Tuesday, July 30, 2013

One of our favorite back country touring areas is in the Texas Hill country south of Emigrant Gap, Placer County. When we have a weather front move in, or thunderstorms forecast, this is the area we most often go for photography because of the clouds in the canyons. One of our favorite spots in the old lookout site at Big Valley Bluff. Here is Shirley shooting into the Royal Gorge of the N.F. of the American River during a thunderstorm this summer.
Last week we hiked up Onion Creek, a remote creek in Placer county that often has interesting wildlife and flowers along it's very high canyon banks. This year it was very dry, few flowers and we saw no wildlife. This creek hike is of a double interest to me. Many years ago I was skiing with a friend at Sugar Bowl ski area, just over the mountain from Onion creek, during a very large snow storm. I last saw my friend get off the ski lift and ski east into the blinding blizzard. He never returned to the bottom of the lift. We searched for a week during the storm and again the next summer. He was never found. I think he may have skied down into Onion creek and become lost. I hike this creek each summer in hopes I would find a ski, a ski boot or some sign of my friend.

WILD PLACES by Jim and Shirley White






This is a web site about the "Wild Places" mostly in the Sierra Nevada visited and photographed by my wife Shirley and myself in the later days of our life. I will post pictures and then tell you about our trip to take that photograph or other information of interest about that area.

This picture of the flanks of Mt. Lassen was taken in late October about four years ago by Shirley when we were the last of a few visitors to Mt. Lassen National Park before the winter storms closed the park for the winter. We had a new pop-up camper on our truck and were trying it out for the first time. We spent one night at Manzanita Lake where it snowed about a foot of new soft snow. We took the road back toward the headquarters photographing as we went. Shirley took this picture near Helen Lake where we saw a man and a small child, dressed in street clothes start up the summit trail. We tried to camp in the parking lot at the park headquarters but high gusts of wind made us think we might lose the camper if we stayed. We moved to a lower elevation camp where we spent a peaceful night.