Sunrise to moonrise on Mount Tamalpais

Mount Tamalpais in Marin County is not impressive as mountains go. It’s no Mount Rainier, the centerpiece of the Pacific Northwest, no Mount Shasta, “as lonely as God and as white as the winter moon,” as the poet Joaquin Miller called it. The east peak of Tamalpais is only 2,571 feet above sea level. It would not even be much of a hill in the Sierra Nevada.

But Tamalpais has something else. It looms over the the rolling Marin hills, just north of the Golden Gate, easily visible from most parts of San Francisco. It has a unique curving profile that romantics claim resembles a sleeping maiden. Tamalpais is swept with wispy fog on summer days and fierce winter winds. It has redwood forests and small towns at its feet.

It has a bit of a literary flair, Gertrude Atherton, John Dos Passos, Jack Kerouac and the poet Gary Snyder wrote about it. And now comes Gary Yost, a software engineer and veteran photographer, who has a new five-minute video that offers a whole day in the life of the mountain. It is called “Mt. Tamalpais Sunrise to Moonset.”

Like a lot of people in the Bay Area, Yost came from somewhere else — in his case, New Jersey. “I was always fascinated by mountains, and New Jersey doesn’t have any mountains,” he said. “I was tired of the East Coast vibe, and I wanted to be on the edge of the world.’’

Well, that was one reason. Yost is one of the tech elite. He designed a 3-D automation program called Autodesk 3ds Max and became well enough known to have his own Wikipedia page. On the other hand, he has been a photographer for 40 years.

He lived in Marin and enjoyed hiking, so he was naturally drawn to Mount Tamalpais. One day, when he was at the top of the mountain just outside the fire lookout tower, he encountered Don Keylon, a Marin County Fire Department officer. Keylon was in charge of staffing the county’s two fire lookouts with volunteers. Yost and Keylon hit it off, and Yost volunteered.

After a bit of training, he stood shifts atop Mount Tamalpais, and the job opened his eyes.

The view from the top of Tamalpais is famous — from the edge of the Santa Clara Valley to the south, north to Mount St. Helena at the head of the Napa Valley, west to the Farallon Islands, which are usually visible, and east to Mount Diablo and beyond, where the SacramentoSan Joaquin River Delta lies. The Marin towns are at the bottom of the mountain, and in the medium distance, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and the cities that ring the bay. Seven million people live within a few miles of Mount Tamalpais.

The mountain is also circled by thousands of acres of trees, dry brush and grasslands. It is prime fire country, which is why the fire lookouts can be useful.

Yost began to sign up for two-day shifts, which meant he could spend the night alone atop the mountain. So he began lugging heavy camera equipment about half a mile up the steep, rocky trail that leads to the summit.

He made a video called “A Day in the Life of a Lookout” in 2012, showing the changing view from the top of Tamalpais and the work of the fire lookout. It went viral on YouTube, Vimeo and the Atlantic magazine’s website with thousands of views, maybe a million. Yost doesn’t know the numbers for sure.

That gave him the idea for more videos, including one on the mountain’s West Peak and its now vanished Air Force station and another on the rangers who patrol the mountain.

“I always wanted to do a video on a full day on the mountain, from sunrise to sunset and the moonrise,” he said.

He used stop-motion photography to get the effect he wanted, a whole cycle, sunrise to midday, to afternoon and night. To start, the sun comes up and burns off the fog banks from the previous day. There is a lull, and then the fog comes in again in the afternoon. The sun sets and the stars come out — a full day in only five minutes.

Yost uses the fog like a mystical curtain; the fog banks rolling in waves over the hillsides like surf on the ocean, brushing through the trees as light as gauze, swirling, drifting. It is as if the fog were an actor in the story about the day on the mountain — and places like San Francisco and Oakland are stage sets that appear and disappear in the distance, like mirages.

The video shows Tamalpais from all sides, even the shadow of the mountain at sunrise. There are forests and hillsides, quick shots of streams and waterfalls, but no people and no animals. The only signs of humans are the nighttime glow from the cities and cars moving over the freeways and bridges like rivers of light.

Tamalpais itself is the star, with the fog, wind and the night sky in a supporting role.

The video has music by Kirk Casey played by Jeri Littlejohn on flute and Miwok chants by Sky Road Webb.

It is an understatement to say that Yost loves Tamalpais.

“It’s inspirational,” he says, “It’s unique in America. It’s spiritual to me.”

Yost did all the work on his Tamalpais videos at his own expense, and wants the public to see them free.

“It’s my gift to the mountain,” he said.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle. com Twitter: @carlnoltesf

Gary Yost Gary Yost has been photographing Mount Tamalpais for years during shifts as a fire lookout volunteer.