On Thursday I went looking for another local point of interest in the Lake Tahoe area, the famed Bonsai Rock, which rests on the eastern shore of the lake, just below Sand Harbor. Someone on Flickr had posted the location of the rock, but actually getting to the spot was a bit of a challenge. Bonsai Rock, so called because of the two small trees growing out of cracks in the stone, is not easily visible from the highway, which at that point is quite a bit higher than the shoreline. Tall pine tres block the view of the rock unless you are standing at just the right angle to see down to the water.
As I drove past it, Google maps on my iPhone told me I was in the right spot, but I couldn’t see where I wanted to be down on the shore. Another challenge is that there is no good parking area along the highway. So I ended up leaving the car several hundred yards north of where I eventually found the rock. I’d seen something like a path leading down the steep hillside, and followed it to the water, thinking I’d make my way along the shore until I found the rock.
But the Tahoe shoreline in this section can by pretty uneven, sometimes composed of smaller granite boulders that one can easily jump from one to the next, and other times going from smaller, low stones to a huge boulder that would require carabiners and pitons to scale. So I ended up moving up and down as much as along the shoreline as I made my way toward Bonsai Rock, and carrying my photo bag and tripod, this felt like quite an expedition.
Eventually I made it, only to find that there is in fact a path from the highway down to the little beach area where one finds Bonsai Rock. It was plain enough from the destination, but I’d not been able to see it from above. The sunset had been promising as I waited for some color in the distance, but as I’m finding is particularly common with Tahoe weather, things can change very quickly up there. The sky had been more or less blue when I arrived at 4pm, and in the next half an hour had filled up with clouds moving quickly from the west.
Things were looking good for a great bloom of warm colors until a thick, low cloud appeared on the horizon and sure enough, blocked the late sun from shining nicely on the moving clouds. Changing strategies, I got out the ND filter and went for a long exposure instead, getting the image above just as the sun peeked through the small gap in the distant clouds. Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera
