USA Road-trip - Arches

The following day we woke up late, had some cereal in our motel room, made a packed lunch and then headed out to Arches for a few short hikes. The sky was overcast again, although there were a few patches of interesting striped cloud and the sun managed to come out for a few minutes as we headed into the park. Without the sun overhead it was far more pleasant for hiking even if it made photography challenging.

We drove right to the end of the road to the Devils Garden area and set off, together with lots of other tourists, along the trail leading to the Double O arch. The first part of the trail is relatively flat and easy, on the approach to Landscape Arch, and thus was the busiest. It still makes me laugh watching people taking photos on iPads.

After Landscape Arch the trail began to get a little harder, with a steep section climbing up slickrock. Fortunately it was dry, but some people found it tricky and there was a bottleneck for a short while as people took it slowly.

 

The trail continued for a while over various slickrock fins, or ridges, out of which the arches are formed. Soon we reached Double O arch - one of the most famous formations in the park - and climbed through and up to a viewpoint on the other side. Already there was a party of school-children, scattered around the arch and above it. A few people sat right at the bottom of the arch, not seeming to notice that everyone wanted photos of the view without them in it! We sat and ate our sardine bagels and chatted to a couple from Portland, Oregon who were on their honeymoon. Eventually the people left and I was able to get a shot of the arch without being dotted with people. The sky wasn't great for photos.

 

On the way back from Double O arch we stopped to see some cacti and a pretty caterpillar, but were dismayed to find some graffiti. It's unbelievable that someone could deface such a place (or anywhere, for that matter). Ted Kim, I hope the park rangers found you and fined you - shame on you!!

We caught up with the party of children as we reached the steep section, which slowed us down a little. We did a little detour to Pine Tree Arch and then back to the car.

We headed straight off towards the Windows section of the park, the sky still overcast, with that nasty white cloud that makes photographs look so dull, but the sun was trying to come out. We did the primitive loop that goes in front of Turret Arch and then behind the North and South Windows. It was nice and uncrowded, unlike the arches themselves which were teeming with tourists (given the proximity to the car-park it's no surprise that they are so popular). By the time we got back to the car the sun had managed to come out, brightening up the red rock. Some interesting clouds were beginning to form, which gave me hope for a decent sunset.

 

 

 

 

Although there were still a few hours until sunset, we decided to head up the Delicate Arch trail and hang out up there on the rock. Obviously we knew exactly where to park having been there in the early hours the previous morning. The sun was still out, with clearer skies above us. We followed the trail and eventually found the cairn that we'd sat next to watching the lunar eclipse. The path led off to the left at that point through a shrubby section which we missed in the darkness. The cairns were all quite far apart - easy to see in daylight, impossible in darkness! The trail continued for another ten minutes, finally winding along a path that had been carved into the rock behind large hillocks. Finally we turned the bend and there was the arch, sitting behind a bowl. We wandered around looking at different angles before deciding to wait for the sunset directly opposite it, with the La Sal mountains - sadly not very snowy, or clear - behind the arch.

The crowds grew as the sunset approached, but there's a large area to sit, so it never felt too busy. People would go down to the arch to get their photo taken, do yoga poses, spread their arms wide in the air (that again) and the photographers on the ridge would shout if they stayed too long; the atmosphere was friendly, though, and we chatted to our neighbours.

Gradually the light got better, the sun coming out just in time to give a glorious light to the right-hand section of the arch - again glowing orange like the Mittens and mountains at Zion. The clouds came and went, but thinned as the sky darkened.

The air grew noticeably cooler and I was glad for a spare layer in my bag. There was a fair amount of cloud lying above the horizon, below which the sun quickly disappeared. As usual, most people left as soon as the sun had set, but a few of us lingered to see the last few clouds light up. I wandered over to the other side of the ridge, closer to the arch to capture it with the last patches of pink cloud.

We could have stayed longer and waited for the moon to rise, but we'd been out a long time and felt hungry and thirsty. We drove back into Moab, ate at an average Chinese restaurant, then packed as we were planning on a very early morning trip to Mesa Arch for sunrise before our long drive back to Boulder.

Next stop: Mesa Arch at Sunrise

USA Road-trip - The Blood Moon

After dinner at the Moab Brewery I did a little bit of research about the upcoming total lunar eclipse, which we were in the right place at the right time for, it turned out. I knew that there was a full moon while we were in Moab when I was planning the trip, but for some reason had failed to learn that there would be an eclipse until two days earlier when I'd read about it online. As a result, we weren't very well prepared. Sitting in the cramped motel room I used the photographer's ephemeris to work out where it would be in the sky. I thought about good places to hopefully see it. I learned all about how it gets darker and darker as the sun comes over the moon (obviously!) before the moon lights up red once there's totality. I manically checked the weather-forecast over and over to see if the forecast cloud was going to lift; it was actually clear outside in the evening, in spite of cloud forecast, so I was hopeful in spite of the overcast forecast. I checked over and over to make sure I had the time right for our time zone; the peak lunar eclipse was at 4.55am, but totality lasted for almost an hour, half an hour either side, with the partial eclipse beginning an hour earlier. I didn't want to get the time wrong by an hour...

We planned to drive back into Arches National Park and try to make our way to Delicate Arch, which in hindsight was wrong for so many reasons. We woke up to the alarm at 2.30am, checked out of the window to see if it was clear enough and as I could see the full moon shining brightly above us we headed out. By the time we parked it was about 3.15 and we set off up the track with torches and a rough idea of where we were going based on my memory of the trail from 9 years earlier, in the daylight; I had also had a cursory glance at a map of the trail the previous evening. The track was easy to follow at first, but as we reached the slickrock section the partial eclipse began, the light became weaker and we began to lose our bearings. With the full moon shining brightly it might have been easy to see the cairns placed at too-far distances on the slickrock, but as the light faded this was impossible. I was also a little nervous about bears, as someone we'd met a few days earlier told us that there were some black bears hanging around the park. I looked out for dark moving shadows around me; thankfully there were none.

We continued up the slope, following cairns if we could see them. It soon became obvious that we were definitely on the wrong track. I could see a few silhouettes of rocks on the horizon ahead and knew that the arch had to be perched on the edge of a bowl behind one of them, but we kept coming to big drop-offs, so had to go back down a bit, trying to retrace our steps. As well as being lost I was soon sweaty and uncomfortable as I was wearing my down jacket and thermals. The battery on my torch was weakening with every step. It wasn't going very well. We were both ratty and annoyed at not being able to find the trail. As we saw the first glimpse of the red moon marking the beginning of the total eclipse we found a cairn, but had no idea where the one further up the hill was, so we decided to cut our losses, sit down and enjoy the eclipse, and worry about the bloody arch in daylight, another time. We sat on the ground and I set up my tripods and cameras to capture the blood moon with different focal lengths. Light cloud came and went covering the moon from time to time. I wish I'd had a teleconverter with me to see the moon a little bigger - the 200mm wasn't able to capture enough detail, even on the cropped-frame sensor of the 60D giving it a little extra distance. The sky was full of stars, but the thin cloud didn't allow for great views of the milky way. The moon was quite spectacular, but the whole experience would have been far better if we'd just stayed at the side of the road and enjoyed the eclipse with a few hills silhouetted behind, rather than attempting a climb in the middle of the night up a slope with no idea of where we were really going.

An hour later and the show was over and the scene was plunged into darkness again. The moon gradually reappeared again, a tiny ethereal crescent surrounded by a light mist, growing as we descended. I used my iPhone torch to guide me, but we could see some lights in the distance from other people coming up the trail, which helped us find the right direction to head for and soon we were back in the safety of the car. We drove home in silence, both exhausted from a short night's sleep and still annoyed by our stupidity in not being better prepared. It was light by the time we reached the motel, but we still managed to get back to sleep for a few hours; no sunrise photos for me that day.

When we visited Delicate Arch the following day (couldn't face it when we woke up later that day) we found that although we'd only been about 10 minutes from the arch when we sat and watched the moon, there was no way that we would have found the trail as it took a little detour through a shrubby area; we made the right decision to go no further! We also realised that we wouldn't have been able to take any photos including the moon and the arch together - do to that we'd have needed to have been on the far side of the arch to get the moon in shot - off the side of the cliff!

Next stop: Canyonlands