Phase 1 - Of gorges, aspens, canyons and snot. Part 1

Our first day of the trip was, in a single word, uneventful.  Which is what you want when you pretty much have a full day of driving to do.  We were on vacation and decided that warranted a side trip on day one to Cinders Cafe in Klamath Falls - a detour of about an hour, plus eating time.  Later that day, Yelp let us down for dinner, but my pre-trip scouting for a dispersed camp site was successful and we nabbed a lovely spot on BLM land in Water Canyon just south of Winnemucca, Nevada for our first night’s campsite.  Willie Nelson definitely has it right, it was great to be back on the road again.

That was definitely true the following morning when we got up nice and early and were on the road while it was still dark.  There’s much to be said about driving down the highway as the sun makes its way up to and then breaks the horizon.  Even the starkest environment takes on a lovely glow as the rich texture of the landscape is revealed by the first rays of sunlight.  

For a part of the trip that entailed cranking out the miles, it wasn’t half bad.  

As we’d hoped, we arrived at Cathedral Gorge State Park near Panaca, NV around mid-day.  After a short stop at the northern look-out, we drove down to the southern park of the park to see if a site was available at the campground.  A flood had washed out access to the campground in the latter part of the summer, but it had been cleared a couple of weeks before our trip.  We were in luck - we had our choice of spots.  It was good that we’d timed our arrival for mid-day because by later that afternoon the campground was full.  Campsite secured, we headed out to do some exploring.

We started out leaving our heavy camera gear in Beast and exploring parts of the park with iPhones in tow.  It was a practice that we revisited several times over the trip and reminded us that we were on vacation as much as a photography trip.  Yes, you’re always filled with that anxiety that you’ll come across the perfect photograph, but that’s rarely the case and in any event, if you run across aliens, Sasquatch or Elvis, you have your iPhone camera to make sure you prove your claims (and claim your millions).  

So we wandered in and out of the tight slots that made Cathedral Gorge such an appealing destination on paper and we had a bit of fun with our iPhone cameras that we might not have done with our regular gear.

After playing around a bit we headed back to camp for an early dinner, so we could photograph in the latter, cooler part of the afternoon as evening approached.  It was a smart move.  Not only were there interesting textures to photograph . . . 

The light quickly shifted as the sun approached the horizon, which gave us some lovely color in addition to the rich textures and the rising moon we had to work with.

Very early on I answered one of the questions I had concerning my photography on this trip - would my mind still be wedded to square image-making?  My answer - No.

Fortunately (I guess), I found myself seeing the image I wanted to make and then adjusting accordingly.  That meant I was constantly changing the format of the image on my camera back as well as changing my positioning and lenses to have the right point of view, focal length and framing for what I was seeing.  It meant for more work on my part, but I was letting my eyes dictate what was needed, which was reassuring.

We quickly passed through the gold and blue hours that precede and follow sunset and eventually called it a night.  As a location for getting the photographic kinks out of our system, Cathedral Gorge seemed to be what the doctor ordered.

We were up before dawn the next morning and back to the same location to photograph.  Unfortunately, I for one had a difficult time making images - or at least I thought so at the time.

We didn’t want to hike out onto the trails very far, so I started out using my telephoto zoom lens.  The light was lovely, but I really hadn’t scouted out (or thought through) the types of images I might want to make in the pre-dawn light, so I was fumbling about with what I wanted to photograph.

And as the sun broke the horizon, the light became incredibly harsh with no real color to the light and we were forced to photograph into the parts of the gorge, immediately behind us, that were still entirely in shadow. 

We made our way back to our campsite to decide on our next steps and to take a shower.  Hey, if you have to stay at a campsite, why not at one that has showers?  And if you have showers, take one because who knows when you’ll get your next shower when you’re on the road?

Ann had gone through the same frustrations I did and it wasn’t until later, when we viewed the images on iPads and computers did we realize how lovely the light had been that morning.  So we made the decision to not stay there an extra night and to start our search for aspens that day, taking an extra day on aspens instead of the gorge.  So we packed up and headed for the hills.

On the way we stopped in Cedar City and had an early lunch at Centro Wood Fired Pizza, a place we’d discovered on our first trip there with Gary and Paula.  Then it was up, up, up to a side road just before the turnoff to Cedar Breaks National Monument that we’d visited the same trip we learned about the pizza joint.  We turned onto the forest service road, put Beast into 4WD and started exploring.

It took us awhile because the aspen trees were a bit past prime and, all too often, much thinner than we were hoping for.  But we had all afternoon so it was nothing to keep exploring for both a nice place to photograph and to camp.  We pretty much blew the entire afternoon exploring the Kolob Terrace, stopping at one place, and then another to walk around and check things out.  Eventually we took side road off the side road and headed further upwards towards Black Mountain.  We finally reached some decent, though scrawny aspen groves and then the end of Forest Service land.  You know you’re there when you hit the closed gate and the No Trespassing signs (with warnings about being sued or shot for violations [one of those was true, the other not - but was the more likely to happen]).  We back-tracked a bit and had our camping and photography site.

Except for the cow pies, it was a fine place to photograph and to be introduced to just how difficult it is to photograph aspens well. It also introduced us to the lovely reflected light you can get in these groves.

To be honest, I think Ann made by far the best photograph of the aspen grove, but she isn’t ready to show it yet, so you’re stuck with my experiments.  And experiment I did, trying a variety of approaches.  I say that the camera is a tool to help me explore, learn about and understand the world.  Well it certainly was that afternoon.

Unsure of how to approach the subject matter, I basically did everything I could think of.

And while I can’t claim that any of the images are incredible (I’ll leave that description for Ann’s image) it was certainly fun and a wonderful way to spend a glorious fall afternoon.

As you can see, the aspens were in a real mix of states - some were still green while many had dropped their leaves.  That was something we would discover throughout our trip.  One of the things I tried to photograph was the chaos of the forest.  I’m not so sure it worked out, but sometimes you have to try working on making an image to hep you figure out how to express a concept.

So there we were, our first night among the aspens - at 9,000 feet elevation.  It was a cold night.  Fortunately, Beast has a heater.  

The next morning we woke up to vehicles driving by (for a round-up on the private property) and to a herd of cows in our photography location.  Given that they didn’t seem like they wanted to move, and far be it for me to mess with another person’s cows, we decided we would continue our search for aspens after we had breakfast.  

We decided to go exploring and that we did.  We drove north a bit to explore the Dixie National Forest around Cedar Breaks National Monument.  After a short stop at the monument, we started our off-road adventures.  It began with a trip up to Brian Head Peak, which got a bit rougher towards the top than I thought it would.  Then we descended down into the ski resort town of Brian Head and, after a quick look around, turned off-road again to explore the various tracks that ran through aspen groves (and ski runs), though none of them seemed quite right.  You should have seen the looks the ATV drivers gave us as we turned up and onto “their” tracks.   As is often the case, the roads quickly deteriorated, but Beast just kept chugging along.  

After deciding that we weren’t going to find anything there, we headed towards the other side of Brian Head Peak.  Sure enough, we saw a lovely aspen grove on a mountain side in the distance. Unfortunately, after traveling down two long, rough tracks, we decided REM had it right, “You can’t get there from here.” (The Dixie National Forest Park maps we got from a ranger a few days later confirmed that fact.)

So back to hardball and not too much further down the road there it was, aspens for the offering along Mammoth Creek on the Markagunt Plateau.  And a Forest Service road that cut into it, which meant we would likely (and did) find a place to camp for the night.  After exploring the road a bit and finding a selection of camping sites (glad we did because we wound up having to use one of the alternative sites), we headed back to photograph.  

The location panned out the way we’d hoped.  A short hike brought us into a field that offered us a range of photographic options.  Surrounding us was a stand of trees that offered close up images.

One of the things Ann and I came to appreciate about the aspen groves in Utah is how they were intermixed with other tree species.  While the idea of a full grove of mature aspens was appealing, seeing an intermixed ecosystem was just as gratifying.  

Across another field we had a lovely view of other aspens that were distinctly more red than the ones around us.

And looking further down hill, we had views of the near-dry Mammoth Creek, which we’d be photographing the next day.

It was a pleasant afternoon of photography, even if we were still trying to figure out how to best photograph aspens.  At least we had a wide choice of subject matter to work with.

We eventually decided to call it and make our way down to check out where we planned to photograph the next morning.  We wound up arriving just as the sun was setting, so Ann and I decided to pull out the cameras one last time and to capture the play of light on the landscape as the sun dipped beneath the ridgeline.

I must admit, it made finding a campsite in the dark worth it.