Yosemite Storm, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

A winter storm blanketed Yosemite Valley. The snow was driving hard, wet, and falling heavily. Even dressed for winter, we got cold walking a few hundred feet. Photography in these conditions was not ideal.

I decided to get us in the car, where it was warm, and to take a chance that there might be something to see (and photograph) from Tunnel View. At the turn-off near Bridal Veil Falls, a Ranger stopped us to verify we were in 4-wheel drive and had snow chains.

We chugged slowly up the icy grade. Tunnel View for once was without the usual crowd of photographers and fellow travelers. The clouds were down low, Tunnel View parking lot was covered with snow, and the view a wall of whiteness.

Julian and I waited for a while in the car, heater on, stereo blasting the Dies irae from Mozart’s Requiem over and over again. This haunting and sad music, Julian’s current musical obsession, went well with the bleak surroundings.

Then the clouds lifted for a minute or two, I hurried outside and snapped this image of the transcendal landscape of Yosemite. All too soon the cloud cover was back in place again, and snow was falling hard on the windshield in time with Mozart’s music of death and redemption.

Bridalveil Falls from near Tunnel View, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

A couple of hundred feet walk down from the photographic fracas at Tunnel View, along the icy fringe of Route 140, Bridelveil Falls glowed in a brief interval of sunshine, framed by snow-covered pine trees.

Morning, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Morning comes late to Yosemite Valley. Suddenly the sun starts to light up the peaks and walls of the valley, in stark contrast to the trees and cliffs still in shadow. Soon the sun will melt the snow, but for now the valley retains its beautiful white coat of winter.

Sunrise from the Yosemite Valley floor is a spectacular show indeed, perhaps more beautiful than sunset. (For sunset, you are best off finding a location where you can see down into the valley, rather than be looking up from the valley.)

I owe my many photos of Yosemite at dawn in part to my nine-year-old son Julian because on our recent trip he woke me each of our days in Yosemite early enough to photograph the sunrise. He also put up with my long photographic sessions on these days before we ever got to breakfast!