Moab day 1.5-2.5

The end of day 1 after the blog update I found a large sandy hill that people had taken over for play. I love how the little unexpected surprises pop up and turn into the most memorable. After helping a family with some pics I made that comment and they agreed this little  not-on-a-map spot would be the highlight of the trip for the kids.

The next day I did some basic chores: laundry, showered at a hostel, food shopping, etc. Picked up some pre-digital camera used books on photography hoping that I can tell what is still relevant. Yesterday was still a bit overcast but today looks better. The absolute key for photo’ing these rocks in Arches is getting the right time of day, which is either morn or evening depending on the rock in question. The sun popped out towards the end of the day and I literally RAN towards one of the bigger landmarks in the park which is delicate arch. I have to say that I am\was somewhat jaded with rocks but this particular one is very very impressive. It’s not really the arch itself which makes the whole experience but the way it is positioned on a huge natural bowl with a great surrounding view. Just amazing. I am gonna post a few pics here but I suspect I will be getting better ones later. Of note, I dodged the standard viewpoint and went off-trail (possibly not legal but if you stay on rocks and off the soil you do no damage and this was possible here). I like the view I found.. it’s farther away and I can’t get mountains in the background..but I can get the other photographers in the shot. At least its not a textbook brochure shot..

I also met a dude who went to my same High School in Georgia. Small world. Only talked briefly. He had pulled his small p’up truck into some deep sand and I could see him get immediately concerned as he tried nonchalantly to rock it out of the spot without drawing attention. Eventually he tried to gun it with no success, lowered the window and let out a slow ‘ooooops’. Cracked me up all evening.

Tried the local brewery as well. Note to self: Pale Ale is not good with spicy burrito. Their belgian wit was very very good.

This town has basically all the outdoor activities one can imagine aside from skiing. Being next to the Colorado and several national parks and LOTS of public BLM land translates to outdoor playground.

Supply your own caption.

Met some kids (Jaiden and Autumn) on a trail in-town next to a creek. Credit Jaiden with this shot. It was their dog who insisted on doing strafing runs on leashed Sadie, which aggravated her severely.

Flora.

The sand hill. Couple hundred feet of fun. I ran down myself 4 times I think.

This guy was also doing flips (clumsily) and such.

This golden was patient with being buried… which humorously was put upon him by an adult who I think was having more fun than his kids.

The celebration. Actually, what this German (by far the most common foreigner) was doing was providing the illusion of holding up an arch. The photo for that would have been from the other side.

Kind of a trick here because the greenery is provided by close and fairly small Junipers.

The longest arch in the park.. over 300 feet. Shooting into the sun made it a tough shot.

From a local picnic area.. These shots had a simplicity and the sun was just peeking out of the clouds to help.

About a 10 minute window to race through the park and pick up shots.

This is a good one IMO.

These two are overly complicated but nice just the same.

Stacked rocks good stuff.

Shots from the arch. I like shooting the photogs.

I love how everyone is doing something different / looking a different way..

Horizon the other way.

Nice shot.

tweet tweet. Next morning shot.

Moab day 1

Moab looks like a pretty slick town, its kind of like a desert Utah version of Steamboat Springs. I got in late at night and stayed at a trailhead into one of the Japanese WWII concentration camps. In the morning pre-dawn I scampered into Arches national park and took some photos but cloud cover sort of limited the efforts. I used the lighting excuse to go into the town for some good grub, coffee, and web time. I am headed back out soon for some evening shots. I suspect I will be in this area for awhile.

I played a lot with exposure on these shots that have sillhoutes. The naked eye can see light\detail on both the rock face and in the sky but the camera has to basically choose between them. I might attempt some form of composite in the future but I don’t have meaty enough software to put them together.

The artistic shot. This was on the brochure into the park so little originality here. Still nice.

Wascally.

Offense sells tickets. Humor wins council elections.

Capitol Reef and en route to Moab

I figured 1 fish was all I needed to justify the 44$ in licensing fees and 30$+ of equipment I had purchased but was not quite ready or extensive adventure so I took the easy route of hitting the local national park of Capitol Reef. I had photo’d this from the top of *1,000 lake mountain. I did end up doing some hikes to get many of these, particularly the one of the arch.

Playing with custom exposure levels. These shots into the sun are hard to get. Cameras are much worse than the eye for these.

The Fremont flowing under the rocks. The colored cottonwoods are an attractive counterpoint and thrive near the water but nowhere else.

Mule deer. Sadie takes an interest naturally. This was in historic Fruita in Capitol Reef as were many of these pics that have the trees.

awwww…

Driving one of the washed canyons.

This is the kind of thing that you fear stepping to far forward…

I picked up the power of flight on this trip. Trust me its a pretty wicked cool skill.

The [Butch] Cassidey Arch. Pretty wicked.

An oft-photo’d barn.

Deer a-plenty.

Down teh road.

I decided to give a shot at finding my way to the top of one of the local peaks without using a trail. I put the pack together in a maximally light coniguration for a 1-night stay. I had misgivings remaining from the last hike and my courage eventually waivered. What encouraged me was that the straightline distance to the top was so short, but I hit so many impasses on the way that I ended up giving up and turning back. Here are some photos on the way.

Texture.

Crooked timber. Has a natural moire effect.

Strange mushroom looked man cut and left out to dry. Sadie took an interest. I kind of doubt this was natively grown.

Someone took an interest in protecting this one and built a little rock circle. It was in the middle of a wash out.

Random car pic while fleeing the failed camp attempt.

Fishin’ outside of Torrey, UT

Fishing qualifies as easy-time, which is what I still needed. I trucked over to the Fremont river which is a smallish, sandy and fast-flowing river. I didn’t have much success there, but what was surprising is I didn’t think anyone would. So I headed back to a ranger center for better advice. I was told about the Lower Bowns Reservoir which then checking online had good reports so I trucked over to that. The ranger also mentioned that 1,000 lake mountain was mislabelled early in its history, and the mountain with all the lakes was nearby. Oooooops. Perhaps it should be called the Mountain formerly known as the Mountain of 1,000 lakes. The weather down here in SE Utah continues to be very warm and sunny.

On first arrival at the reservoir I noticed a large number of surface strikes from the fish but couldn’t quite cast to them. So I bravely took off my shoes, rolled up the pants, and walked out to get better range. Gave up on that after my toes stopped delivering cold signals. On shore, I picked off about 20 leaches per leg. I needed a better strategy.

On the first night I fished for about 5-6 hours. A friendly couple near me gave me some Powerbait which they had used to collect the Trout limit. Even so equipped I managed to elude the fish’s greedy hunger. You’ll never get my bait suckas.

Playing around with some night shots at the reservoir here. Not much else to photo.

The reservoir.. kind of midrange in attractiveness. The levels were way down and fellow fishers generally just drove on the ‘beach’ and parked along the water.

The next day the same couple were back in the morning. They assisted me in duplicating EXACTLY their strategy. They had collected 7 more trout by mid-morning. I had 0. Though their success declined dramatically upon my arrival.

But what is this ?! I got one !

I then stuck a knife through its brain, gutted it, fileted it, and ate it. Well I ate some of it.. it wasn’t particularly tasty owing to my failure to thoroughly rinse it, the fact that I ran out of gas half way through cooking, and the fact that I had no seasonings.

Great Western Trail

On teh road to the Colorado River I got sidetracked by a town that was a tourist outpost for the Capitol Reef National Park. As a rule, I am avoiding the national parks because they basically don’t let dogs out of the car and they charge a fortune for entrance and camping. I will admit that they likely have the absolute best of all scenery, but having to make quick car stops and scenic drives has limited appeal. I think there is plenty to see outside the parks.

Anyways, this town also had the Great Western Trail running through it which crossed through National Forest land. It sounded interesting so I went for it. Drove the truck as far up an ATV trail as I could comfortably get it (not far at all) and headed out.

Here are some pics on the way to the town though (I am posting from a hotel on the other end of this trip).

This first pic gives you a taste of what South-central to south-east Utah looks like. Desert and painted rocks in sharp relief.

Dawn on the day of departure… before setting off on the formal trail I dayhiked up a nearby flattop.

Not actually this one… this one just made for a good pic.

Reminds me of those lion shots I am sure I’ve seen in a sunset red light. Only not so fierce. You will see a lot of Sadie shots here because frankly, the setting is just not as photogenic as the wetter, more verdant Colorado settings. So the dog is my cheap prop.

I love how the grasses catch the light.

Gonna have to send these pics to Toyota…

So the following pics are all from the close-by flattop. It was about 300 feet high I’d say which isn’t much but on most sides it was STRAIGHT up, which is something.

This picture somehow better captures the vertigo you feel of standing on the top of something really really high. That feeling is almost completely lost in pictures. This one seems just disorienting enough to give the impression and I think the stream below gives distance context. Still, seems flat. I look forward to figuring out how to pull distance off without 3d glasses.

Here we see the caves that the Pueblo peoples used for shelter.

Oh no! The giant rabies-vaccinated she-devil is attacking again! She’s all but wiped out the native peoples!

More giant Sadie pics for fun.

A different kind of monster.

There was a sign going into the forest land that said to be on the lookout for suspicious drug activity: farming tools, people that didn’t ‘belong’, etc. Well lookie, lookie..

I tried *hard* to find more evidence of illicit activity but failed.

Rising up, back on his feet..

The disembark pose.

There aren’t many pictures of this trip, but it was 3 days/ 2nights and treacherous, grueling walking with a 50lb+ pack. I was headed for something called 1,000 lake hilltop. So I assumed there would be water eventually but I also knew it was desert most or all of the way so I brought about a gallon and a half of water. The weather was good so I was light on clothes, but the total weight of the pack was still monstrous. Food like water is also a very heavy item.

The trip started off poorly with me taking a wrong turn early. I didn’t bother to find a trail map and was going on a rough memory of a map I had seen earlier and my GPS. So I had a nice 1.5 mile detour to start off with. I then had another 7 miles of incline walk before I realized that the main Western trail was not actually going to take me to the hilltop and that there was NO WATER anywhere else. Night was coming so I basically just stopped on the trail and walked off a bit hoping for a decent tent siting. I got one that was decently smooth but couldn’t find anything flat. So several times a night I basically had to get up and move back uphill inside the tent.

Here was a shot from pretty high up, not the top, but high up. The distances you could see were pretty insane but there was a blue ozone-like haze that keeps the pics from being super clear.

Dawn shots.

So in the morning I had to decide whether I was gonna turn around or keep looking for water, most likely on top of the 1,000 lake hill. I decided to cut over to the hill. This was straight off-trail hiking and turned out to be damned hard, particularly with the weight on my back. I was down to essentially no water at mid-day. I was climbing over precarious rubble fields and between tightly knit aspens and basically eating snow when I could find it. My assumption was that the lakes would provide the water or at worst-case, the higher elevation would produce even more snow.

Fortunately I had enough food, as I didn’t want to touch this.

Of particular difficulty was the very last 200 feet until the top of the hillside. When I had arrived there it was basically a straight up bluff. So I had to corkscrew south on the mountain and travel upwards when possible. This GPS image shows me finally arriving at the top. It basically tells the story.

The GPS was very frustrating on this trip. It highlighted two different roads which when I went out of my way to get to, turned out not to exist. Also, it really fails to show on the topo exactly how the land undulates on the way to (and from) the mountain. So, despite the fact that you are attempting to generally head upwards you end up getting stuck at local maxima and have to descend again, only to go up, and then down, etc. A waste of effort. This was particularly bad on the way back because the terrain undulations were precisely perpendicular to the direction I needed to go.

So, I finally arrived at the top of the 1,000 lake hilltop and there was not a SINGLE LAKE. So I had to revert to my snow strategy. The upshot of being in a desert was that the fire was very easy to start.

I must say that the inevitable pine and sage needles that find their way into the snow make for quite an interesting taste. I can’t wait to see what long-term consequences develop..

Dawn pic from on top. Hazy.

I had a good second night’s sleep with a perfectly flat surface. Even at 11,200 feet it wasn’t that cold. I am not that far from fish lake which was actually lower than that so I have to credit the sunny warm snap we are in. I had melted about a half gallon of snow over 2 hours of effort and stored it in my rubbermaid wal-mart cheapie 2 gallon I had brought. In the morning it was essentially all gone. I think a pine needle lodged in the lower valve and it trickled out. fantastic. Still I had drank as much as I could the night before so I was ok.

I was feeling ready and confident for the return trip. Despite my best effort I actually never made it back to the trail I had come up on. Obstacles kept making it the hardest way to go, so I basically back-countried it half way back until finding a completely different trail that took me the rest of the way. So this was another 10 miles or so, and I’d say the total trip was about 25. This underestimates the effort because of the tough terrain and over 4,000 foot elevation differential. Needless to say I was EXHAUSTED, and for the first time in the trip I stayed the night at a hotel. Still sore this afternoon.

Finally found water on the way back. This was nice.

One last shot of rocks…

Ok, a few days of easier travel are in store now…

I have a video log of day 2 of the trip I may post later.. will take some time to do.

Fish Lake

My next stop was Fish Lake.. good for.. fishing…hopefully.

Here were some pics on the way. The thing about Utah is you know immediately you are in Mormon country. There are very few labelled coffee shops, the liquor stores seem to be all called the ’utah state liquor store’ and I suspect they are *highly* regulated if not actually state run. Further, all the libraries thus far have required passwords and so it has been harder to find wifi. Mormon churches are aplenty and it seems that a very high percentage of the signs which decorate good views describe mormon related history. It is enough for me to want a beer, and I would find an appropriate one later.

Polygamy Porter. Why have just one !

A Mormon Church. They aren’t all this size naturally. I didn’t stop to see the story.

Ron Paul: 1. Mitt Romney: 0.

Church of later day cheapskates.

On teh dirt road.

Fish Lake in the morning. I arrived too late for photos. I parked illegally at a nice hidden trailhead. I don’t think it much matters, almost no one is around these days. You wanna know why? 7 degrees that night. Farenheit. 7. Ouch. I was in full mummy mode and was fine. Sadie thawed fairly early the next day.

I placed her in a good spot for this photo. It works well and she was in the sun for reheating.

Most of the lake was frozen around the edges in the morning so I thought my fishing hopes were dashed, but a couple hours into daylight I found a nice spot where a brook emptied into the lake. Fish were hitting the surface left and right. It was with great skill I managed to dodge their many hungry mouths. Sadie, meanwhile, finally succeeded in making her first kill. It might be hard to see but she dug out a ground squirrel nice and comfy in his sleep and left it bloody in the snow. Good dog.

I dunno why but I liked this iced rock which looked like a jellyfish swimming upstream.

A free beer for anyone who can figure out what this is. On the 7 degree night I dreamt of being kidnapped by UFOs and this was on the camera the next day.

So I headed up one of the hillsides surrounding the lake for a better view. I love just picking a direction and going. That may have been this guy’s strategy too.. who knows. But he had lost his head somewhere.

I’ve had an endoscopy before, but the pics weren’t quite like this.

This was quite a nasty corpse with an active maggot population. It reeked. Sadie started picking at a piece. That’s when we left.

Dew on the pine. This is a class of pictures I’d like to expand on.

View from the top. Feels good to get to the top and crack out a powerbar. Sadie has grown a sense for when we have ‘arrived’ at a destination. If we stop beforehand she’ll whimper with impatience.

So I decided in the end that I didn’t want to spend hours shore-fishing and I didn’t want another 7 degree night. I don’t know if the antifreeze and oil are right in the truck for that. So I headed further East thinking maybe for Colorado or Green River as a target but got derailed on the way. Next Post…

Into Utah

So fleeing the coldfront and having seen quite a bit of Colorado I headed for Utah. I was also in a mood to fish, which I had heard there was spectacular opportunity in Flaming Gorge. I stopped my first night just north of Vernal on the top of a popular hunting and ATV mountain. I awoke to the best dawn I have seen in a long time if ever. I took many pictures fast and furious and was rather non selective in posting them to flickr and here.

 I then went on to the gorge for some fishing. I rented a pole and got a daily license, and picked up some lures and such. I was fishing behind the dam/reservoir in the Green River. This is one of the most popular fishing places in the state and I could see why. They were hitting the top of the water left and right and despite hunting season starting there were still plenty of fisherman. I even got a fish on the line though I lost it at shore. I think it was a brown or brook trout about 16″ or so. I woulda theoretically had to throw him back. But, a day in which I had remarked to some hikers that I shoulda put on the sunscreen turned mesmerizingly quickly to crap. I was deep in a gorge and the wind went from nil to 30+, the sky went from clear to gray, and the temperature went from 50 to 32 in about 20 minutes. Crazy. I tried to wait it out in the car with no luck. At least I got a fish on the line …

So with a lot of time on my hands I drove rather haphazardly through Utah heading roughly for the fishlake forest which I am at now. I of course got myself caught in 19 degree snow at 10,000 feet and had to put on my chains again under the creepy mercury lamps of some kind of massive mining operation. Bizarre experience and not altogether pleasant. I then proceeded to drive around like a stupid out-of-stater turning up certain side roads only to turn back when even with chains I could only barely get around. The clearance on the truck is really only about 9″ by my reckoning so there is only so much crazy offroading for it. Still, chains rule. Notsomuch on asphalt with a thin ice layer though on account of the jarring vibrations induced, but grip-wise they are supreme. No 4×4 needed.

So now I am ripping off some poor hotel’s wifi and trying to get finished before heading to the hills. This week is supposed to be very clear weather though cold.

On the drive West from Colorado.. the sun hitting the hills obliquely was a nice color experience. I would get more of these type later.

Can you see the ghost on the horse with the noose? creepy.

Sunset pics.. most do not required description. I have been rather indiscriminate in selection here. All of these were taken in about 15 minute span. In this situation, the exact same shot 30 seconds apart can look completely different.

I am sure I could pass off the open door as a metaphorical embrace of the scene. I really didn’t even notice and would kill to have the shot both ways.

I generally prefer landscape shot orientation. But there is something to be said for this one.

The sun’s red swept across the plain in a flash and I caught it here. stunning.

Tree always adds a little spice like a Bay leaf in a pan of spaghetti sauce. It picked up some of the color here as well.

mmmm love the colors.

Pictures at the reservoir. I think the ominous clouds matches the powerline. Lightning enabled.

Osprey Island.. there were a few of those around apparently though I didn’t spot one.

Zooming down the gorge at a fisherman.

Net is out. The net is out. If I had a net I prolly wouldn’t of lost mine.

if I could bump out the smidgen of rock in the bottom right this shot would be perfect. The gorge was an awesome place for fishing. The water was perfectly clear.

Included for completeness. Not too impressed with the result here.

Vernal and other towns nearby all live on the dinosaur theme of the close-by national monument.

Hard to believe this is naturally lighting and no photoshop.

That is a seriously large willow.

It’s a dog’s life. It is always Sadie’s priority to sleep as comfortably as possible.

My random shack with weird stuff around it shot.

Videos

Having fun on a snowy morn

Feeling a bit more somber after the second snowy morn

Solomon Falls – I would be kidding if I said this was pleasant.

Lake Gilpin. I’ve decided video may do better at showing scale.

Snow,Snow and… snow

So I haven’t left the greater Steamboat Springs area just yet.. having explored east and south I eventually headed up north this time.

First, I went to the Steamboat Springs city council meeting. Not a lot of fireworks or hot items. Elections are coming so there was some posing. Issues discussed revolved around the new sidewalk, city energy conservation, and mobile home park divestiture. The last one is interesting because it was also an issue in Lexington. The council is pursuing research into a strategy employed successfully in New Hampshire to actually sell the land and management rights back to the actual residents rather than to a private manager or government housing authority. Makes sense to me….maybe. Seems American at least.

I then headed up North into the snow…. after having procured tire chains. TIRE CHAINS KICK ASS. After a long night of constant snow, it wasn’t long before I had fishtailed straight into the side of the road and was stuck. I did find that traction control is actually of some assistance. Otherwise the differential just lets one tire go nuts. The trac seems to apply the abs breaks to the slipping wheel and lets the other one attempt some work.. also, when you have more or less completely lost it there is a humorous warning beep which is the trac throwing up its hands. But trust me, you know you are f’d. It’s kind of fun actually… but with the chains on, which took less than 10 minutes for the first ever installation, there were NO issues… Sadly, I have to take the particular ones back to WalMart because like everything I buy there they were broken. One of the tensioners came broke and so the left side ran loose and slapped loudly at anything over 12 mph. Plus the idea of it snapping loose and wrapping around the axle is not appealing. Further note: pure mud is just as hard to get around in.

They would never be this clean again..

Could get lost in the sky

My Jackson Pollack effort.. mud on the hood.

So I was told about a secret place only for locals called Solomon Falls. A shorter hike though a long drive to it. I was hoping to pull it off while waiting for the weather to improve, and schedule the bigger trip to Lake Gilpin the next day.

Being a shorter hike I didn’t much care about the downsides so Sadie and I trundled straight up the river to the falls. Impressive those boots. Walking the sides would have been tough anyway because of the sharp gorge cutting.

Interesting red rock sparkling while wet.

The falls – oh the fish that would elude me here..

With enough light the high iso settings can really catch the action

Falls from higher up. Sadie didn’t care to follow this climb.

Some texture imagery

This was back at the campsite while I was collecting firewood. It would be the first camp fire of the trip believe it or not. It was also one of the hardest to start. I had paper products and a lighter naturally, but the wood itself was thoroughly drenched and frozen. At least 3 times I had the fire start and look permanent only to dwindle on its own. A lot of blowing on coals and effort, steam, embers, and little flame. It hardly seemed worth it.

FIRE.. GOOD !! (when going on its own)

So then I started upon my 10 mile hike to Lake Gilpin.. one of the more famous hikes in Colorado and busy on any summer day. It had snowed about 9″ in the last two days and I was the only one leaving tracks on this trip. I have the apparel to make this trip comfortable and I was hardly aware of the 20 degrees, snow, and thoroughly frozen boots. I was more concerned about Sadie, but she seems to have taken it like a trooper. At one point she had so much snow sticking to her haunches that it clacked together like plastic beads as she ran. The trip up consisted of her basically running or leaping (depending on snow depth) at full speed forward and back and left and right. The trip back basically consisted of her running 100 yards in front of me, and then sitting down to pick out the ice from her hair. At the lake she took a certain calm, with ice hanging from her chin and wind blowing hard. I didn’t linger long, and the sun never came out, so the pics are highly disappointing. I think on better days this would have been the second or third most scenic lake I’ve ever seen (behind the one in Banff (Louise?) and near Interlochen, Switzerland). The best looking one on this trip clearly, with sharp peaks on 3 sides and a more distant one on the fourth. I want dearly to return with a fishing pole and give it an effort.

Some good pics were had on the way there though.. I liked this little tree and its blair witch look.

Some macro on the pine

Reflections on a beaver pond

Reflections on a mountain brook

Very attractive stream, one of the many to cross.

I love how the water is in various states here of flow and ice.

A wall texture

Water was actually running behind the ice on this rock.

This stream is getting close to freezing over.

This is a panorama stitch of Lake Gilpin

A peak along the way

I loved how the snow descended into this tranquil section of stream and the dark color of the water in contrast.

The sky closing on a long day. I was asleep before 9.

Well forecast of 13 degree lows coming soon and that’s in the low country. I have to decide now which direction to go.

My boots need a vacation

These boots are real troopers… I have gotten used to putting them on frozen. It is quite amazing what one pair of thick wool socks and these boots can do for insulating the feet, which seem to be the worst naturally cold-prepared part of the body. I can walk straight through water and snow in the 20 degree range and stay comfortable (as long as I keep moving). It is a bit of a rush [read:avoid this] if you step into water OVER the boot line, but otherwise..

These boots are one of my favorite pieces of equipment and they are 8 years old now.