Category Archives: Photography

A Backpacking Trip into Coyote Gulch

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When I was  photographing on film, I became very good – in my humble opinion – at telling a story with a slide show, especially stories of trips. At some point, I quit making slide shows and concentrated on making just the right art shot. Over the years, I have reverted back to telling stories which, I think, I do much better and which is, really what this blog is about. So now I am trying to get some of those old – mostly trip – stories down here. Michele and my first trip down Coyote Gulch is one of them.

Backpacking in the Escalante River Basin requires a leap of faith bigger than any place I have ever hiked. First, it is a long way from the Bay Area. We have to drive for about sixteen hours, past all kinds of great places to hike and backpack; the Sierras, the Ruby Mountains, Zion, Bryce. When we finally get to the town of Escalante, it seems unremarkable. A small, isolated, farming town in southeastern Utah. The trailhead to Coyote Gulch – the Hurricane Wash cutoff, really – is about 35 miles down a dirt road off of Utah Highway 12. It isn’t dry enough to be called a desert, just Drylands – very red Drylands, it is true – heavily sprinkled with shrub brush, and interlaced with the occasional cattle corral or small water tank.

From the trailhead, on a bench of the Kaiparowits Plateau where the red Drylands – seemingly – go all the way to the horizon, we start walking down Hurricane Wash. We carry enough water to comfortably walk down to Coyote Gulch – about 3.5 miles – where we will find water (if we don’t find water, we will have a very uncomfortable walk back to the car). As we walk, the land slowly, slowly, becomes more wash-like. We pass petrified sand-dunes about – and that is a very big about – 65 to 55 million years old.

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We are walking down-section which means that, as we walk downhill, we are also walking back in time. The wash gets deeper, a little rougher, and the sandstone gets older.

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When we get to the corner of Hurricane Wash and Coyote Gulch and see water in this dry landscape, it is a little bit of a shock. The green against the red walls of the canyon is almost neon in its intensity. The running water is not big enough to be called a stream or a brook but over time – alot of time – it has carved a canyon that is probably over 300 feet deep. There are Cottonwoods everywhere, the still water areas are covered in Equisetum, and lots of unidentifiable – to me – bushes.

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After wandering around – in awe – we cooked dinner under some Cottonwoods, and spent our first night in an covered alcove (feeling very Indian). About mid-night, we were woken by a stealth bomber flying over. It was very loud and very slow: not at all what I would have expected, especially having lived near a B-52 base while stationed in Texas, years ago.

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The next morning, we headed deeper into the canyon. It must have been cold because Michele is still wearing her long underwear which makes me wonder what time of year we took this trip. If it had been in the fall, the trees would have been changing color, so it must have been Spring but it also must have been earlier than Memorial Day that we had carried warm clothes. Either way, it was cold in the early morning and Michele had her long underwear on when we started out, following a well worn trail.

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I have hiked or walked – dabbled, really – in alot of mountain ranges, but nothing prepared me for hiking in the Escalante Basin. It is like hiking in a miniature Yosemite dyed red. Except that there are small waterfalls and arches. Oh! and ruins. and petroglyphs.

99 to 65 million years ago – according to Hana Doggett – this part of the world was an inland sea running all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic. Eventually that seabed was filled with material washing down from the higher ground both to the east and west and, then, it lifted, becoming a low flatish area with lazy, meandering rivers. It got lifted again, higher this time and the rivers, staying in their meandering beds beds, wore down those beds as the areas around them lifted up. Eventually, it became one of the most stunning places on earth.

Back when we first reached the corner of Hurricane Wash and Coyote Gulch, we dropped our packs and sat by the side of the mini-stream to take a break. As were sitting there in stunned awe, a German – or a guy with a heavy German accent – ran by yelling, YELLING!, Oh my Gott! Oh my Gott!. When he saw us, he stopped and said This is amazing, do you have any idea how amazing this is? and then ran off. We didn’t know where he came from or where is was going, we only knew that we agreed.

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Two nights after the German ran by, we camped near a small ruin with petroglyphs, the next night we camped in a grove of Cottonwoods near where Coyote Gulch enters the Escalante River.

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To be continued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every picture has a story except when it doesn’t

Salt Flats-0005Way back in the olden days, in the film era, I was driving home – across the Dumbarton Bridge – at sunset. It was a rare, warm summer day, with no wind and no fog peaking over the hills. The light was magical and I pulled over and took a couple of pictures.

I have dozens of Carousels of slides and even more binders filled with slides (maybe more binders than Romney). Right now, they are hidden in their Kodak boxes, doing nothing to enrich my life. I have not looked at them or shown a slide show in over ten years. To make room, and in an effort to actually make the slides accessible, I am slowly going through them, throwing alot away and converting some to digital. At Kirk Moore’s recommendation, I am using the ScanCafe and they are doing a super job.

One Carousel is a group of pictures from Japan in the 60’s and another, a trip down Coyote Gulch, that Michele and I first took in the early 90’s. There were also a couple of odds and ends that I tossed in the scan pile. One of them was the picture above.

Another sunset was from Russian Ridge. I have been to Russian Ridge  – probably – fifty times. Michele and I watched the Transit of Venus from there, I have watched the fog come in from there, and I have watched dozens of sunsets. None were even close to being as spectacular as this one from the film era when everything turned orange.

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A third sunset, this time in Arizona during a silence and fasting period of a week long spiritual retreat. It was a crummy, overcast, day that turned magic as the sun dropped below the cloud layer.

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Driving back from the same retreat, I drove by what seemed like miles of yellow flowers. Lisl Dennis talks about inertia in photography – not photography? – and I remember driving along and thinking This is gorgeous;  I should stop and take a picture. and continuing to drive. It is always a conflict, while driving someplace, between trying to actually get there and stopping to take a couple of pictures, and then a couple more pictures, especially if it requires any setup. This didn’t, the clouds, the flowers, the junipers, were just there, mile after mile.

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Before he had a studio in The Smoke Creek Desert, Mike Moore had a place on/in an old Air Force Radar Station south of Winnemucca, Nevada. It was a concrete block building, on top of a mountain,  and he called it Radar Ranch. Walking up from the building to a view point, we could see all the way to the edge of the earth in three out of the four directions. I think this was the view south.

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After a very crowded day at Machu Picchu, the tourist train left, leaving just three of us in the empty ruin. We were all photographers – a good friend with whom I often traveled, a photographer from Brooklyn, and myself – and we were all chewing coco leaves. I ended up shooting three roles of film of – basically – stone walls. Surprisingly, I liked them all. This stray shot showed up and, somewhere in a binder, there are another hundred shots just like this as well as more conventional shots.

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Of course, there are lots of odds and ends from various trips to Death Valley. I am almost positive that I didn’t take either of the next two shots. The first, a wedding picture of Michele and me. I have no idea where or how I got this wedding picture, we were married the afternoon before and the Wedding Photographer suggested that we get a picture the next morning from Zabriskie Point. What I had forgotten and the photographer never knew, because he had never been to Death Valley before, was that sunrise at Zabriskie is probably, photographically, the most popular sunrise place in California (atleast, that doesn’t involve water). There were dozens of photographers and Michele and me, all dressed up. Our wedding album has lots of pictures that are better than this but, still, this does have an enigmatic charm.

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Michele pointed out that the final shot, below, is close to the odds end of the odds and ends scale. I know that both our names are Steve and I am pretty sure that it was taken in greater Death Valley in the 60’s. Other than that, I have no idea what the story is, what we were doing, or what I was – apparently – trying to explain with my arms.

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Maybe it’s all a matter of attitude

Uhhh…that should really be Maybe it’s all a matter of altitude. Let me make a short story, long.

Michele’s sister, Claudia, was going to the family cabin at Squaw Valley and she graciously agreed to give me a ride – pretty far out of her immediate way – to get the Range Rover which was now back in Minden at Hollar’s 4×4.

As an aside, I had meant to post that on Monday but got the date backwards and told WordPress to post it on 06/05/2013 rather than 05/06/2013. I really left on Monday and got back on Wednesday. End aside.

Because Claudia was in Napa, the easiest way to meet her was to take the ferry to Vallejo. Michele dropped me off and I started my trip at the Ferry Building which has been remodeled – in 2003, under the Willie Brown administration – into a foodie paradise featuring local purveyors.

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In the back, the Ferry to Vallejo loads at a new pier.

Rover trip-0010I said Goodbye to San Francisco and about an hour later said Hello to Vallejo which is still devastated from the Navy pulling out (I think as a way for the Pentagon to punish California’s anti-war liberal Congress-members).

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Claudia picked me up and we headed to Minden under a darkening sky that turned to rain in the foothills and snow – with big flakes that didn’t stick to the road – as we got higher (passing blooming dogwoods in between).

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When I picked the Rover up at Hollar’s 4×4 and drove to Squaw Valley without the low coolant light going off even once, I felt very hopeful. Not hopeful enough to drive to Gerlach, but hopeful enough to think I would get home. Claudia and I spent the next day driving to Gerlach in her truck and, on Wednesday, I started home early so I could be home to let Precious Mae out (she had been locked in all night because Michele was now in Napa) .

When I fired up the Rover, in the cabin’s driveway, the low coolant level light started flashing immediately. This changed my chances of getting home, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I figured that there were two main obstacles: Donner Pass at  7,056 feet which I could go over slowly by taking the old road and Emigrant Gap at about 5,200 feet where I didn’t think there would be an old road to bypass the freeway.

After getting gas and a supply of anti-freeze, I drove around Donner Lake with Donner Pass looming, ominously, in the background.

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Donner Lake and Donner Pass are named after the infamous Donner Party (duh!, OK, probably only infamous in California). I figured, no matter what, my trip would be considerably easier than that experienced by the Donner Party in 1846. Considerably easier than working on the First Transcontinental Railroad when – primarily – Chinese  workers labored to get tracks through this solid rock landscape (today, it is hard to believe that all this work was done by hand, lots of hands).

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After taking a couple of hurried pictures from the side of the road near the summit, I turned back towards the car. Coolant was running out from under the engine. Not dripping, gushing. All I could think of as I ran back to the car was If I can just get over the summit, I can coast to a place to park where AAA can pick it up. I jumped in and started driving.

As soon as I got over the summit, I turned off the engine and started to coast. Ahead was a a little uphill section and then it looked like a long downhill and I was calming down, so I fired up the engine, and – watching the temperature gauge – got over the next bump. That pretty much went on until I got to Emigrant Gap where I stopped, let the Rover cool, and then poured almost a gallon of coolant into the reservoir tank. I called Michele and told her that I was not going to make it and I would keep her posted.

I went over Emigrant Gap at about 45 and coasted – off and on – to the Rest Stop at Gold Run. I stopped, washed my hands and sweating face, and decompressed. I was about 145 miles from San Francisco and our towing covers 100 miles so I thought I would see if I could get under the limit. This went on for a couple of hours, coasting downhill, crawling uphill at 45 until I finally got to the Great Central Valley. The I pulled off the freeway at a Park and Ride to add more coolant. It turned out that I parked next to the Placer Buddhist Church and I took that as a good sign. So I walked over to the Church while the Rover cooled. The Church was closed but the Koi in a pond- infront of the Church – were calming.

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I filled the coolant reservoir and it only took about a quarter gallon and I was off to see if I could get within 85 miles of San Francisco to give myself some breathing room on the towing distance. Then a funny thing happened: the Rover stopped spewing coolant. I checked in Vacaville even though there were no flashing lights, everything seemed fine and I kept going (at 45 on the Freeway!). I didn’t bother to check before I went over the Bay Bridge. I didn’t even bother to check  this morning when I fired up the Rover to go to the market. Still no flashing lights.

Michele’s theory, which I am completely buying into, is that the Rover problem is only bad at high elevations. This is because the pressure cap releases fluid at about 15 psi – pounds per square inch – and that is the differential pressure between the atmospheric pressure – outside the Rover radiator –  and the pressure inside the Rover cooling system. I have no idea what the pressure should be  inside the radiator, but let’s say it is 25 psi now. At sea level, the outside pressure is about 14.7 psi. That plus the 15 psi pressure cap is almost 30 psi at sea level, well over the inside pressure of 25 psi. Going over Donner, the atmospheric pressure is about 40% of sea level or 5.88 psi and that is not enough to keep the cap from releasing massive amounts of coolant.

Of course, the whole point of the Range Rover, for us, is to go to the mountains; to go over Donner Pass or, more importantly, Tioga Pass at  9,943 feet where the pressure is under 4 psi. But, if I stay at sea level until I do a restoration on the Range Rover, I may be OK. Or, maybe, it’ll be OK for the next week. We’ll see.

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Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: some other Views

Sierras-JR on the Eureka Dunes by Coco Gonzo

Last Saturday, Michele and I joined JR at Gina and Courtney’s house for a spectacular dinner followed by their slide show of our Death Valley Easter Trip. Actually, I should say slides shows because we also saw JR’s shots and Michele’s pictures. The slide shows were about an hundred times more fun than it sounds.

First off everybody’s trip was slightly different, meaning that everybody’s point of view was both literally and figuratively different. I wasn’t where Courtney was to see the shot of JR and, if I had been, I might have been looking somewhere else. I know I was looking somewhere else when Gina was demonstrating how windy it was at the edge of Ubehebe Crater.

Sierras-Gina leaning into the wind by Coco Gonzo

Second, nobody got much in the way of shots of themselves, I didn’t, and it was fun to see pictures of myself (some of them, some were pretty horrifying at how fat I have become).

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Sierras-2145Replacing the top radiator hose by JR

Sierras-1050053Steve leaving Red Wall canyon by JR 

While I was fretting over the waning light  as we crossed over the last Chance Range on our way to camp in North death Valley Wash, JR was looking at the great view down onto Crankshaft Junction.

Sierras-2211Looking down at Crankshaft Junction from a pass in the Last Chance Range by JR

He got higher than anybody on the Eureka Dunes and caught the sinuous road leading down to the dunes from the North Death Valley Road.

Sierras-2187From the highest ridge at Eureka Dunes by JR 

And, on his early morning walks,  JR saw and photoed every sunrise and even photoed himself seeing the sunrise.

Sierras-2353JR from Lake Hill, Upper Panamint Valley by JR  

Lastly, this was a special trip and it was fun to re-live it through the eyes of other people who were on the trip.

 

 

 

Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: Red Wall Canyon

I woke up early on our last full day in the Death Valley area and went for a short walk. It looked like everybody else was sleeping in and the day was dawning cool and still.

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Death Valley 2013-2871When I got back to camp, I realized that JR hadn’t slept in, just his bag had. He was up earlier than me and had gone for a longer walk. Finally, everybody got up, JR came back to camp, we all caffeinated in our favorite way, and we drove down valley to the closest we could get to Red Wall Canyon. Red Wall is a canyon in the Grapevine Mountains at the top of the third fan from the left in this very much vertical exaggerated screen shot from Google earth. We parked at the bend of the yellow Scotty’s Castle Road.

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Our path was up the fan to the reddest looking hole in the mountains. Walking up a fan in the desert is totally different from any other kind of hiking I can think of. Around where we live on the San Francisco Peninsula, or in a forest, or in the Sierras, on those hikes, the cars – usually in an authorized parking lot – disappear when we walk away because, following the trail, we walk around something like trees or a ridge. Walking up the fan to Red Wall, the cars just got smaller. We walk completely in the open across terrain that is both unendingly similar in all directions and radically different every ten feet. There is no trail or, even right path. The Park Rangers encourage hikers to spread out so as not to leave traces and everybody ends up walking their idea of the best way up.

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When we stop, we collect, then we spread out again.

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Death Valley 2013-9641As we enter the canyon proper, we start finding shade and places to stop for lunch (lunch for most of us, a place to climb for Courtney).

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Deeper into the canyon, the fan gets steeper and narrower.

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I am not positive that it is a immutable law of nature but every canyon seems to be graced by a dryfall or a series of dryfalls. Of course Red Wall is no exception. First there was a small dryfall,- almost a step – then, for all practable purposes a dead-end. (I have read that the canyon becomes easy again after the harder dryfall but we turned around there.)

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After the turn around, JR took our official group portrait, on a ledge, in front of a distorted rock outcrop.

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The ledge, by itself is worth looking at.

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These lines are layers of sediment that were laid down in a sea – probably shallow because the rock is red indicating the presence of oxygen – off the west coast of North America. Then, about 15 million years ago, give or take a month,  something raised it up1 so that the ancient seafloor has now become the mountains were are walking through.

Once we turn around, it is all down hill.

1. The something probably being an ancient Plate – the almost completely  subducted Farallon Plate – which was once between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate that are now rubbing together at the San Andres Fault zone.

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By the time we get back on the open fan, the day has cooled and we are boogying along.

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Very roughly, the fans are composed of flat areas with washed out gullies in between. Going down, it is much easier to see the flat areas which is often referred to as desert pavement and present easy walking. The combination of wind and time – lots of time – has sorted and flattened the rocks and they are often covered in a thin, dark, layer of  manganese oxide called desert varnish.

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Walking down the fan fast – and it is hard not to walk fast – is a walking meditation. Everything else falls away – atleast for me – but the next step and the direction of the step after that. The cool air, the ease of the walk, the canyon behind us, and the huge space ahead, all contribute to the meditation. It is both relaxing and exhilarating (that’s Gina and Michele in the center of the picture).

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Then in the distance are the cars and all is right with the world (if you are into that sort of thing).

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Part One: Here

Part Two: Here

Part Three: Here 

Part Four: Here

Part Five: Here

Next: Going home here