Indeed Gary, what an exceptional image, one of the best I've seen, am envious! The light off the broken clouds provided wonderful light for the ground fog below. None of the valley is in direct light that often plagues this kind of image with higher dynamic range to contend with. Snow nicely covers lots of the rock areas that otherwise would be dim. If it had really been a much larger snow event that made the whole scene white on all trees and rocks there probably would not have been the nice ground fog that is a result of thin snow depths vaporizing off rock then condensing above the ground.
Before that storm on Wednesday April 8 came through I was aware that it was probably going to be the only opportunity in 2015 for a chance for snow covering valley floor areas but given how storms in the Sierra had played out this droughty winter, didn't have enough confidence it would amount to much to bother taking a day off from work midweek. You might enjoy playing the below animation of that storm back.
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/js_animate.html?year=2015&month=4&day=19&type=ruc_nonsnow_precip®ion=SouthwestAlso enjoyed reading your commentary that reflects my own thoughts on these kind of icon locations. Of course the key is to be there and ready when uncommon conditions have potential. If one does that enough, sooner or later it is by law of chance likely to offer rare opportunities that can stand out above the thousands, millions of other visitor's images.
David
http://www.davidsenesac.com/Spring_2015/spring_2015-1.html
http://www.davidsenesac.comEdited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 09:35AM by DavidSenesac.