#1 Vernal Fall

In the summer of 1988 I hiked the John Muir Trail, which travels 221 miles from Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney. I took photographs along the trail and over the next year and a half did a suite of 17 etchings of this Sierra Nevada backpack.

This plateau is strangly flat and desert-like. One can almost forget that they are in the mountains until they look up to see the surrounding peaks. Mount Whitney to the east is rather flat and unobtrusive. A small round lake punctuates this odd scene.