The Wheeler Geologic Area was one Colorado’s first National Monuments. It is located in the La Garita Wilderness, a few miles east of Creede, Colorado. Due to its remoteness, there were not many visitors, and its status as a National Monument was withdrawn in the 1950s.
To get there, you drive up state road 149 from South Fork for about 15 miles. Just as the highway crosses over the Rio Grande, take a well-maintained dirt road to the east. This road climbs for about ten miles to the trail head. There is a pit toilet and lots of room for parking.
Because it was Labor Day weekend, there were about 15 cars parked when I arrived in the afternoon. I spent the night there.
From this point you can take the eight mile (one-way) hike over undulating terrain, or you can drive 14 miles over a very difficult 4WD hi-clearance road.
Conventional wisdom is that the drive will take you about as long as the hike.
The next morning, after eating my boiled eggs, I filled my day pack with a poncho, some snacks, and my Sterilite water purifier, and set off on the trail. I took my little Sony Cybershot RX100-iii point-and-shoot camera and a light-weight tripod. It was obvious from the start that it would be a slow walk. At 11,000 feet of elevation, any uphill walking got me out of breath fast. I was passed by several people along the way.
After about 5.5 miles the trail joins the aforementioned road. The road eventually ends in a parking area that is a little less than a mile from the Wheeler area. There were several stands of Aspen with bright yellow leaves along the final path.
After about three and a half hours I reached the viewing area. It was an impressive experience. I spent about an hour taking pictures and then turned around for the eight mile walk back to my truck.
I arrived, exhausted and a bit unsteady, a little before 5 pm. All of the pictures I had taken were during mid-day, when the shadows are not the best for photography. So I got the idea that if I drove fast I would have time for to take the 14-mile drive back to the area and get there before sunset.
I drove like a crazy person (which I was a little bit) and made the trip in an hour and 15 minutes, putting a few scars on the truck body in the process. Just as I arrived, it began to rain, but after a few minutes it abated. I had about 20 minutes to walk up the last part of the trail if I wanted to reach the top before sunset.
I made it! Just as the sun was setting, I hastily set up my little Sony on the tripod and clicked off a few shots. It was darker than you would think from the image here. Thank you, Photoshop!!
I walked back down in the dark to my truck and slept there at the end of the road.
The next morning I made the bumpy 14 mile drive back down to the trailhead. I stopped there to take a break. Actually, as I pulled in, the truck engine quit and so did the radio. It was totally dead. I popped the hood and saw that the battery had bounced out of place and the cable had become unattached. I looked in my toolkit and found everything but what I needed (a crescent wrench). I worked the connector back onto the battery by hand, and that turned out to be good enough. The truck started and I was on my way home.
Tags: Wheeler Geologic Area La Garita Wilderness Colorado mountains panorama high resolution hi-res rocks sunset panorama PTGui Pro Sony RX100-III
Daughter of ancient sea and flowing lava
conceived and buried
after a million centuries rising
her crown choosing her
as the land falls away
She has lived through it all
seen fantastic things come
and go in a stream
of deep time ending
with the arrival of man her assassin
She has not much longer to exist
I believe
what wind earth and water would do
slowly
man will accomplish in an instant
And so I come to her court
cloud moon and stars
this beautiful woman who has
endured, soon to be no more
to sleep at her feet and dream
Tags: Wahweap Hoodoos median filter 15 images StarryLandscapeStacker Nikon D800E Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 Nik
Tetons with Flowers. We were driving back to the hotel from Yellowstone late in the day. The light wasn't all that good, but we stopped by the road and set up just in case. I was waving my arms to ward off the mosquitos and finally got back in the car, leaving my camera on the tripod outside.
After a while another car pulled up and two young guys hopped out. One of them put up his tripod next to mine and, after snapping off a few shots, moved over to the left and sat down right behind a clump of yellow flowers. He began to frame this with the Tetons in the background. I was so impressed (and ashamed that I hadn't seen it first) that I said I might try to steal his idea. He said fine with him. Meanwhile the other guy told me that the photographer was a pro from San Francisco.
I decided not to move my camera as long as he had the spot occupied. Soon they left and took off in their car. The light was still improving, so I moved over to the spot he had found.
The scene I shot consists of five blended images. The first four were selective focus: one for the flowers on the right, one for the flowers on the left, one for the bushes in the mid-foreground, and one for the distant trees and mountains. Finally, the sky was way too bright for the foreground so I took a much darker exposure for this.
Tags: Grand Tetons sunset pink clouds flowers Grand Teton National Park landscape Sigma 24-35 f/2 Art Nikon D800E Photoshop CC 2015
The Cosmic Navel, a.k.a. Cosmic Ashtray, Red Breaks Volcano, or Islomania Dome, is a rock form inside a bowl of sand atop a slick rock peak in southern Utah. To reach it, I traveled about 10 miles down Hole-in-the-rock Road near Escalante and turned left (east) onto Harris Wash Road. After about seven miles, this rough dirt road crosses Harris Wash. There is a sign saying that further travel is limited to “Authorized Vehicles Only”, so I stopped the truck at that point. There are a few pullouts for primitive camping and I took one, intending to spend the night. I signed the trail register and started out down the road, across the wash, and walked in sometimes sandy conditions for about four miles.
I had the coordinates of the formation in my handheld GPS, and at that point it indicated that I should leave the road and head north across rising slick rock in the general direction of a peak about half a mile away. After about 500 feet of climb, I arrived at the location. The formation is much bigger than it looks in the photo. The central rock rises about 40 feet above the smooth layer of orange sand. To get this shot, I stitched together 13 images using the widest-angle (24mm) setting on my Sony RX-100 III camera. On the far wall there is a set of Moki steps that might be useful if one were to fall in.
The formation is hard to photograph in direct sunlight because part of it will always be in shadow and part in bright light. I hung around until sunset to get this shot. In the fading light I hurried down the steep slick rock before it became too dark to see. The moon was a tiny crescent in the western sky. Back at the truck, I ate and prepared for the night, which passed uneventfully. The next morning I headed up another wash in search of Red Breaks slot canyon.
Tags: Cosmic Navel Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument PTGUI Pro Sony Cybershot RX-100 III Red Breaks Harris Wash Road Escalante Utah
Double Arch in Arches National Park, Utah. Taken before moonrise. I used an eight-LED cabinet light (powered by 3 AAA batteries) for illumination. The light was hand-held just above the camera. It would have been better to place the light (or lights) away from the camera to create a better sense of relief.
This is a single exposure:
Nikon D800E
28 mm f/2.8 ai-s lens at f/4
25 sec at ISO 6400
That looks like a galaxy in the upper left corner, but I think it's in the wrong place for Andromeda, so I don't know what it is.
This is my best shot so far of the Milky Way. I'll be out next week with a rented 24mm f/1.4 lens, so stay tuned. Also I need to work the color balance settings for the harsh LED light, and maybe get some more lights.
Tags: Double Arch Arches National Park Utah star photography Nikon D800E 28 mm ai-s f/2.8 lens ISO 6400 long exposure