Home from Great Basin National Park...

It is always great to get home from a successful adventure. The Great Basin formation inclides most of Nevada, and the national park is the jewel in the crown. In the Basin, water running off the mountains doesn't run to the ocean, but instead remains in the unique Basin ecosystem.

Sitting above the 10,000-foot level on Wheeler Peak is a delight, one I savored for four hard-working days.

Yes, a lot of jets go overhead! A main skyway from Vegas and L.A. must pass right over this landmark.

One pleasure in being home is that I can do computer processing I couldn't get to in the evenings in the motel. One picture I particularly wanted to have time to work out was the panoramas of Wheeler Peak with the Fall colors erupting on its flanks:

I got the color right at home, which I hadn't succeeded in doing in an earlier post of a quick 'motel-room' version.

The other wondrous scene that cried out for a panorama was what I thought of as the 'Color Corner,' a bend in the winding road where the Fall colors exploded over the four days:

I still haven't had time to process many of the Lehman Caves images, but I confess that it is a real challenge to shoot good images in the !#!$!%!^! dark with only small accent lights placed to illuminate the formations! Thank goodness for Photoshop...

It is satisfying when you get them to render so others can share how you experienced them. Just think of wandering in 50 degree darkness through a corridor, and then to turn a corner and see this::

And so, farewell to Great Basin!

Until the next adventure!!

The God's eye view

I booked a flight over Canyonlands to see the nearly-impenetrable sectors of the park which lie to the South of the Island in the Sky. The Maze and Needles are for the young and hardy who are equipped with 4-wheel drive vehicles. Looking down, you wonder how much of these expanses has ever been seen from the ground.

No, I wouldn't want to be walking out there. It's much nicer up here!

At one point in the flight, we flew over a complete double loop of the Colorado River, one of those natural wonders which make one believe that Nature indeed has a sense of humor.

It was a special treat to look down on the Island in the Sky, a vast raised plateau near whose southern tip so many dramatic panoramas are presented to the humble photographer. The Grand View overlook is at the tip of the plateau, looking across at the free-standing Junction Butte. The junction of the Green and Colorado rivers is just to the left of the butte.

More adventures today! I have a long list of targets, but may end up dodging thunderstorms, which are in today's forecast. Sigh.

By helicopter over the Grand Canyon

I almost hate to put up this post, because it will push my December great white shark trip down the page. Oh, well.
On January 13, 2010,  I made the four-hour drive over to the Grand Canyon and hopped on a helicopter.

It is a fabulous ride, eight thousand feet above the Colorado River.

Even though I have been at the North Rim and at Havasupai, the view from the air reinforces the colossal size of the Canyon.

It is Winter, of course, so the crest of the canyon walls and the surrounding Kaibab National Forest are brushed with snow.

I hope to do the flight again later in the Spring, with the hot colors of a brighter Sun. Still photos only suggest what it's like up there, so let's try some videos.

That gives you the idea! That is early in the flight, circling out over the Colorado. A little later, I pointed the video camera out the pilot's window across the immensity of the canyon. Pictures and videos struggle to do more than suggest the vast size of these formations.

The special contribution of Winter is snow in the upper reaches of the canyon. The snow betrays no tracks, accenting the remoteness and the impenetrable nature of these formations.

Well over a century ago, local Indian tribes would not tell the European explorers that there were safe ways to cross the Grand Canyon. The Spanish and other stried for years and finally gave up, declaring the Grand Canyon 'worthless.'  In this century, we now know better.

Okay--now scroll down the page and enjoy those sharks!!

Mother always said there'd be days like this...

Yesterday was a sensational day--a deep blue sky for the drive from Escalante and a perfect afternoon for an initial foray into the park. I should have known that Mother Nature was luring me in.

Filled with confidence after that afternoon, I decided to undertake the arduous 70-mile circuit up to Cathedral Valley. That was my main target when I set up the trip.

So, the Toyota and I took off for the river ford--oh, did I forget to tell you that you have to cross the river to get to the North? Must have slipped my mind.

All went well for a couple of hours. The light was brilliant at the South Cathedral Valley overlook.

Alas, then the clouds roared in, the rains came, and I drove fifty miles of rutted, bouncy, rocky, treacherously twisting roads and took nary a picture. Well, when I got back to my starting point a bit of late afternoon sun bathed the hills above the park entrance--just to mock me. Grrrrr. Note the sky in the image below compared to the one above, taken this morning.



Of course, after that unintended 'scouting mission' I know where all the Cathedral Valley formations are now, so I can just do the whole thing again tomorrow or Sunday.

Of course, when I turn the car toward the river, she is going to look at me with those big, soulful headlights and roll over dead.

Panoramas of Canyon de Chelly

While my webmaster Patty struggles with a mountain of new material, I am enjoying the power of fitting enormous tracts of desert into single photographs. This first one is the colossal view from the Mummy Cave overlook.



And yet, the original image is so huge it retains the detail of the centuries-old ruin under the ledge. I just love this software!

This next one is the amazing vista one experiences from the Antelope House overlook. If you look very carefully to the lower right, there are three trucks and a gaggle of visitors crossing the bridge to walk by the ruin.

It is an astonishing retention of detail--which of course comes from using 18 shots stitched together to make the large image.

These will soon be in a gallery in the Desert Photography section of my web site--with a lot of other fascinating views!