Dan's Outside

I go, I see, I do, I walk, I think, I like…

Purchasing Photographs

Many of the photographs at this web site and at G Dan Mitchell | Photography are available as prints and/or may be licensed for other uses. Please ask if one interests you.

Information about purchasing prints and licenses for other uses of my photographs is available at the Purchasing Photographs page at the G Dan Mitchell | Photography web sit.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

P.O. Box 8655

San Jose California 95155-8655

408-297-9447

408-504-3266 (cell)

dan@gdanmitchell.com

Web Sites

G Dan Mitchell | Photography – http://www.gdanmitchell.com/

dan’s outside – http://outside.danmitchell.org/

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March 23, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Purchasing Photographs

They're Coming!

Wildflowers, that is.

From Tom Stienstra at SFGate:

Rains set stage for explosion. Brace for the flowery onslaught Half of the Bay Area’s wildflower puzzle is in place. It rained like, well, uh, heck in January, and then again in mid-March. To make the picture complete, nature now needs to provide clear skies, a bright sun and warm… By Tom Stienstra. [SFGate: Tom Stienstra]

Several of the wildflower spots on Stienstra’s list are also on mine, particularly some of those in Santa Clara County, along with Mission Peak. (In addition to the flowers he reports on that hike, there will also be spectacular lupine and California Poppies near the summti.) I’d also like to get to Point Lobos.

Plants are coming up all over, the ground is very moist, the weather is beginning to warm up. It’s clear that the wildflower bloom is coming.

(Stienstra also has an interesting article about the west shore of Lake Tahoe.)
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March 23, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on They're Coming!

Early Morning Jaunt to Castle Rock

I got up early this morning and went up the Castle Rock State Park on the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was surprisingly cold when I arrived, especially in the narrow and wet canyon that the trail follows. Trees were down and the trail was muddy and on the way back out I came across snow patches that still hadn’t melted – it seemed more like winter than the day before spring.

However, I also saw some of the first spring wildflowers poking up from under last year’s dead vegetation. I saw a few small patches of gentian (? – I’m awful at ID’ing flowers.) and lots of new plants that should be blooming during the next month.
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March 19, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Early Morning Jaunt to Castle Rock

Nice Email

Jeff sent a nice message about the photographs seen at this web site. I’m replying here, Jeff, since it looks like your email spam system blocked my reply. So… thanks!
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March 12, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Nice Email

Snow Day in the Bay Area

Central California has experienced very unusual weather conditions over the past few days, especially considering that it is a week and a half before the start of spring. The weather has gotten colder and colder, and last night there was widespread snow above 500-1000 feet, with snow much lower than that in some areas.

I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to do some photography in these ususual San Francisco Bay Area conditions so I got up at 5:30 this morning and left the house early. First I headed down toward Almaden Quicksilver Park, hoping to visit that area in conditions I might not see again. It was 36 degrees and trying to snow in the town of New Almaden, but the weather did not look conducive to hiking and photography, so I headed back north to Mission Peak.

It seemed like half the people of Fremont were hiking the trail today. Although I arrived fairly early, I had to park way down the hill on a side street. As I started up the trail there were families with children carrying sleds, people with their dogs, you name it. There looked to be quite a bit of snow about half way up the peak when I started, but as I climbed the trail I could see that it was melting quickly. There wasn’t more than an inch or two of snow anywhere on the mountain. This didn’t stop some kids from trying to sled – in one case I saw two joyous children “sledding” on a slope that was about 1/3 snow (an inch deep), 1/3 grass, and 1/3 rocks and dirt. They didn’t seem to care.

I continued on up to the Hidden Valley area where the view of the snow dusted west face of Mission Peak looked more like a scene from the Sierra Nevada than the town of Fremont. I took the main trail across the saddle below the peak, but then left the main route and followed the lower trail that traverses around the back of the peak. There were fewer people here and more snow, but also quite a bit of mud. The snow increased as I reached the saddle south of Mission Peak, but ended as soon as I started up toward the summit.

There were more people on the summit than I have ever seen there before, but I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. By this time there was almost no snow at all there, but there were good views of snow-covered hills to the south and east.
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March 11, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Snow Day in the Bay Area

Late

It is about 11:00 p.m. and I’m back from a day in Yosemite Valley. Photos coming later…
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March 4, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Late

Early

I’ll be up at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday… :-)
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March 3, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Early

Cowardice

Tom Mangan (at Two-Heel Drive) is a coward… with good reason. ;-)
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March 1, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Cowardice

Mission Peak: A Second Try

On Saturday I wrote that I headed toward the Mission Peak trail in the morning, only to decide to head down to Almaden Quicksilver instead when it appeared that I would not find snow on Mission Peak.

I went back to Mission Peak yesterday and did climb the peak – but via the main trail since the wet conditions would likely have made the alternate Horse Heaven Trail variations a very unpleasant, muddy mess. There was still no snow on the peak, though there was still a bit left on the next peak south and more in the Diablo Range to the southeast.

Conditions on the peak were interesting – it was very cold with fog blowing up the west side. A few feet east of the ridge it was perhaps 10 degrees warmer and – for a time at least – sunny. There was still a pretty good cloud cover over the Diablo Range, so I decided not to stick around to take photos this time.
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February 20, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Mission Peak: A Second Try

SFGate is on a Roll Today

A whole string of interesting outdoor articles arrived in my SFGate RSS feed today, so I’ll point to some of them here:


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February 16, 2006 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on SFGate is on a Roll Today

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