Snow Canyon - at 100 degrees
The next day was laundry day, but the big question was where. Our next big destination that we’d decided to keep was Toroweap on the north side of the Grand Canyon. We had a 2-night camping permit I secured a few months earlier. However, given the (mis)adventure and the screws issue with the small pantry, I decided to give the route description a careful read. The high clearance vehicle issue wasn’t a problem. Nor was the description that the last half mile would require a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Unfortunately, the description also said to expect at least a couple of hours of very heavy washboard road. After discussing it a bit, we decided to play it safe and not put Beast through that sort of ride until we got her fixed up. So where to?
We decided to make our way generally westward (towards home) so we headed to Cedar City to do laundry. As we approached Cedar City, we found a great French bakery to grab some breakfast goodies while the clothes were getting cleaned. We scoped the internet while in town and were still at a loss, so we decided to head to the west part of Zion, a bit south of town. Much like Bryce has a small part of the park that is accessed from a totally different direction, Zion has apart that is accessible off Interstate 15.
Best thing was, while heading down there Ann found our next target destination - Snow Canyon by St. George, Utah, just a bit further south from our Zion stop.
The trip in and out of Zion was a short, though nice drive. Lots of beautiful viewpoints, but you really have to hike into the park to experience it, and that was not on our agenda or our legs after the morning’s photo shoot. Still, it gives a taste of what Zion is about.
The diversity of the canyon drive was impressive for a short drive, but I really loved this particular grouping of formations so we stopped a few times along the way for some quick snaps
Back on the road to St. George, it seemed like it was downhill all the way. That’s because it was. At the end of the trip when I did gas mileage calculations, I found out that our gas mileage increased by 2 mpg on the way down (and dropped by 2.5 mpg from our trip average on the way back up I-15). Even more significantly, we went from the fairly pleasant mountain plateaus to the heat of St. George. Yikes was it hot.
We arrived at Snow Canyon State Park and immediately secured a camp spot in the park. It wasn’t as bad as the line-up at the RV park near Monument Valley, but it was close. Task done, we immediately went out on a scouting trip.
Utah’s State parks are incredible, and while not as large as some of their federal cousins, they’re impressive enough.
We started off by driving on the main road north, driving in and out of each of the pull out areas and checking out the trails and features that radiated from each. As the canyon rises as it moves northward, we eventually got a nice shot looking down the canyon towards St. George
Along the drive, we saw some very interesting formations that warranted pulling out the point-and-shoot.
There were a variety of rock formations and a great mix of colors as you moved from one area of the park to another. We eventually exited out the north entrance, and drove around to a pull-out that takes you to the edge of the canyon. It’s an impressive view.
By then it was really, really hot, so Ann and I headed into St. George for some ice cream!
On the way back, we re-entered the southern entrance and worked our way checking out the areas south of the campground.
As I mentioned, the types of rocks you find really vary from place . .
. . . to place.
When we arrived back at the campsite, we decided to grab the gear and head down the trail that leads from the campground.
The sun was starting to set, and I noticed a clump of grasses that were catching the last rays of the day. I quickly set my gear up. Took a shot, checked it for focus, composition, etc, and then planned on making a few more. Unfortunately, the sun had dropped in that minute or so and there were no more highlights on the bushes. A few lousy seconds and it was gone!
Still, there were images to be made, and definite planning for the next morning
Eventually, things were mostly in shade and one starts looking for a different type of image.
We got up early the next morning and, after making the obligatory pot of coffee, we headed back out on the trail from the campground to see what the morning would offer us.
Each of us had a pretty good idea of where we wanted to start, so the first image wasn’t a problem.
But it seemed like the sun was moving particularly fast that morning and the light conditions changed quickly. We lost the lovely blue-pink light, but managed another decent image before everything started going south
Then the sun hit with a sledge hammer, which forces you to look at everything quite differently. After a few feeble efforts, I managed to finally find a combination of shadow and form that did the stark morning light and the subject matter justice.
I tried to photograph in the direction we were headed (which looked to head into a narrow canyon), but I really struggled to create an image that imparted the sense of exploring a new place that we were feeling and the complexity of the geologic formations in the park
As we worked our way down the trail between the narrow rocks, the mix of rocks, vegetation and light offered yet another image
And as the trail passed through some rocks, it narrowed significantly. Either that, or our camera bags are just way too big!
As we got into the narrow canyon, the light we had to deal with was getting really harsh and difficult to work with. Several photographs simply did not work. I’m still holding final judgment on this image.
So I eventually hung it up and started working with compositions wholly in shadow.
Of which there was a lot of subject matter from which to choose. Both in color and in black and white.
By mid-morning not only was the sun blaring, it was getting hotter than the dickens. By the time we’d made it back to camp, both Ann and I had drained our water bottles and were sweating like proverbial pigs (I say proverbial because I don’t think pigs sweat, but you get my meaning . . . ). The day was going to be a scorcher so we decided to do what all smart people should do when it’s unbearably hot - sit in a cold movie theater.
Guardian of the Galaxy 2 was great, and as you should already know from Ann’s earlier post, Mad Pita was awesome.
It was still sweltering entering early evening when we got back, so we decided to get ready for the next morning’s photo shoot, which would require a bit of hiking to get to.
Our morning shoot was going to start in the northern part of the park, where we would hike in and onto a giant rock. Hopefully, we’d crest it and make our way down to some black rocks on top of another formation we’d seen from a distance. We weren’t too sure of distances, but that was the plan.
It was a very early morning and it started wonderfully, as the pre-dawn glow began just before we started climbing the rock. I simply had to stop and take a shot of the north western part of the canyon.
As we finally got to the top of the rock and made our way southward, I had to stop and photograph another part of the huge rock formation as a pink morning glow started bouncing off clouds in the east
We quickly realized we’d never make it to our destination (darn, we have to come back!) so we started working from the top of the rock looking down the canyon
It was a truly lovely morning with the clouds that had caused the pink light now filtering the sun’s first rays so they didn’t blast the scene with light.
When I say we were on a rock, it wasn’t a “rock” per se. It was a series of petrified sand dunes and they were huge. We had several football fields of rock surface to move around to make photos on. We barely covered a quarter of where we could, but that gave us enough diversity of imagery to make the location an ideal morning photography site.
Making my way around to photograph down a draw, I came across a lovely composition of cactus and grasses.
The sun was starting to occasionally peek through the clouds, which gave us quite a bit of texture in the landscape and which lengthened the amount of time we could photograph that morning. The photographer Charlie Waite describes the transformation that weather or spotty lighting can add to landscape photography as the difference between making a “scenic photograph” and making a dramatic photograph. It certainly helped in this case. I took quite a few of this image because the light would pop in and out of the landscape. The ones where everything is evenly lit are, simply put, pretty dull even though the place is beautiful. So chock it up to the lighting
Eventually, the sun rose over the clouds and the morning sunlight hammer hit. I managed one more decent image before the contrast became simply too harsh to readily handle for a broader landscape.
As much as I tried, the images after this were just too harsh to have any subtleness to the light. And since we were on a giant rock facing the sun, we didn’t have the opportunity we had the previous day to hide on the shady side of the ridge to make a few more images. Ann and I have agreed that we need to come back here sometime when it isn’t blazing hot and when the sun is lower in the sky so you can photograph for most of the day. It truly is an incredible place.
Anyway, it was time to head back, get a shower and start heading home, with at least one destination on our itinerary. So we started the long trek back to Beast and, just like the previous day, arrived with empty water bottles. Man is it hot there!