Diablo Lake Overlook

Author's Comments

The color is the thing, and the color is real. I have heard people accuse the photographs of being saturated past honesty, and I understand the instinct, but Diablo Lake actually looks like that. Glacial flour suspended in cold water, refracting light in a way that no other lake in the region quite matches. The first time I saw it I sat in the pullout for a long time before I lifted the camera at all. Morning is when the lake gives its best version of itself. The peaks to the east catch first light while the water is still in shadow, and there is a window of maybe twenty minutes when the turquoise reads almost luminous against the darker shore. Late July through late September is the peak of the color, when the glaciers are most actively grinding and the sediment load is highest. By October the water deepens and the surrounding larches begin to turn, which is its own kind of photograph. The pullout is small and the crowds are real on summer weekends. I have stopped trying to shoot here on Saturdays. A Tuesday morning in August at six in the morning is a different place entirely, quiet enough to hear the wind moving down the valley. Bring a wide lens because the scale wants it, but do not neglect a longer focal length for the way the ridges layer behind the lake. The compression flattens the peaks into something almost Japanese. Highway 20 closes for the winter, usually in November. Plan accordingly.

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