I stood below the tallest peak in the contiguous United States in awe. Standing in almost a half foot of fresh snow, I realized how serendipitous this moment was—Lone Pine, California averages only 2 inches of snow per year.
It was the last day of the year; naturally I spent the morning reflecting on the past few months. In January of 2021, I quit my decade-long career in retail management to pursue exactly what I was doing in this very moment: chasing sunrises, capturing split-seconds of time and making them permanent.
In February, I visited this scene for the first time and remember marveling at the castle in the sky that is Mt. Whitney. The granite needles cascading toward the peak look like staircases to the clouds: a pathway to dreaming. I now stood in the same spot, 306 days later, with my life inexplicably changed for the better.
I think a lot about the geography of this mountain. The highest point in the lower 48 states is only 80 miles away from Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at -282 ft below sea level. In the spirit of New Year’s reflecting, this encapsulates the past year. This is what life feels like; you’re only ever one decision away from changing everything. Sometimes, the best moments of our lives are only a hop, skip, and jump away from our rock bottom.
Cold from the snow and the clouded sunrise, I was unknowingly seconds away from the most memorable moment of the year. Below Mt. Whitney was a cloud inversion, the first time I ever saw one in my photographic career. The mountains were obscured with fast moving clouds. Unsure if the scene I was waiting for would happen, I looked to the clouds anyway, hopeful.
For only twenty seconds, the clouds revealed the mountain I had been hoping for. At the very end of the year, one of my final frames, was the best photographic moment of the year. Sometimes your highest moments are fleeting, yet their impact is infinite. As I pressed the shutter, I knew this was where I was supposed to be all along.
