Journeys›Photograph

Deep Snow Around Donner Lake

·Placer County, California·#winter#tahoe#skiing#snow#landscape
A snowy landscape with a lake, a tree-lined shore, a wooden cabin, and a partly cloudy sky with bright sunlight.

Vacation weekend up in Placer County, and the storms this month have buried everything. The pines along the trail are carrying so much snow they barely look like trees anymore — whole branches bent into white lumps, some of the smaller ones folded almost to the ground.

We followed a creek that stayed open and black against all that white. At one crossing the handrail was the only thing sticking out of a drift, and further along a fallen log bridged the water with a foot of snow balanced on top of it. Someone ahead of us had poles stuck upright at the edge of the trail.

Down at Donner Lake the surface was still, houses along the far shore reflected clean, ice just starting to form near the buoys. Later the clouds finally broke and from up high the whole lake sat below us with haze pooled in the valley, the first blue sky of the day. Hard to believe the same Sierra passes that stopped wagon trains in Gold Rush days are what we drove over to get here.

A snow-covered forest of tall pine trees with a person on skis in the distance on a cloudy day.A snow-covered forest alongside a dark river with deep snow on the banks and a metal railing in the foreground.Snow-covered evergreen trees surround a calm lake reflecting the forest under an overcast sky.Snowy pine branches frame a calm lake reflecting snow-covered trees and houses on the distant bank.A winter scene with a lake reflecting snow-covered mountains and trees, framed by snowy evergreens and bare branches.A snowy evergreen forest lines both sides of a dark stream with several fallen, snow-covered logs across it.A winter forest scene with snow-covered evergreen trees, fallen logs, and a dark stream under an overcast sky.A snowy mountain landscape features a blue sky, a distant lake, snow-covered trees and hills, and a black fence in the foreground.

More Entries