School started this week, but we’ve got one last respite of summer: the upcoming Labor Day weekend!  Wife and I worked all last evening to get the car packed so we can get out the door to Zion National Park early this morning, and beat southern California traffic through Las Vegas.  On Sunday we have a permit to hike the left fork of North Creek, also known as the Subway.  This will be our second time through, but this time I’m taking my camera and 1 lens (in addition to ropes, harnesses, etc), so I’m hoping to come back with some photos of this amazing canyon.

Although we’re not quite to the end of summer, its time to start looking to fall.  By way of Phillip Colla this week, I learned of a lot of great online resources to monitor the onset of fall color in the eastern Sierra Nevada.  We were already planning a fall trip to Bishop Creek Canyon and Lundy Canyon, but this sort of re-cxcited me for fall, which is my favorite season.

Michael Frye posted an update on his recent night photography workshop.  It looks like it would have been especially neat to attend this one because of the fires currently burning in Yosemite National Park.

Today’s photo is a few years old, taken from the classic Tunnel View overlook in Yosemite, right before a summer thunderstorm:

Yosemite Valley, July 2006