Timp Dayhike

Hiking Mt. Timpanogos from the Aspen Grove trail

On our way back from the Sawtooths, on Tuesday Claudia and I did a day hike up Mount Timpanogos, the most famous and beloved mountain in the Wasatch Range in Utah. We started from the Aspen Grove trailhead, and our leisurely tour took us 9 hours up and down.

The summit of Mt. Timpanogos, Utah

Looking up at Timp – the summit shelter is just barely visible at top right.

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Sundials

Sundial Peak, Wildflowers, Wasatch Range, Utah

Sundial Flowers : Prints Available

Wildflowers below Sundial Peak, lit by a half-set sun - August.

Here’s some photos from a nice hike we did in the Wasatch Range in Utah a couple days ago!

Sundial Peak, Wasatch Range, Utah, sunset, Lake Blanche

Sundial Sunset : Prints Available

Red sunset light on Sundial Peak - August.  In the foreground is the red glacier-scoured rock that surrounds Lake Blache.  Shortly after taking this photo, thunder clouds and lightning came over the ridge into the basin, sending us running for our lives down into the forest!

On tap: a week in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho! Stay tuned…

Two Weeks in the Canyons

Happy Canyon slot

I just posted a bunch of photos from my trip in Utah! Though I was only out there for two weeks total, it truly felt like a full month. It always amazes me how time slows down when I travel. I think that is the secret of living longer… to travel a lot! In that regard, I suppose it’s not all about how long you live, but how well you spend your time while you’re here. (I say that after having the last three days fly by while working on the computer again).

Anyhow, now I’m back home in Ouray, Colorado. It feels great to finally be back home. I’m really looking forward to summer.

>> Check out my new Utah photos here.

Desert Wanderings

Coyote Gulch Arch, Escalante

My winter season in Jackson Hole has come to a close. Though it’s actually snowing again as I write this, I am packing my bags and am excited to spend 3-4 weeks wandering around in the deserts and canyons of Utah. Tomorrow I drive to Moab where I will put all my stuff in a storage unit, then the adventures begin! My rough plan is to do some hiking and backpacking in the San Rafael Swell, then Escalante (shown above from my last trip there way back in 2001), Bryce Canyon, and depending on my timing and the conditions, perhaps Zion and Cedar Breaks.

My blog will be pretty quiet while I’m gone, but when I’m back home in Ouray in early May I will surely bombard my website with a heap of [hopefully decent] desert photos!

In the meantime, check out my collection of favorite skiing/snowboarding shots from my winter in Jackson Hole.

Great Goosenecks

Great Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah
[+] Click for larger view

Sunrise at the Great Goosenecks of the San Juan River, as seen from Goosenecks State Park overlook on the southern end of Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah, on the morning before my backpacking trip in the Grand Gulch this last weekend.

The San Juan River, which originates from the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado, slowly flows through the 1000 foot deep canyon walls, forming one of the world’s best examples of entrenched river meanders. This is one river in the photo – it flows from left to right via three immense meandering curves. It is a very impressive sight to see, and to portray the full scene with all the different river bends, I needed to create a panoramic image.

I made this panoramic photo by stitching together 5 vertical photos in AutopanoPro. Each of those 5 photos were made with dual exposure blends, prepared manually in Photoshop, to control the dynamic range of the bright sky and darker canyon. So that was a total of 10 photos needed, which I shot as quickly as possible using manual focus and two manual exposure settings (one for the canyon and one for the skies), with preset white balance for all. Between the relatively long exposures and quickly changing sunrise light, I only had about 2 chances to get this right.

Grand Gulch Loop Hike

Cedar Mesa Kiva

Over three days and two nights this last weekend I went on a ~25 mile loop hike from Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah. I hiked down Todie Canyon, to Grand Gulch, then out Bullet Canyon. Most of the way the hike passes through dramatic canyon scenery with vertical cliffs and dramatic rock formations. But the highlights were without doubt the numerous ancient ruins and pictographs along the way.

Check out all the photos from the Grand Gulch trek on my gallery site.

Island in the Sky

Canyonlands sunset

[+] On my way home today from Midway, Utah (near Park City), I made a detour from Moab and drove up to the Island in the Sky, in Canyonlands National Park. There was still lots of snow on the ground, even two days after the Christmas dump, and the roads up there were sheets of ice! After a slippery drive to the Grandview Point overlook, I donned my down jacket and snowboard boots, and hiked a mile along the rim to take photos of the evening light and sunset.

More photos below.

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