I love this area, but “people pollution” around the lake really is a frustrating problem. Stupid people crawling all over the fragile tufas (despite signs telling them not to), breaking them and ruining views. Fortunately, as you suggest, most of them are too lazy to get up early, but some other photographers can get seriously obnoxious and obtrusive as well. Last fall, I set up a pre-dawn photo point just east of the south tufas to capture the tufas in first light. Unfortunately, a fat woman (or was it Santa Claus?) arrived in a red and white outfit and parked herself with tripod in full view on the tufa formation for the entire time. And a guy was there panning back and forth with a camcorder with a red pilot light. So all my long exposures had this fat broad in the middle and were streaked by the red light. Wished my Canon had been a Howitzer! Got some nice shots of the Sierras though. Fortunately, there’s much more to Mono than just tufas.

Happy shooting,
Craig