Nineteen days of storms finally broke. I woke at 4:00 A.M., drove down Highway 395 to Lone Pine, and then climbed the Whitney Portal Road in four‑wheel drive until the truck could go no farther and the snow held it fast. I set the camera beside the tailgate and hiked a short way up, stopping above the Alabama Hills—about halfway to the Portal—where the rounded foreground rocks frame the serrated Sierra crest.
The distance demanded a very long telephoto lens; the compression it produced made the peaks loom close and monumental. A couple of weeks earlier I’d tried for this same view, but the alpenglow never came. This morning was different. The storms had scrubbed the air clean, and fresh snow on the ridges turned every contour into a reflector. When the light arrived it was astonishingly pure: a slow, luminous wash of rose and crimson that sharpened the ridgelines against a deepening sky.
The glow lasted only minutes, but those minutes felt vast. Foreground shadows held the Alabama Hills in quiet silhouette while the distant crest burned with color—an ephemeral, almost sacred performance that rewarded the cold, the wait, and the stubbornness of a stuck truck. It wasn’t just a photograph; it was the culmination of timing, weather, and patience, a rare clarity of light I’ve carried with me ever since.
