It all began at the trailhead
Bob grew up amid orange groves and open scrub land in southern California in the early 1960s. Family trips included Yosemite National Park and the Owens Valley, and at age 14 Bob made his first of many backpacking trips into the High Sierra. The southern Sierra Nevada and the associated mountain ranges of southern California would foster a life long interest in their ancient geology, their peaks, glaciers and forests, and the contemporary historical changes brought about by man and climate. In 1966 Bob hiked and camped the North Fork of Big Pine Creek out of the Owens Valley. In 2016 Bob hiked up the South Fork to about 10,000’ (the second low brown ridge in the painting) to gaze up into the still living Middle Palisade Glacier beneath Norman Clyde Peak. This painting was started in “the”plein air just below the confluence of the two drainages, and worked on in camp and completed in studio at home.
South Fork Big Pine Creek - 10 x 8, oil on panel