Moab - November 2009

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I was able to visit Moab, Utah again this past weekend. This time, however, I didn't bring my bike. I just brought my camera equipment as part of a photography workshop presented by Bret Edge and Todd Caudle (aka "Cloudman"). The workshop was great, largely due to the other great participants and the workshop leaders. It is rare that all the participants get along so well and we all had such a great time taking pictures together.

We all got up very early each day (around 4:30 to 5:00 a.m. for me) to get to a site by sunrise for the good light. Since it is so late in the year, sunsets came early, so we didn't get much of a break between the two main sessions, brunches and recoup time or photo critique time.


In addition, I had the opportunity to stay with Dell again. I was hoping to have more time to visit with her but the workshop kept me very busy. She is such an awesome person so I hope to visit Moab again in the near future so that we can have more time together as well.


Here are a few pictures I took from the class. You can click on them to bring in larger photo.

Ox Ranch - Hell's Canyon

A couple of weeks ago, I went with a few photographers on an outing to Seven Devils Lodge in the Ox Ranch above Hell's Canyon. Our fearless leader was David Cole, a professional photographer based out of downtown Boise. It turned out to be more of just a nice relaxing weekend rather than having many photographic opportunities.

I got there a bit late on Friday and grabbed my gear to run out to meet the rest of the group down the trail looking for critters. Mother Nature wasn't very cooperative in the wildlife department, so the only real critters that night was the numerous cows on the ranch. We did have a full moon on the walk back to the lodge for dinner.




On Saturday, we headed out to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to base ourselves for the day, take pictures and look for critters to shoot (with a camera). Bears are common there and you could see this was in fact true with all the bear scat in the front yard of the cabin by the fruit trees. I mean a LOT of bear scat. We headed on out on a hike and did see a sow with a cub and then another bear, but both were fairly far away. I didn't manage to get a picture, but a couple of other folks did get a good shot in. So Iwill have to settle with some scenery pics.



And then it started to snow.....and snow.....


and snow....

So what better to do than just hang around the fireplace inside where it is nice and warm and just talk about Alaska and cameras and travel until dinner time.

Sunday morning, we did go out in the morning for another critter walk and did see a coyote. I tried to get a few pics of the guy but they did not come out very sharp. Then I took the long drive home. A great time was had by all.

Sawtooths

I have gone to the Sawtooths many times here, mostly backpacking in the most scenic areas locally. I just love this range. Last weekend, I went on a Photographic Workshop held by David Cobb with Best of the Northwest Photographic Workshops. It was so interesting to come to just photograph. Usually, camping or backpacking, I left my main camera at home and just brought the Point and Shoot. This time, I brought the big guns.

We were up early and on site by sunrise at Little Redfish Lake, Stanley Lake or in the area by Stanley. Sunsets we were also in scenic areas. One night, we went out to Redfish Lake and took pictures of the Milky Way and star trails over the silouhette of the mountains.

Western Idaho State Fair

OK. I'm not normally a state fair type of person, but I thought it would be fun to enter the photo contest at the fair. In addition, some folks at the Eagle Camera Club thought it would be fun to take our cameras to the fair and take pictures. The fair is just down the street, almost, so I couldn't resist.

Here are a few pictures from the 2009 Western Idaho State Fair.

Tetons and Yellowstone - 2009

I just arrived back from a car camping trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone. On Saturday, August 30, I drove from Boise over to Jackson, Wy and then north to Gros Ventre campground in the Tetons National Park. I wanted to take the infamous shot of the Moulton Ranch cabins in front of the Teton range in the early a.m. and this campground was the closest I could stay. After I arrived and set up camp, I drove down Mormon Row to the cabins to get set for the early a.m. shoot. On the way, there were a lot of bison in the area and thus, I had to drive cautiously so as not to hit them or agitate them.




On Sunday, I was to meet George Ellis, Diane Olsen and Susan Hawkins from Anchorage at the hotel in Jackson Hole. While waiting I went to the new Wildlife museum. There, John Batdorff had a showing at the museum, so I thought I would go check it out. He had some great photos displayed in the main hallway to other museum rooms. They were very impressive. Finally, they got into town and we went out to the Wine bar for some appetizers and wine, then over to the Trio for some dinner.

On Monday, we got into the Tetons and set up in Jenny Lake campground. We arrived early as we really wanted to stay in this campground and it is first come, first serve. We then headed over to the other side of Jenny Lake via the shuttle boat and hiked up to Hidden Falls, Inspiration Point and down the canyon a bit.

On Tuesday, we hiked up to Taggart Lake and Bradley Lake. It was a beautiful hike and the weather couldn't be more perfect.

Wednesday had us going up to Yellowstone to the Canyon campground where we had reserved a couple of campsites, last year. It turned out to be a good central location where we could explore the park. Unfortunately, the road between Norris and Madison was closed, so we had to go around on some drives where that road would have been quicker.

After setting up our new camp we decided to explore the Canyon area first, since it was the closest. Driving by this area, you would never know that such beauty is just beyond the trees. A lot of up and down hiking to the views provided us with great views of both the lower and upper falls at different perspectives.

Thursday is thermal day. That means geysers, mudholes, fumeroles and anything steamy. We headed up first to see the area north of Old Faithful area in the Fountain Paint Pot area. We took a loop drive there to see the Grand Fountain Geyser which erupts about every 10-12 hours. The first time through, it was not quite ready to erupt. After viewing the paint pots area and then having lunch, we went back just in time for a spectular display.

Old Faithful

The next to last day saw us hiking up Mt. Washburn to see the 360 degree view from the top at 10,243'. It looked like it may storm so we hurried back to get to our campsite in time for a hard rain. My tent was in a pool, so George helped me move it over a bit. We decided not to cook in the wet soggy camp area, so went to the diner for dinner.

The last day had us packing and discussing what we would like to do for our trip next year.....

Wind Rivers, Wyoming Backpack

On July 25th, Bobbie, Norma and myself started the Lizard Head backpacking trip from Big Sandy Trailhead in the Wind Rivers mountain range in Wyoming.

We drove to Pinedale, Wy on the 25th and got a motel so we could start out fresh on the trail the next day. On the 26th, we then drove the 1 1/2 hour to the Big Sandy Trailhead and hiked out to Big Sandy Lake. The Big Sandy Lake hosts a lot of backpackers who start off their trips from there or use as a base camp to do day hikes from there. The bears have become wise to the backpacking population and there are not bear containers for backpackers to put their food in at night. The hike from the Big Sandy Trailhead to Big Sandy Lake was a gentle uphill and we completed the 6 miles in under 2 1/2 hours. We found a place for our tents and got ready for the next day. No bears, fortunately, but Norma frightened some deers which decided to almost run over my tent in the early a.m.

Day two we went from Big Sandy Lake, up over Jackass Pass to the Cirque of Towers and then on to Lizard Head Meadows. We took off the main course accidently a couple of times resulting in clamboring down rocks and boulders trying to get back on the main trail. Jackass Pass was steep and high at about 10,800'. The minute we got on top of the pass a thunder storm with lots of rain hit us and we got our rain gear on and ran for the protection of underneath a large boulder. After waiting there quite awhile, the storm passed and we got some pictures before the sun again went away for the next series of storms. We headed on down to Lonesome Lake beneath the cirque, crossed a large stream and walked on down to Lizard Head Meadows to camp.

The Cirque from Jackass Pass

Bobbie at Cirque of Towers


Looking down at Lonesome Lake

Norma at Cirque of Towers

At Lonesome Lake

Day three of the hike will take us 10 miles, up to Lizard Head Trail which is an ascent of 1,800 feet in the first 2 1/2 miles. During the ascent we get a great view of Bear Lakes.

Once on top, the trail is great. A bit rocky but with cairns to show us the way. It was this great plateau where we were up with the peaks across the valley. We finally got to the junction with the Bears Ear Trail, where we descended down to Valentine Lake for the night.

Lizard Head Trail

Day four was to be our relaxation day with only 6 miles to go to Grave Lake. We woke up to misty, rainy conditions. This continued as we hiked on to Grave Lake. Grave Lake is huge with lots of peaks surrounding it in a spectacular scenery. We didn't see any peaks that day, just the clouds we were walking in. We got to camp and it started hailing. We all got into our tents rather early waiting for the hail to stop. Well, once it stopped another hail storm started with bigger hail stones. Then the next storm, even bigger. It continued to rain for 36 hours. None of us even got up to fix ourselves any dinner. Norma was creating ditches around her tent to keep from flooding beneath the tent. She eventually had to move her tent and noticed the flood gathering under my tent. I had to get up and move that also. It was a loonng night. So much for washing clothes and our hair.

Grave Lake in the early morning

Day five we had to get to and over Hailey Pass. We knew this would be a challenge and with all the rain, we anticipated fresh snow on the Pass. It is also at 11,200'. We first had to get around Grave Lake. To get around this we had to go over great boulder field on the waters edge. These were huge boulders and took us 45 minutes to negotiate over them.

Then we had to start our initial uphill along the Baptiste Creek and pass a huge waterfall. The last part of the pass was a 900' climb in 1 1/2 miles over Hailey Pass. There was fresh snow but it actually helped our climb. One party had gone through before us and created footsteps in the snow for us to get up to the steep scree section of the trail. It was steep and tough, but we made it just fine. Once on top, we could see into the next valley where we would spend our last couple of days.





Once over the pass, we headed on down to Skull Lake for the night. Norna even made us butterscotch pudding to celebrate. What a treat. We decided to go ahead and just hike out the last 10 miles Friday. No one was up to base camping and doing a side trip into one of the other trail possibilities along the way. I think the rainy weather got the better of us. Thus Friday, we hiked on out pass good fishing lakes and folks coming in for the weekend.

PhotoWalk - July 18, 2009

The Scott Kelby International PhotoWalk was Saturday July 18th. Over 32,600 photographers participated in this event. In the Boise area there were 4 PhotoCrawl events. I went on two. One to Idaho City with the PhotoCrawl group and one in the evening in downtown Boise.

Jeanette and Patricia joined me at Idaho City. It must have been around 100 degrees cause we were sweating and tryingn to stay in the shade as much as possible. The night event in Boise was great as we got to try out night time photography with a lot of photographers around to question when we had problems.

Here are some results from that event.

Idaho City:

Boise Night Photo: