Phase 2 - Of Goblins, Hurricanes and Devils, Part 1

Our morning photographing the aspens of the Pando Forest had been superb.  It was time to start the second phase of our trip, which would take us to more desert-like environs to places we’ve been to before, places we haven’t, and new routes in-between.  In our planning, this was the part of the trip where we were supposed to stay in one general location for at least a couple of nights at a time so that we could explore an area deeper before moving on.  Well, that was the concept at least! The best-laid plans of mice and men . . . .

We’d spent so much time photographing the aspens that by the time we made it back to the main Forest Service road up the hill (and within LTE coverage) it was time to stop and do the task that was red-flagged for the day - reserve a camp site at Zion National Park.  Watchman Campground had been booked as far back as we’d even considered going to Zion.  But you can’t make reservations at South Campground until two weeks before your date of arrival, and you can only reserve a site for 3 nights.  Given our luck with purchasing the Bruce Percy book at Bryce Canyon, we were hopeful.  We wound up disappointed.  Zilch, nada, nothing - all booked.  Oh well, we’d figured we’d come up with something else along the way - face it, we had two weeks between now and then - so we headed on down the hill.

Our destination for the day was Goblin Valley State Park, which we’d visited a few years earlier.  In addition to interesting landscapes and other areas to explore, their campground has hot showers and we had reservations for a couple of nights.  To get there from the Pando Forest we had to drive east through Capitol Reef National Park where we had to make one of the numerous check-in stops to find out about road and weather conditions.  We were going to do a back-country loop after Goblin and needed to see if we had to check again before doing so.  There’s a river crossing, where the water level was 10” - no problem - but a slight chance of rain on Sunday night and on Monday, which meant needing to check in a couple of days later before heading out on the loop.  Then we were off.

While our main destination was the state park, there are a couple of canyon routes in the immediate vicinity of the park that I wanted to explore and given that check-in wasn’t until the afternoon, we hit one of them on the way in.  Goblin Valley State Park is at the base of the Grand Rafael Swell to its west, and the routes drive into and then behind the swell.  Heading into the Temple Mountain wash you pass by the Temple Mountain Wash Pictograph Panel.  While it’s not particularly large, the landscape that it’s in is typical of the swell area.

The scale of the images are deceptive.  In the photographs the pictograph looks minuscule but the characters are life-sized.  Although weathering is having its impact on the pictograph, the place has a sense of presence I always feel when I’m looking at imagery that ancient peoples have left behind.

We continued down Temple Mountain Road, then hung a left on Chute Canyon Road.  The landscape was amazing, though the sunlight was harsh.  At one point Ann said, “Hey, why don’t we take some glam shots of Beast?”  So that’s what we did.  We weren’t ready to do any hiking into the canyons, so why not play a bit with Beast and get some fun photographs to boot?  Ann played director, photographer and producer, and I played driver.  We communicated via walkie-talkie and . . . well you can judge for yourself whether our fun was worth it.

After driving a goodly distance down Chute Canyon Road, we figured it was time to turn around and check into our campsite.  That went without issue and after settling in (i.e. take a shower) we headed out to explore Goblin Valley State Park as the sun was approaching the horizon and wasn’t so glaring.

On our previous trip we’d hiked into the goblins to the south, but after scoping out our options, we decided that this trip we’d concentrate on a fairly compact cluster to the east.  The viewing area starts on a little plateau, which gives you an elevated view of the goblins as well as views to the north, and where you can take any of several trails downward into the goblins or beyond.  We decided that since we have four quiet-light photo sessions (two evening, two morning) we would do an evening-morning session from the ridge area and an evening-morning session from down inside the gardens.  It seemed like a pretty good plan.

The goblins are in fact hoodoos of unusual and sometimes funny shapes created by the uneven weathering of the soft sandstone that is prevalent in the area.  The lowering sunlight began casting interesting shadows on the weathered features.  But given that the goblins are in a valley, the ridge we were on started casting its shadow on the goblins so I turned my camera northwards.  Here you get a good view of a hoodoo called the Three Sisters (not to be confused with the Cascade’s Three Sisters near our home), the San Rafael Swell in the area we’d go into the next day, and Temple Mountain off in the distance.

I then turned the camera eastward to a group of features that I would return to again and again while here.

Then it was time to wait for the sun to set and for the light to do its magic.  I know of two places where the light is consistently unworldly.  One is Bandon on the Oregon Coast; the other is at Goblin Valley State Park.  It didn’t disappoint.  

Sure, the magic doesn’t happen immediately, although you are relieved of the strong shadows once the sun drops below the horizon.  Still, there’s quite a bit of light and the eye has no problem seeing details in a way that only reflected light can reveal.

And another benefit is that the softer light begins to bring out the subtle colors that get lost in the harsher rays of mid-day or the yellow cast projected by the setting sun during the golden hour.

And you even get to the point where you think all will pan out to nothing, especially when the sky becomes overcast and everything starts to darken.

But patience is a virtue in this practice, something I’m guilty of not having for too many sunsets.  But this wasn’t to be one of them.  Because if you wait, sometimes, and as has been the case each time I’ve been at this place, the magic happens.

And then it’s all you can do to find as many compositions as you can to take advantage of what’s happening before your eyes.  

I guess that’s where having photographed pre-sunset helped because I had several rough compositions in mind to reproduce if the light is right, and it was right.

But as the sun was setting it was becoming harder and harder to see, which means lost frames trying to get the right composition.  But that doesn’t mean the magic was gone.

Eventually, the spectacular coloring in the clouds does fade.  But the magic remains for a bit longer, even though it takes a 26-second exposure to record an image. 

Yeah, I’d say our first photo session at Goblin Valley was just what we were hoping for.