Desert Daze – A Southwest Adventure (IV)

Part Four:

'Hoodoo

Redux'

(Scroll down to start with Part One)

As Dr. Suess might have said: 'Whew! Hoodoo beaucoup! It's true, more than two, more than just a few! Who knew? Did you?’

Who knew there were so many hoodoos? They are found all over the Southwest, indeed, throughout the world – if you know where to look. Hoodoos are erosional towers left in place when a hard cap rock (generally a boulder or cobble) protects a column of more erodable sediment beneath. Thus, while the material surrounding the hoodoo is washed away by direct rainfall and surface erosion, the hoodoo stands, sometimes just an isolated one or two, sometimes whole ‘fields’ of them. They come in a great many varieties – tall, short, skinny, fat, rough, smooth, white, red, gray (and all shades in between), etc. – every hoodoo is unique and every location is unique, all it takes for the possibility of hoodoos is a harder layer of rock above a softer layer.

My first priority upon arriving in Kanab, Utah on this most pleasant morning is to visit the local BLM (Bureau of Land Management) office. It is from these knowledgeable men and women who staff the offices that I often get good information about unique places to hike and shoot. These rangers know their area well and are happy to share their knowledge – I guess I’d be happy too, with a job like theirs.

This time I’ve come specifically for permits to hike into Coyote Buttes where the semi-famous ‘Wave’ formation is located (more on Coyote Buttes and The Wave later.) I get my permits to explore the Buttes tomorrow and the day after leaving me with the rest of today to poke around elsewhere – I go hoodoo hunting.

I visit two locations. The first area is called ‘The Toadstools’; it is a hike featured in the BLM’s Grand Staircase-Escalante visitor information pamphlet and has an actual trail. It’s all new to me; this is my first visit. The hoodoos vary from white with red capstones to all red. There are three main sets, each different. The first bunch I encounter are red with a little striping, sitting high atop a base of furrowed bright white sandstone. The change from white to red is abrupt, there isn't any transition zone; I wonder why that is (anybody?)

A short distance away, another group sits beneath an imposing white cliff, mostly red again with slightly darker capstones. For some reason, this group brings to mind the ‘Flintstones’, that old cartoon TV show from the sixties. There’s something cartoonish and slightly absurd about hoodoos, as if someone with a goofy, but fun-loving sense of humor created them. They always make me smile.

The third set is hidden away and, if you’re not the curious type like me, you could easily miss them - I suspect many do. As opposed to the other two all-red sets, these have white columns.

Speaking of my curiosity, a few years ago it led me to stumble upon a truly surreal place that I am quite sure not many know about. This magical place is the second hoodoo location I visit today…

Next – Hoodoo Redux Two - Dali's Dream

Desert Daze – A Southwest Adventure (III)

Part Three: 'The Valley of Fire'

My feet feel like two blocks of ice. I have forgotten just how cold it gets here in the high desert at night during the winter. Guess I’m going to need to procure another blanket or two and some wool socks. My ice-cube feet have awakened me at 4am, but that’s OK because the timing is right, I want to be in the Valley of Fire for sunrise and it’s a bit of a drive from here.

I careen through the early morning darkness on remote roads until I sense the presence of monoliths around me - I have arrived. Funny how, even though I can’t yet see a thing, I can just feel that this place is going to be magical. Looks like I'm not the only one excited about being here to watch the golden orb rise, I see a huddle of vehicles gathered in a parking lot, tailpipes issuing forth a steady stream of steam to keep the passengers warm. Later, I see that these people are here to film a Ford commercial – I run into them (well, not literally) all over the park using the fantastical formations for backdrops.

I spend two days exhilarating days exploring this place. Filled with huge, alien, mostly red, rock formations, it looks more like Mars than earth. The valley was formed from great shifting sand dunes approximately 150 million years ago. Complex uplifting and faulting, followed by extensive erosion, have created the present bizarre landscape. The hiking is splendid, and if one explores the park beyond the obvious - off the roads - he or she will find some amazing hidden rock formations. Among them (my names), ‘The Roman Villa’ (complete with steps!),


‘The Pottery’, three colorful, giant ceramic pots perched on a cliff (featured as one of my March Images of the Month on my website) and, ‘The Balls’ an area where all the smaller rocks ranging from the size of peas to tennis balls are perfectly round - it's really quite bizarre.


On my second crisp and clear morning here, I set out on the ‘White Domes’ trail. This hike has it all – amazing rock formations (this is where I find ‘The Pottery’), a deep slot canyon, an arch you can climb through

and the remnants of an old movie set. Some of the rock formations tower hundreds of feet above you, it’s almost intimidating at times just to think that if a hunk of this rock were to let loose, well, I wouldn’t be telling this story.

After two splendid days exploring all the gifts the Valley of Fire has to offer and three nights now spent in Hotel Truck, I’m feeling it’s time to move on. Moreover, I’m beginning to feel a bit ripe, time to find a motel. As I am driving out of the park on the main road, I pass by one of the campgrounds and spy a building off to the side– nah, it can’t be. It is! Showers! Ahhhh, a warm shower never felt so good ( I say that every single time after a few days without one). Now feeling refreshed and reinvigorated, I point the truck eastward, my sights set on Utah.

Next: Part Three: Hoodoo Redux

March Images of the Month and more...

March Images of the Month: The Southwest Rocks!

Also, now available, fresh from the darkroom - ten new images! Please check 'em out.

Thanks for your interest in my work!

Desert Daze – A Southwest Adventure (II)

Part Two: 'Escape from Vegas'

The plane shudders to a halt; I’m happy to be on the ground. It’s extremely windy out making for a rough and stressful landing. I really don’t mind flying at all; it’s these landings that give me pause.

So let the adventures begin! I get my rental vehicle – a van this time instead of my usual SUV. I have chosen a van because it should be much more comfortable to sleep in and I plan to sleep in it often because I will be visiting some seriously remote areas. I also want to be able to immerse myself in these places without worrying about where I will be spending the night – I plan to drain each sunset and be out hiking with the sunrise each day. I just hope I don’t regret not getting four wheel drive – it’s real winter out here at higher elevations and some of the roads I will be traveling are not much more than two dirt tracks.

I flee Vegas via the road less traveled, naturally, taking the north route through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area instead of the interstate. Excellent choice, the scenery’s immediately magnificent and there are so few other vehicles, it feels remote just a few miles away from the city.

After driving for about a half hour, I realize that it’s already late afternoon and that the sun will be setting soon. Time to start looking for a place to throw down anchor. Just as that thought goes through my head, I coincidently spy a little wooden sign pointing down a dirt road towards the water that says “Stewart’s Point.” Sounds good to me, let’s find out why this fellow Stewart has a point named after him The road is rough and just a few hundred yards in I see a sign stating ‘Four wheel drive recommended.’ “Uh oh” I say to myself and I wonder if I will already be regretting my choice of vehicle. But the road turns out to be passable if one pays strict attention to avoiding the ruts and rocks. It leads me to a beautiful vantage point overlooking thevast blue lake and the arid, rugged mountains on the other side. Perfect.

I park in a level spot and go wandering. I find a bundle of firewood close to my campsite that some kind soul has left behind. Excellent. My game plan now: soak up the beautiful views until dark and then have me a little campfire – what a great way to spend the first evening.

As the craggy brown mountains across the lake dissolve into soft pastels and blue shadows in the twilight, a pack of coyotes sets up howl in the distance. How I love that sound, it speaks to me of wilderness. As the darkness sets in in earnest, the thinnest possible crescent moon (if it were any thinner it wouldn’t be there) and a brilliant star (must be a planet) pop up from below the horizon. Now the Big Dipper, tilted so far back that anything in it would spill and with the handle almost touching the water, reveals itself reflecting in the lake along with a million other (give or take a few) twinkling stars.

Stars don’t actually twinkle, the effect is caused by the light being bent and twisted as it passes through the earth’s atmosphere. Here in the dry, clear desert air, they put on quite a light show, better, I dare say, than anything you could find in Vegas.

Now that ol’ sol has retired for the night, the desert cools off rapidly. I put on long johns and a sweatshirt and then start my fire. I stay outside admiring the lavish sky above until I run out of wood. By now, it’s become seriously chilly and with the fire down to a few small coals, it’s time to retire to ‘Hotel Truck’ for my first night in the desert. As I lay my head on the pillow, shimmering stars are still floating through my head; I fall asleep content.

Look for Part Two soon...

Desert Daze – A Southwest Adventure (I)

Part One: Introduction

I just spent 16 days freezing in the desert. Freezing in the desert, you say? But, the desert’s a warm place, an escape from the cold north this time of year, you protest. Nevertheless, it’s true, with one brief exception that I’ll get into later, I spent most of my time bundled up in the high desert, where temperatures struggled to reach highs in the 40’s and often hovered between zero and ten above at night - and me, camping in an uninsulated van.

Why on earth would I do that? Because I’m a little crazy? No doubt. But, that aside, I do it for one reason: to truly connect with the wilderness. Oh sure, there’s wilderness in the Southwest at all times of the year, but it just feels so much wilder when there’s no one around, no one on the roads, no one on the trails and no tourists demanding ‘services’, in the tiny, out-of-the-way towns that swell to several times their permanent populations during the summer. Nothing smashes the perception of wild more than finding oneself stuck behind a string of behemoth RVs, those ridiculous homes on wheels (let’s go bag us some nature, dear!), crawling up some remote, winding mountain road.

For similar reasons, I mostly avoid the National Parks (Edward Abbey: “The National Park-ing lots.”) on these adventures. The Disney-esque, automobile-oriented, theme park atmosphere fostered at most of these parks, as beautiful as they are, prevents me from truly connecting – and those connections are the very essence of my work. We human beings have a tendency to love the best places to death, chasing away the very spirit that originally attracted us until we wonder ‘What happened?’

As Edward Abbey said in Desert Solitaire: "Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself." I couldn’t agree more. Therefore, I go and freeze my ass off. And couldn’t be happier. I let my legs and intuition carry me to new places, perspectives and impressions. It is my hope that the words and images that follow can convey even a small part of the magic I felt so often during those sixteen wonderful daze...

Soon – ‘Desert Daze – A Southwest Adventure’ - Part Two

Glad To Be Alive

It’s the night before I am scheduled to fly back to Western New York. I am sitting in a motel room in Las Vegas, Nevada after a wonderful sixteen days exploring the desert Southwest, organizing and packing my bags, feeling depressed; I always feel a little depressed at the end of a great adventure and it's no different this time. I decide to check the weather forecast for WNY; the National Weather Service is predicting high winds and snow as a nasty front moves through. Oh great.

I wake up early the next morning, return my rental vehicle, check my baggage and go to the gate. I check the monitor for my flight and it says simply ‘On Time’, but I see that the corresponding flight from Buffalo to Las Vegas has been delayed. This makes me a little uneasy.

We board and take off with no problems. After we’ve been in the air for about an hour, the pilot informs us that we have a tailwind and we should be landing in Buffalo about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. So far so good. As we approach Buffalo I see snow falling from the clouds in great shifting curtains. We descend into the clouds and the ride gets bumpy. Nothing but a wall of white now outside my window; this is uncomfortable for me because I am such a visual person. I marvel at how pilots are able to land planes precisely on a runway without being able to see; to me that seems akin to barreling down a road at night in heavy fog without headlights. I know that very sophisticated equipment aids in the navigation but if I were a pilot it would still drive me crazy not being able to see.

Now we’re rocking and rolling as winds buffet the plane. I’ve been in this type of situation before; once, as we were about to land in Denver, the plane was struck by lightning and simultaneously shoved down by wind sheer; the pilot had to quickly ascend to avoid us being smashed into the ground. He didn't attempt to land at the Denver airport again; instead we flew to Colorado Springs some 70 miles away.

Finally, we descend out of the clouds and I can see the ground below- it makes me feel better knowing that the pilot can too. But we are still being pushed around by the winds and I see the runway looks icy. We touch down pitching from side to side - one tire, two, then all three, we are on the runway but still unstable . If one of the wings hits the ground… I don’t even want to think about it. Very quickly we decelerate from hundreds of miles per hour to a crawl – we have landed safely. Everyone cheers and applauds the pilot.

I get home a few hours later and turn on the TV. The news people are in the midst of informing us that a plane has just crashed near Buffalo Airport– they don’t know the details yet. Immediately I think how easily that could have been me – my plane landed in similar conditions. Suddenly I am no longer depressed - I am feeling lucky just to be alive!

By now, most everyone has heard about the horrible crash of Continental flight 3407 just a few miles from Buffalo Airport. My heart goes out to all those who lost a loved one in this awful tragedy.

Southwest Shooting Trip

I am currently on a four state photography trip to the Southwest. For those who are interested, I will posting brief updates throughout the trip.

Update: I have deleted the brief updates and am now recounting the whole story with images: see 'Desert Daze - A Southwest Adventure' above.

The Last Night (and next morning) in Killarney - Part X

(scroll down to start with Part One)

After a day of inconsequential rambling (still immensely enjoyable, my bumper sticker would say “A day of inconsequential rambling in Killarney is better than a day spent doing almost anything else anywhere else” or something like that), I return to the campsite for The Last night in Killarney. I’m celebrating five wonderful days spent here with a blazing campfire, a bottle of wine and crackers, cheese and pepperoni.

There is a saying when sitting around a campfire that ‘smoke follows beauty’ – I don’t know where this saying came from but, if it’s true, I must be friggin' gorgeous tonight. No matter where I move, the smoke follows! But nothing other than the fact that I must leave tomorrow can bother me, smoke or no smoke, I love it here so (gee, can you tell?)

Parting is such sweet sorrow – but, while the fire dies out and I finish the wine, I’m already plotting my next trip here – next fall, a little earlier to catch more fall leaves. I hit the sack. I wake up to a clear day and decide not to head out until early afternoon for two reasons: (1) I don’t want to leave and (2) I do want to avoid the crazy daytime traffic of Toronto on the way back.

I decide to visit the Killarney graveyard for the first time ever. I had driven past Cemetery Road many times but had never checked it out. I like cemeteries, especially old ones, so I decide to explore it. Given that people have been living in the town of Killarney for many years, I am surprised to find that most of the graves are newer. I suspect there is an older graveyard somewhere else that has run out of room, maybe next to one of the churches in town. However, what really catches my eye is the birth date on a headstone at the foot of a fresh grave –it’s the same as mine. Whoa! That puts me in mind to express gratitude for my life - he’s already gone. I doubly resolve to get back here next fall.

After my cemetery visit, I go for my third hike of the week to the Georgian Bay shoreline– it’s just so incredibly beautiful here, the sexy pink granite, sculpted by weather and waves, the myriad small islands dotting the bay with their charmingly crooked trees
and the horizon that doesn’t end – blue bay as far as I can see.


As I am gazing out into the bay I suddenly sense a presence - a deer has come to visit. She seem as struck by the scenery as me, she just stands and looks out. Then she turns and fixes her big, beautiful eyes on me; I see no trace of fear. We both enjoy the view for a while then head back from where we came – her to the woods, me to my vehicle.

I finally decide to start the loooooong drive back, it’s always seems to take much longer than the drive here. The worst part is the section through the bustling city of Toronto – it will be a rude awakening after five and a half quiet days spent communing with nature. I stop at a few shops along the main highway, not wanting to leave the area. But eventually I can delay no more.

Soon all the signs that civilization is not far start to appear – the highway widens from two lanes to four, then to six. A McDonalds appears on the horizon, then a shopping mall and finally endless houses and development. I wish to get through Toronto as quickly as possible but I am not in luck – the traffic ahead of me turns into a sea of red brake lights and soon we come to a dead stop. We crawl along for about an hour covering barely a mile. We finally reach an exit where everyone is being shuttled off the highway, a sign says some about “emergency repairs.” In all three lanes? Must be one heck of an emergency.

I eventually make it through Toronto and then home, it just take three hours longer than usual. But nothing, not even gigantic traffic jams can take anything away from this wonderful Killarney visit - these memories are untouchable and the best part is, I can recall them any time I choose.

Killarney Part IX: Ravens and Wolves and Bears - Oh My!

The timber wolves are howling tonight! What a wonderful sound – to me, the wolf howl embodies wild-ness itself. That's why I'm sitting here in the frigid woods tonight –to be at one with the night sounds of the wild. I have given up on this type of endeavor at most campgrounds – all you hear is other campers – but here in Killarney the place goes pin-drop quiet at dusk – there is real respect for nature and for fellow campers who come here to experience the quiet sounds of nature - so rare in this day and age.

It’s so quiet I can hear my own heart beating. You don’t often find this kind of tranquility in today’s society, where noise is accepted, expected and sometimes even desired – people can get uneasy when it’s ‘too’ quiet. Here, I can clearly hear every beautiful sound – a faint rustling of the leaves, the far off trickling of Chikanishing Creek and something, probably a raccoon, slinking through the woods. A group of ravens nesting nearby for the night starts up a conversation uttering a whole mélange of strange croaks, squawks and squeaks. I wonder what they’re saying - probably just ‘good night’ to each other.

So now I’ve mentioned wolves and ravens – so what about the bears, you ask? Well, I admit, I added bears to the title because it was catchy; I will see none of them during this particular visit to Killarney. But I have, however, seen or experienced direct evidence of them many times here in the past. I'll never forget the time I went hiking for the day and inadvertently left a cooler outside. It contained only beer and ice, but the bears didn’t know that. They know that coolers often contain food and therefore all unattended coolers must be investigated. I returned to beer and ice spilled out all over the ground and a cooler lid lying in the dirt with a deep puncture mark in it – the bear had evidently pried off the lid with its teeth.

Then there was the time I literally smelled bear breath. I was tent camping on this occasion and after a long day of hiking and a hearty meal, I retired groggily to my tent for some well deserved shuteye. I was pleasantly dozing when I awoke to shuffling sounds just outside. And intense sniffing. That’s when I smelled him – or rather, his wild breath. He was alternately sniffing and snorting, his nose evidently reporting to him that there was a human inside and he wasn't sure what to do. Fortunatelty, he must have decided that I wouldn’t make a good snack or that I was probably too much trouble because humans refuse to willingly become food and will fight back. In any event, he soon shuffled off snorting and huffing back into the woods from whence he came, but sleep didn’t come easily for the rest of that night.

Back in the here and now, I gaze up at a sky positively glowing with stars, as only can be seen in this magnitude in places like this where there is no artificial lighting for many miles around. Finally, as much as I am enjoying the night’s charms, I tire of shivering and my teeth chattering, so I go inside. While falling asleep, I plan to shoot the morning sunrise from a vantage point high up on a bluff near my favorite campsite.

I wake up about an hour before dawn. I go outside to pee and check out the current conditions and I see that all the stars have been blotted from the sky as if someone had closed the observatory roof – it has clouded over. There will be no magic light this morning so I go back to bed. When I wake up a couple of hours later the sky is an uninspiring gray, but at least it’s not raining. I hang around the site organizing my stuff (getting ready for the inevitable return to society), eat a leisurely breakfast and then slowly sip a couple of cups of tea - a very relaxing morning when compared to the pre-dawn starts of the last few days.

Finally, in the late morning I amble over to the La Cloche Silhouette trail, which starts only a few hundred feet from my campsite. I have no set agenda today; I will just wander wherever my wanderlust takes me. Almost immediately, it takes me off the trail - the wild north shore of George Lake is calling me. I bushwhack to the edge of a steep cliff and search for a way down. I find one and scale it down to the edge of the water. The view from here is spectacular - precipitous white cliffs plunging into the brilliant deep blue water as far as the eye can see.

The area surrounding the place where I am standing itself too is beautiful; soft white pines drape overhead and picturesque boulders decorate the shoreline with stretches of pink sand beach in between. If it were (much) warmer I would strip down to my birthday suit and plunge into the inviting water, but it’s decidedly not a possiblilty today. So instead, I sit down on a big chunk of quartzite and revel in this little piece of heaven, gazing dreamily out at the lake and the small islands dotting the horizon.

The gentle sound of lapping water and soft breezes singing in the treetops provides the soundtrack for my reverie. I think about how comfortable I am in Killarney, how it all feels so natural, it’s like I am at home here.

NEXT - Part X - The Last Night in Killarney

The Crack at Dawn - Killarney Part VIII

I awake with a start, pale light is seeping in – oh no! Did I oversleep? I look at the clock, it's only 1:30, it's a crescent moon that is bathing the forest in dim light. Now I'm wide awake. I turn on the light and busy myself with preparations for the day ahead. At about 3:00 I start to feel sleepy again, so I go back to bed - and this time oversleep for real!

Luckily, my 1:30 prep session has me ready. I throw some gruel down my throat, quaff a cup of tea and shoot out the door. I arrive at the trail head about an hour before sunrise, it’s going to be difficult to make my goal - to be at the top of The Crack for sunrise - considering it's a good hour-long hike in full daylight and I’ll be starting out in the dark.

My headlamp does its job well on the mostly level first leg of the trail and I am able to make good time. I reach Kakakise Lake and stop for a moment. It’s a still morning, the only sound I hear is my own breathing. The lake is just beginning to reveal itself in the first light of day. Somewhere out in the distant mist a loon announces with an eerie warble that dawn is coming.

From here, the hike increases in difficulty, an uphill slog over rocks and roots and in the woods, it’s still dark. Taking it slowly, I make my way up to the top of first incline and pop out of the forest into dim light. Then, almost immediately, I am back in the forested hollow and need my headlamp again.

As it gets lighter and lighter, I make better time. My desire to watch the sun rise over the Georgian Bay from the top of The Crack energizes me; I practically bounce across the rough field of broken quartzite leading to it's mouth.

The Crack is filled with giant boulders; I pick my way up and over them with care, a misstep here could lead to a significant fall. The thirty pound camera pack swaying on my back doesn't help my balance, but I make it to the top without incident. I turn around just in time to see the first sliver of sun revealing itself – perfect timing!

Coming soon – Part IX: Ravens and Wolves and Bears - Oh My!

The ‘Whew’ Factor

One of the people with whom I correspond regularly mentioned that, in a recent blog entry of mine, “once again there was a ‘Whew’," meaning that I take chances, some risks when I adventure - it’s true. She said, as far as she was (and most rational people are) concerned, “It's better for me to experience the whews vicariously. The 'Wow' factor, rather than the 'whew' factor is more me. Thanks for giving [me] both." ‘Wows’, not ‘whews’ for her.

It's definitely 'whews' for me, which often lead to the 'wows'. After spending years of my life not feeling fulfilled and nagged by thoughts that there is something specific I am here on earth to share, I believe I have found it – my appreciation of the profound beauty of our natural world and love for adventure. My friends and family know that, should I die doing this, at least I have died doing what I love – and I sincerely mean that.

When I ‘adventure’, I am not foolish. I take calculated risks, meaning I assess situations based on experience and confidence in my physical abilities. For example, most times I hike alone, sometimes far away from the possibly of rescue. I do not take a cell phone or emergency beacon with me; those modern conveniences would ruin the sense of adventure for me. I know that many cannot understand this - when I tell people I refuse to carry such equipment when I hike alone, they invariably look at me as if I have a screw loose. “What if you get injured?” they say. Honestly, I never even consider that, I keep myself in the best shape possible and have the confidence borne of 35 years of experience.

People who have read the story about the guy who, while canyoneering alone in Utah, got trapped by a boulder and had to cut his own arm off to escape, say “That could have been you!” and it’s true - to some extent. I am not apt to perform seriously risky maneuvers with thirty pounds of camera equipment on my back. I usually keep it reasonable. I am skilled at finding alternative routes or other ways to get to places I really want to be. Or, occasionally, I have to admit defeat when I know something’s beyond my technical abilities, I tell myself “It wasn’t meant to be.”

All the same, when I am hopping from slimy boulder to slimy boulder amidst a rushing stream, creeping to the edge of a precipice for a better shot (that's me in the red in the picture above - Photo: Mike Reade), hiking in the dark with just a headlamp to be somewhere at sunrise or snowshoeing through frigid fields of ice in the dead of winter, there is a chance I could suffer a debilitating injury. Nevertheless, it’s a chance I need to take - that blood pumping adrenaline rush that comes with a little danger is part of my muse, that which inspires me and makes me feel alive. And, there is the fact that I am still here to talk about it.

That said, there was this one day in Utah…

Coming soon – The Day I Almost Died, Twice.

Killarney - Rocks, Logs and Lakes (Part VII)

>>>>if you haven't already, please read parts 1 - 6 first (scroll down to the bottom), the story will make much more sense...

Killarney Rocks! I really can’t say enough about the rocks; it’s what sets the place apart. The defining La Cloche mountain range is composed mainly of beautiful white quartzite, which explains why it is still here after 3.5 billion years - it is a very hard, erosion resistant rock and only a few gemstones like ruby, sapphire, topaz and diamond are harder. Quartzite is quartz sand that has been metamorphosed (by heat and pressure.) It breaks through, not around, the quartz grains, producing smooth surfaces when broken or split instead of rough granular ones; a field of the angular slabs looks to my eye like a quarry of unfinished headstones. Quartzite rocks do not easily settle or pack making negotiating a field of the stuff tricky, it can shift under your feet at any time. Add to it that the smooth faces can be slippery (especially when wet) and you know you will need to pay attention when hiking through it.

It can be difficult to take a good photograph of a scene dominated by white quartzite because it fools the camera’s internal light meter into thinking that the scene is more brightly lit than it really is. (Same thing happens with snow pictures.) The exposure may need to be manually adjusted to compensate, which causes another problem – other elements in the scene may now be overexposed.

The other fascinating rock type in the park is pink granite. The color can range from slightly pink to a deep, almost red in places depending on how much pink potassium feldspar it contains. This stuff is sexy and I don’t just mean because of the color - it tends to weather smooth and rounded – the undulating deep pink shoreline along the Georgian Bay is particularly striking.

OK, so enough already about rocks – back to the hike. I climb out of the chasm somewhat disoriented, looking for the trail. At this point, it passes through a field of quartzite and the only trail markers here are cairns of quartzite, which of course, blend into the landscape; they can be difficult to spot. I stumble back and forth through the field, still not finding the trail. Finally, I go back to the edge of the chasm to see where the trail lines up on the other side; I see that it is about a hundred feet upstream from where I am and now I have no problem picking it up on this side. I trip back through the field of quartzite and then the trail enters the woods.

I pass by several babbling brooks; at one of them I spy the remains of an old ‘lincoln log’ type cabin – now reduced to just a few rotting notched logs. I sense some real history here, the large tree now growing in the middle is evidence it was built quite some time ago. I vow research it to learn more when I return home. (Update – I couldn’t find anything at all about it.)

Next, I pop out of the woods along the shoreline of beautiful Acid Lake. It gets its name from being one of the most naturally acidic lakes in the park causing the water to be incredibly clear, but nearly devoid of life. I was looking forward to getting here, this is one of the most scenic parts of the entire hike. The trail is sheltered by pine trees and the footing beneath is soft, pine needle duff, quite a contrast from the usual rocks and roots. The lake is not big, but is very fetching; it’s dotted with tiny islands and an impressive quartzite ridge wall rises up behind it. On a warm day, this would be a great spot to stop and lollygag; but it's decidedly not a warm day today and the wind is still blowing; I linger just long enough to take in the view while I stuff an energy bar in my mouth.

The trail then crosses the Acid Lake outlet over a steep beaver dam - a real tightrope walk. If you slip here, you will either: (a) fall into the lake or (b) fall about six feet down onto the rocks of the outlet creek. Neither one sounds like fun to me, so I pick my way across carefully. From here, the trail re-enters the woods; I walk for about five more minutes and then decide I’ve had enough for today - I want to have enough time to go into town for a shower and get back to cook dinner before dark.

Fast forward three hours: hot water and soap suds are cascading down my body washing away three days of grime and sweat - what a lovely feeling; I’ll never take a shower for granted again. Now well-scrubbed and warm, I return to my campsite in great spirits. I pour myself a glass of wine and prepare dinner in fading light. After a good hike, food always tastes delicious, it doesn’t much matter what it is. On the menu tonight is Italian sausage, squash and homegrown tomatoes – yummmm! Under the influence of clean, well-fed and a couple of glasses of wine, I decide that tomorrow morning I will attack THE CRACK. Since I want to be there for sunrise, a good portion of the hour long hike will be in the dark.

Next - “THE CRACK at Dawn”

Starting The New Year Out Right

It’s a chilly one this first morning of 2009 – two below – but, as is often the case when it’s this cold, the sky is clear and sunshine is calling me outside.

After a power breakfast of four eggs, a bowl of raisin bran with extra raisins, a banana and two cups of tea, I am off to my favorite, close-to-home escape – the Zoar Valley gorge. There isn’t much snow, most of the three feet that was on the ground here just last week melted away during a warm spell, so I won’t need snowshoes, just warm clothes and my trusty hiking boots. (My hiking boots feel like a natural extension of my feet; I rely on them completely. Whenever I am climbing a cliff, descending into a steep ravine or hopping from rock to rock to cross a creek, all with thirty pounds of camera equipment on my back, I know I can count on them to provide excellent traction and ankle-saving stability. That’s why it is so worth it to me to spend big bucks on a high quality, proper fitting pair, not to mention that, despite all the hiker miles I log, they last a long, long time - my boots truly become my good friends.)

Today I will hike the north rim trail to enjoy the numerous views, visit my Favorite Frozen Waterfalls and end up at The Throne (more about The Throne later). There are no other human footprints here, just those of the four legged variety – deer, coyote, rabbits and fox are among the ones I notice. My own private wilderness. The muddy water is roaring deep down in the canyon but otherwise it’s very quiet, not a breath of wind. One by one, I pass all my favorite landmarks: first, the Family Clump, a group of about ten large trees all seemingly sprouted from the same roots, yet with separate trunks but very close together.

Next comes the Knife Edge Ridge, an anomaly really, a lone spine of earth descending all the way down to the water below with sheer cliffs surrounding it. Why it hasn’t eroded away like everything else around it, I don’t know. The view from the top of the ridge is awesome – the serpentine gorge winds away from you in both directions and the massive fluted cliffs across the way are decorated with icicles and a dusting of snow highlighting the fluted textures.

As far as I can tell this area along the rim where the trail is has never been logged - there are some monster trees here - mostly oaks, beeches, hemlocks and a tree with deeply furrowed bark that no one that I’ve brought here has been able to definitively identify. There is one red oak that I always visit in particular; it’s so impressive - at least six or seven feet wide at its base. Somehow I can feel its vigor, its alive-ness. It has been here a long, long time - based on articles I have read, I would estimate at least three to four hundred years, six to eight times longer than I myself have been here on earth.

The footing is slippery up and down the frequent ravines, about six inches of fluffy snow hides a layer of loose leaves below and it’s easy to start sliding. At times, I find it necessary to walk sideways, using the full length of the boot sole to dig in for traction. A few times I must plunge my bare hands into the cold snow to arrest a fall.

But nothing compares to the slipperiness I will soon encounter. At the bottom of the steepest ravine is a creek featuring my Favorite Frozen Waterfalls. They’re my favorite not because they’re big - they aren’t, just a few feet tall, nor because there’s anything really unusual about them, they are certainly pretty in a diminutive sort of way, but because in winter, beautiful ice formations form on and around them, especially after a thaw then a quick re-freeze like happened in the last couple of days.

It’s treacherously slippery down here and I’ve forgotten to bring my new Kahtoola Microspikes (think ice chains for the feet, you slip them on over your boots when you need them.) And besides the slickness, the ice isn’t very thick, just a skin really, and I break through each time I try to cross it, coming dangerously close to getting a hot foot – or a very cold foot in this case - definitely not recommended when it’s this frigid out.

Despite the dangers, I manage to move around enough to shoot a roll of film, then cross the stream and move on to my last stop for the day – The Throne. The Throne is my name for a large, flat rock that juts out of the side of a cliff - the best seat in the house. Perfectly sized for a couple of rear ends and backpacks, the 270 degree view of the river and cliffs is breathtaking. In the summer, it’s safe to reach and there is no better place in my estimation than here for a little back-of-the-beyond picnic. Today however, the throne is covered with snow and I don’t want to get too close to the edge when it’s this slippery, so I take in the view standing about ten feet back.

By now the sun is getting low in the sky (short days this time of year!) and it’s time to begin the hike back. I amble slowly, not really wanting to leave this paradise. I take in all the same views and admire all the same landmarks that I did coming in - I never tire of them. When I pop my head out of the woods at the beginning of the trail, I see the sky is aglow with a beautiful sunset - a most fitting end to this little adventure – I feel I’ve started out this New Year right!

Spring in December

It’s definitely winter here in Western New York, it's December 27th, yet here I am, high on a hilltop being buffeted by sweet, sixty degree winds. Why does the air smell so sweet on unusually warm winter days - is it perhaps more oxygenated for some reason? I am not sure but I do know that the aroma is lovely, even if that loveliness is perhaps accentuated a bit by a mind addled with a touch of spring fever.

It smells like baking pies out here. No, that’s not quite it, not actually baking, but cooling atop a stove, as smelled from a room far at the other end of the house. But the air not only smells sweet but clean too, like clothes that were hung outside to dry. Maybe all this is just my brain’s reaction to fresh air after spending so many days in a row inside, but I don’t care, I am in high spirits as I explore my woods on this wonderful day.

I feel so good I feel swept up with the breezes, like I could fly, such is the whimsy of spring fever. With my mind and senses acute, I roam the forest noticing things I might not have otherwise. I spy a tiny hummingbird nest built in the fork of a skinny branch. Then I spot another. And yet another. So miniature and cute, they stand out as bits of triangular solid among thin branches silhouetted against the sky, easy to spot now, but something you’d never see when they’re actually in use hidden deep in the leaves of summer.

Now I stumble upon a stand of black birch trees. How unusual, I don’t ever recall seeing black birch bark before. Yellow (golden) and white yes, often, but black? No. I’ll have to do some research when I return home to see how rare this is. But, for now, I just appreciate seeing something new.

The forest is alive with squirrels dashing to and fro. I imagine they are taking advantage of the warm weather to stock up on nuts revealed by the melting snow. The snow is sprinkled liberally with them, mostly beechnuts. I also spot clusters of wild grapes and wonder if the squirrels like them too.

Now the sound of rushing water down deep in a ravine draws me; I head there. This stream, a mere trickle in the summer, now gushes with thick, brown, unstoppable water coursing towards it’s meeting with the larger stream further downhill. I know this stream intimately but now it’s almost unrecognizable. It has filled its banks and more – the water has crept partway up the hillsides and, with its newfound might, it has moved some of the larger dead trees well downstream from where they originally fell.

Gone now are the numerous little tinkling waterfalls I enjoyed last summer, obliterated by the muddy torrent. Of course, next summer, there will be brand new tiny waterfalls to fall in love with, courtesy of the reshaping power of three feet of rapidly melting snow.

A cold mist trails the streamwater downhill while on the hillsides, a curtain of fog shapeshifts over the remaining snowpack. You’d never know that there was sunshine and blue skies just above this ghostly scene. I really like the contrast of these two worlds knowing that I can inhabit either within a few hundred feet of each other. The eeriness of this ravine microworld is reinforced by two decidedly different air currents being felt at the same time; a wintry chill emanating from the water and snow mingling with the much warmer ambient air. It’s like being in the arctic and the tropics at the same time.

I climb out of the ravine back into warmth and sunshine. What an absolutely delightful day it is! Of course, I am well aware that winter will be back soon enough – about three more months of it yet to go. Nevertheless, I am reveling in this short break, intoxicated by the sights, sounds and smells of spring in December…

--->Killarney Part VII to be posted soon.

Killarney - Part VI

Morning. The rain has finally stopped but it’s still cold and dripping outside. I dress for it - long underwear, rain slicker, etc. and off I go. I am hiking in from the south terminus (or start) of the legendary La Cloche Silhouette Trail (doesn’t the name alone spark the imagination?) The trail in full is about 63 miles in length over extremely rugged terrain and generally takes experienced backpackers 7-10 days to complete. I will only be hiking in as far as I can go to leave enough time to make the return trek back to camp before dark.

I begin the hike at brisk pace, my energy level high due to being relatively sedentary the last two days. Quickly I find myself in a misty valley between two towering and craggy quartzite cliffs that resemble fortress walls of old castle ruins - very impressive. Though I’ve hiked this portion of the trail a number of times before, I’m later in the fall season this time than ever before and all the leaves are off the trees - this is the first time this magnificent scene has been fully revealed to me - it’s like a completely new trail! And as happens often in magical places like these, I am humbled and amazed by the sheer beauty of nature.

The theme of this hike as remembered later will definitely be water. Not the lakes and streams I will pass but the water that is coursing everywhere, even trickling and babbling from the most unlikely of spots, like high up on the cliff sides after 24 straight hours of rain. In places, even the trail itself has become a creek. Today’s challenge will be to avoid stepping in water above the tops of my waterproof boots – not an easy task with the thick mat of last night’s leaf blowdown hiding puddles and hollows like hidden trap doors.

The rain may have stopped overnight but the wind is still blowing impressively. Each gust starts as a far-off roar, sounding similar to a distant waterfall, but with the difference being that the din gets closer and closer until you are suddenly awash in it, hair blowing back, wet leaves slapping you in the face and cold wind finding its way into every nook and cranny in your ‘windproof’ clothing. Nevertheless, I barely notice the frigid gusts, I am just so thrilled to be on this trail with its whole new look and feel - there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now!

Soon I am fully soaked from head to toe (I did manage to find a couple of those hidden puddles that were deeper than my boots are tall and the soggy vegetation and wind took care of the rest.) I slosh to the brink of what I have dubbed Acid Chasm on previous trips. A stream running from higher elevation Acid Lake to Lumsden Lake below has cut a steep slot through solid rock like it would have taken pure acid to do it. But given time, just regular ol' H20 can cut though anything, and time is something it’s had plenty of to do its work here.

Several waterfalls drop the water down the chasm to the lake below. Full time waterfalls are rare in this hardpan landscape; water runs off so fast in steeper places that waterfalls dry up quickly and where the terrain is more gentle, water has had eons to smooth rock faces making flumes or gentle rapids more likely than waterfalls.

Easing my self carefully down the slippery smooth sides into the chasm, I reach bottom where I am able to admire these elegant waterfalls at eye level. In addition to the cascades, there are strikingly colorful lichens coating the rocks. Nowhere else have I ever seen lichens so brightly-hued, I call this special area the Killarney Painted Rocks. There is no shortage of lichens here in Killarney, it’s a hardy form of vegetation that can endure extremes of cold and drought, but here in this chasm they have taken on beautiful colors, perhaps due to the consistent presence of moisture. Do you know what a lichen is? It’s a fungus and an alga that have taken a ‘lichen’ to each other.

Part Seven soon!

Killarney, Part V

After my pleasant visit to the Killarney village, I return to the campground. It’s still windy, rainy and cold but I’m not ready to be cooped up yet. I put on my rain slicker and go for a stroll to visit my favorite campsite. Upon arrival, I immediately feel pangs of regret that I'm not camping here. The view is simply stunning, it sits on a bluff high over the water with an unobstructed view of the lake and mountains beyond. One of the best views of any campsite in any campground I’ve ever visited. When staying here, I drain this view every night ‘til I can see no more. I think to myself that since no one’s camping here this week, maybe I’ll wander over each night at sunset and drain the view anyway.

Tonight, the view is much different from when it is clear - the mountains, mantled in thick mist, look delightfully mysterious and foreboding. And each powerful gust of wind sends a wake skittering across the surface of the lake – I can literally ‘see’ the wind!

By now, the unrelenting driving rain has me soaked through and through despite the slicker - I sure wouldn’t want to be backpacking and camping out in those mountains tonight! As the cold and wet penetrates to my bones, I change my mind about draining the view and simultaneously realize I haven’t brought along my headlamp to find my way back to camp anyway. I leave while I can still (barely) see the way.

Given the weather, I decide that tomorrow will be a lowland hike since everything will be wet and slippery even if the rain has stopped. The trail I’ve chosen will be perfect for a soggy morning, a meander thru misty, ethereal forests of hemlock, aspen and white birch. I fall asleep with visions of rainforests floating through my head.

Part VI soon...

Killarney, Part IV (parts 1-3 below)

I am hoping for clear, cold and quiet weather this week, my ideal recipe for photography. However, as this day turns slowly into night, it becomes obvious it is going to be anything but that tonight. It’s still warm, in the sixties and the winds are picking up. I watch as the gusts grow continually stronger, sending waves of crisp leaves sweeping across the ground and raining from the trees. Above, ominous gray clouds freight train across the sky. After several days of unusual warmth just prior to my visit, a cold front is approaching; the weather gods are about to set things right for this time of year.

The storm seems to be justifying my decision to rent the yurt instead of camping. Now inside, I hear the fury growing stronger, lashing the canvas roof and walls again and again with waves of rain. I begin to wonder just how well built this thing is; another shuddering gust has me concerned it could be torn from its moorings. Eventually though, I get used to the howling winds and pounding rain and drift off into an uneasy slumber; I dream of tropical storms and hurricanes…

Apparently, the yurt is built well enough; it survives the night. I awake in warmth but sense cold lurking just outside the door. There’s a different sound on the roof this morning, a rapping instead of a tapping – freezing rain. I step out to pee and almost fall on my butt, there’s a thin sheet of ice coating everything. The temperature has dropped like a rock overnight, from sixty to twenty degrees (F).

By the time I finish breakfast, wash up and dress, it has warmed up enough to turn the precipitation back to all rain, but it’s still not letting up. I drive to the Georgian Bay shore trailhead and sit for a minute pondering whether I should attempt the hike in this cold rain. Not much stops me; I set out. The first thing I see is a little sign stating “Rocks slippery when wet” -this whole hike is a clamor over smooth rocks. The sign proves prophetic (no surprise), within a matter of minutes I am forced to turn back. The cold rain has indeed rendered the rocks dangerously slick.

Nothing else to do so I head to the little town of Killarney. I take a slow drive around; it takes all of about two minutes. The park has increased in popularity since I first visited many years ago but this tiny town has hardly changed at all - it still has that quaint old fishing village feel that I am so enamored my. Until the 1960’s when they punched a road through from the highway 45 miles away, it was only accessible by boat or small plane.

The rain lets up just enough to park my vehicle and walk around town. The summer gift shops are now closed; they’ve been boarded up since September 2nd, the end of the Canadian Labour Day weekend. Not much of a tourist season up here, but that's one of the reasons I like it - no glitz or glamour. Walking to the western edge of town, I discover an area overlooking the bay that I had somehow missed before. It’s a perfect place to watch the sun disappear below the watery horizon; how I love a good sunset! I’ve been coming here for thirty years and still somehow managed to miss this vantage point, guess it sometimes pays to have a rainy day!

Killarney, Part Three (Parts 1 & 2 below)

My camp-to-be is still occupied when I arrive in the park so I go for an amble to untie my legs. I return later to the now vacated yurt, ready and waiting for me to move in. By the time I settle in it’s mid-afternoon, too late to go for any kind of an ambitious hike (dark comes early this time of year) so, instead, I wander along the lake’s edge, admiring the ancient rocks that define Killarney.

Accented by the late afternoon light, the near shoreline of George Lake glows an improbable pink. From a distance, the rock appears rounded and smooth – this from eons of erosion and numerous glacial bulldozings. A closer up inspection however, reveals deep grooves, fractures, fissures and scour marks – this rock has truly been ‘etched by the ages’. In addition to its unique coloration, in places you’ll find rich veins of smooth, marbley-white quartzite running through it, quite striking in contrast to the pink. These quartzite veins remind me of a much larger version of the delicate inlays you’ll sometimes find in high-end wood furniture. Mother Nature’s inlays.

Now I gaze further out into the distance upon the impressive ridges of gleaming white quartzite, remnants of a once towering mountain range, that plunge precipitously into the lake. Hiking up on those ridges in bright sunshine can be literally blinding – sunglasses de rigueur.

I then try to imagine these diminutive mountains once soaring higher than the Rockies but I fail miserably; I just can’t envision these ancient, rounded ridges as the spiky towers they undoubtedly once were.

The rocks here are among the oldest on the planet; depending on where you are in the park, they range from about 2.2 to 3.5 billion years old. I think about how long these mountains have been crumbling and dissolving to reach their current state and I realize just how little of that time we have been around – modern man doesn’t even qualify as a blip on the radar.

Meandering now away from the lake, I enter the woods and the piney/earthy scent immediately hijacks me, as some smells are wont to do. I slip into a reverie; a highlight reel of past visits dances through my mind. I remember as if it were yesterday the first time I climbed to the top of Killarney Ridge and was completely dumbstruck by the view. I recall the sudden and enthusiastic chorus of a wolf pack howling together on some distant ridge; until that moment I had never heard a wolf howl or even been in a place where wolves still roamed. I’ll never forget watching the setting sun light the red rocks of the Georgian Bay shoreline on fire and marveling about how I’d never seen bare rock look so beautiful.

And then there was the night that, while admiring a perfect reflection of the Big Dipper on the still surface of Lake George, a shooting star streaked across the scene, how I wished I’d been able to capture that on film! Once I ran into (well, not literally) the same moose twice on a trail at two different elevations, as if he was a friend, meeting up with me. Another time I was privileged enough to watch a family of otters play at waters edge like kittens as I silently drifted by in my canoe. I remember spotting a beautiful flower I’d never seen before along a trail and wondered what it was; when I looked it up later imagine my surprise when I found it was a wild orchid - I had always thought orchids were too exotic to be found along hiking trails!

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven the first time ever I woke to eerie warbling of loons reverberating across the lake in the complete stillness of dawn – how I thrill to that haunting sound, even today. And I’ll never forget seeing that black bear family I mentioned earlier, sitting placidly and contentedly by the side of the road, munching on berries. This place holds so many wonderful memories for me I could go on forever... as these scenes flashed through my head I realize just how much I love this place and why I am drawn back again and again, like nowhere else...

Part Four soon!

Killarney Part Two

---> Make sure you read Killarney - An Epic Journey (Part One) first!

...I leave at 2am to avoid Toronto traffic and to gain almost a full day of daylight in the park. The weather was drizzly when I left, but six hours later, as I neared my destination, the weather gods give me the gift of a beautiful sunrise. I stop to do a little shooting.

Finally, after three hundred and twenty long and dark miles, I turn onto Route 637 - only 36 more miles to go - I start to get excited! This is a quiet and scenic road; a perfect lead up to the park. It’s dead-end and only exists to service the park and the tiny town of Killarney beyond it, so there are few human artifacts to spoil the wild on either side of the road.

The first thing I see after turning the corner is a fox trotting down the middle of the road with something in its mouth. It's a turtle – I sure didn't expect that, I thought it would be a rodent of some kind. Years ago, I saw a bear sow and her two cubs munching on berries at the side of this very same stretch of road.

When I first started visiting the park years ago, this road was much rougher, the campground check-in was a little self-service kiosk, and the campground was very primitive. Now there is an imposing visitor’s center, hot showers, and, in addition to the campsites, yurts, the first ever roofed accommodations in the park.

To me, the camping experience is more authentic than sleeping in a room at night. I am immersed in my subject twenty fours hours a day and feel more connected, usually resulting in better photography. Contradictorily however, this time I’ve rented a yurt. I kind of wish the yurts weren’t here so that I’d have had no choice but to camp. I am hoping the added comfort will equal better photography since I won’t be wet and/or chilled to bone like I usually am when camping this late in the season. On the other hand, I am worried that the disconnect each night may actually cause the opposite to occur. We’ll see!

Being late in October, the regular camping season is over. The showers are locked tight, the water’s been drained and the ‘sneaker crowd' (I cringe when I see people hiking these slippery rock and root strewn trails without solid, ankle supporting hiking boots) is gone. There is some consolation in this as it feels just a little bit wilder, more like it used to be. If they continue to add improvements to this place, they will eventually improve the wilderness right out it!...

Look for Part Three soon...

Killarney - An Epic Journey (Part One)

OK, I’m addicted. I admit it. To the Killarney Wilderness Park in Ontario, Canada. I think about her all the time. If I don’t get there at least every year or two, I start to go crazy, she consumes my thoughts. This promises to be an epic journey - thirty years from my first ever visit here and the first time exploring the park alone, just my camera and me. But first, a little about the park.

Killarney, she is old. Really old. About 2.2 billion years ago, a towering range of mountains , higher than the Rockies, rose up. After all these years of erosion and glaciers later, what’s left is a much more subdued range of mostly white quartzite. In a huge but vertically challenged province like Ontario with little or no real mountains, these stand out. Add deep blue lakes with pink granite shorelines and emerald forests and to the rugged, wild beauty of these mountains and you have the formula of paradise, at least to these eyes. The park has only one campground, the rest is wild. About 247 square miles of wonderful wildness to lose yourself and forget your troubles in. The rugged and remote La Cloche Silhouette trail alone is 63 miles rugged miles long and usually takes a week to ten days to complete.

I remember vividly how disappointed I was when driving there for the very first time – I was only a few miles from the park and still no mountains in sight! I had read of quartzite cliffs – where are they? I arrived at the campground, drove in and… was blown away! The rugged, wild, mountains seemed to rise straight up out of the waters of George Lake – it was love at first sight and that love has only gotten stronger.

I have been to Killarney at least a dozen times since, but never on my own. I can’t properly concentrate on photography when I’m with others so this time will be different, I hope to do her justice on film. It’s gonna be a great trip, I can feel it already...

To be continued...