Terrell Brothers Road Trip - Day 4: Sunrise, Arches and Islands
Ok, I guess the clock analogy only applies to clocks with hour and minute hands, not to digital clocks. But since my watch is manual, the analogy is appropriate. You see, not only did Len recommend we head out to the Slickrock Foot Trail for a sunset shot, on the way back to the van he suggested we return for sunrise as well. Sure, that meant hiking by headlamp in the morning, but at least we knew the trail and at some point, there should be enough early pre-dawn light to hike by.
Perhaps it was intelligence on my part in recognizing that he was right, not so much the fact that he was right. Brotherly love only goes so far. Admitting he was right twice in one day is tough. In any event, I think it was a smart move to head back out to the mesa trail for sunrise as Len had suggested. Little did we realize that the location that gave us some nice sunset shots would offer us us even more during sunrise.
It was a bright pre-dawn morning, with little of the soft quality of light that the desert environment has to offer. Or perhaps we should have gotten there earlier. In any event, that all went away once the faintest edges of the sun rose above the horizon. Charlie Waite would have been proud of me for finding a way to gain the elevation needed to lower the foreground tree branches to below the horizon.
As with the previous mornings, Len and I worked furiously in silence, each of us doing our own thing. The morning light waits for no one and passes all too quickly.
Every time I made an image, I saw another as I was breaking down my camera and tripod.
Pointing into the sun was . . . difficult to get a good image. But looking north or south offered incredible potential. I really worked hard to include more landscapes in my images instead of relying on the detail shots that come so easily in this environment.
But at one point I saw a tree and decided to try and isolate it from its environment. And when I scanned the edges of the first of the images I made (another Charlie Waite pointer), I noticed a shadow in the bottom left corner of the image. So I waited for it to slowly move off-frame.
Not long afterwards, I came across another lone tree. To quote Charlie Waite, “What photographer can resist the lone tree?”
As the sun continued to rise, Len and I continued to photograph the mesa. I have to admit, my first impression from the previous afternoon of what the Slickrock Foot Trail had to offer photographically was dead wrong. Next time I’m out here, I’m definitely doing the whole trail (hint hint Ann).
Soon it was time for us to head back to the van. Of course, not before one final shot. I call this one “Two Geezers Taking Selfies - Homage to Ansel Adams”.
We made it back to the van in good time, unsurprisingly given we were more than familiar with the trail. Our schedule for the day included heading up to Moab for breakfast, into Arches National Park and, time permitting, off to the northern part of Canyonlands NP, the Islands in the Sky District (visible in the first few images above). As you can see below, time permitted.
Jumping ahead in time, while we were at the Capitol Reef NP welcome center, I picked up a copy of Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire.” It documents his time as a park ranger in Arches National Park when he did summers there in the late 1950’s. In it he damns the surveyors who laid out the “new road” that was to come some years later (the present entrance road), bemoaning the fact that it means more and more tourists “in their damn automobiles” will make a point of coming to the park. I must agree. All of the horrors he had described have come true. And I am not hypocritical enough to not be aware that I too am part of the problem. Oh to have been there when he was a ranger. Alas, that was not the case.
It has gotten so bad that this year Arches was one of several parks where you have to schedule an appointment with a permitted entrance time. I booked the earliest possible time I could once we figured out we could do the road trip and the day we would (should) have been in Arches. The earliest time was 11:00, which I took. Naturally, anyone can enter before 8:00 without a reservation (I was originally planning on 5:00 for a sunrise shot), which of course would have totally deprived us of the morning we had in Canyonlands.
The final nail in the coffin regarding our arrival time was when I tried to reserve 2 permits to the Fiery Furnace area one week in advance - the earliest one could get them. The Fiery Furnace area is a maze of rock formations that have restricted visitation - either through a ranger-guided group tour reservation, or by permits that allow one to wander about (and photograph) freely. From our AirBNB in Phoenix I had my iPad all set up to reserve 2 permits on the day we were going to be there. I waited for the iPad clock to turn over from 7:59 to 8:00 am, within one second I hit the “reserve” button, up popped a window that said “59 Permits Left Do You Want to Reserve?” I immediately tapped “Yes.” The whole process took a dozen or so seconds. The response, “Sorry, no available reservations for the date you selected.”
We ultimately opted for Plan C, doing the sunrise shoot in Canyonlands, and then entering the park at 11:00 (despite getting in line at 10:50, we didn’t actually enter the park until 11:35). Edward Abbey was so right.
That’s the long way of saying that, despite the fact that the crowds are largely hidden in the photographs below, don’t kid yourself - the place is crowded. Always crowded. Even with the limited entrance pilot program.
I decided that my first image in Arches should not be of an arch. It’s an image that could have been taken anywhere in that area. The place is beautiful mind you, despite the crowds.
Len and I decided to first head over to the Delicate Arch viewpoint. Not to the arch itself (that parking lot was full and the crowds coming and going were . . . disturbing), but to the viewpoint our friends Paula and Gary had taken us to in 2015. While that parking lot was less full, it did have busses that arrived and off-loaded tourists.
Fortunately, most people stayed down below at the lower viewpoint while we opted to climb up to the upper viewpoint. And while I thought that it was a 50-50 split, maybe 60 (lower) - 40 (upper), as we were hiking up the trail, not everyone hiked all the way up to get the closest view from the ridge line we ended up at. I guess there is something to the saying that 90% of the people who go to the national parks stay within 1/4 mile of the parking lot. There were only a handful of people on that upper ridge line - plenty of room to avoid others.
And yes, if you look real closely, you can see the people at Delicate Arch.
Len and I drove around to a couple of other locations, periodically taking a short trail to get a better view of the arch or whatever feature was supposed to be at the stop.
Our short hikes allowed us to get a better feel for the landscape. As I said, it’s a beautiful place to explore.
And while hiking to an arch can give you very different views of it,
one should not ignore the other photographic opportunities along the way.
Or the opportunity to make an abstract image or two.
When we stopped at Balancing Rock, Len asked in that “I’m not so sure about this place” tone of voice whether I really wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon at Arches. I told him no and that, as much as I love the place, I’ve found the crowds to be photographically stifling nearly every time I’ve visited the park.
I did, however, tell him that should really swing by Double Arch on the way out because it is such an interesting formation. So that’s what we did. It’s amazing how you can use bushes and deep shadows to hide all the people around and under the arch. But as I said, Edward Abbey was not wrong.
Ultimately we said our goodbyes to Arches and headed up to Canyonlands North. On the way, I pulled off and found a BLM campground (free camping is prohibited on the BLM land around Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park), where the camp host let us reserve one of the sites in the tent-only area . . . as long as we don’t use a generator. Using Len’s park pass, it only cost us $10.00. What a bargain!
Camp spot reserved, we were off to check out photo opportunities on this end of the park.
The first thing we did was swing by Dead Horse Point State park, the location where we were going to start the next day. We stopped at the entrance station to make sure they don’t close the gate at night (they don’t) and we even got a tip from the ranger - if all we’re doing is going to photograph sunrise then leave the park, there’s no need to pay the entrance fee. Far be it from us to not follow a ranger’s instructions, especially when it saves us money.
So we made a U-turn and headed out to the adjacent Canyon Lands NP’s Island in the Sky District.
This is the north end of Canyon Lands, but since it’s located on a mesa that juts into the canyon, you get beautiful views in all directions, to include the beautiful La Sal mountains east of Moab.
The vastness of the canyon resembles the Grand Canyon, but its topography is entirely different.
From the southern tip you can see the Needles District far to the south (above) as well as the other prongs of the mesa (below).
As I’d mentioned in the very first of the trip postings, I experimented a lot with the 9:16 aspect ratio this trip - a ratio I hadn’t seriously considered before. I can see why some landscape photographers love the proportions of the frame. It is suited for the grand landscape.
We worked our way along the various viewpoints of the mesa, experimenting as we went along. As time wore on, more and more clouds started to develop, which gave us interesting, varying light.
Eventually though, the clouds became thicker, as as we got to a viewpoint that faced to the west, the spots of sunlight became fewer and fewer and the light became flat.
Eventually we had to resort to making images that either had interesting textures, . . .
. . . or provided subjects that were close enough to where clouds could be excluded for the most part.
We hung out for quite a while, often being teased by gaps in the clouds directly above, offering the hope of some blue in the sky and spots of sunlight on the landscape. But they were just that, teasers.
Eventually, the clouds sealed up entirely and started looking threatening. The weather forecast said heavy overcast and possible rain. Given that the heavier clouds came in from the west and the western horizon looked significantly denser than the others (with rain falling in some areas), we concluded we were not going to have a spectacular sunset and decided to get a good night’s sleep for an early and very exciting next day.
It was yet another good call on our part.