Lost and Found
Found at last!
This has been a very busy and interesting week of photography. And it isn’t over yet.
Who would have thought that Page AZ (population 6800) had such an incredible and diverse set of landmarks to visit and photograph. Some are easily accessible (meaning not far from the highway), while others are more challenging, involving many miles on what at best could be described as dirt roads. (Ryan, you may recall the nature of some of the potholed roads in Tanzania. Those were superhighways relative to these remote deserts roads of Utah and Arizona.) Then, one sets out for another 1-3 hour hike further into the wilderness to see landscapes (I call them visionscapes) unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.
Yesterday was one such experience. A group of 6 of us set out together before dawn, a 2 hour drive out of Page and then another 2.5 hour hike into the far reaches of the North Coyote Buttes. For this old guy with a bad hip, that was one long hike (coordinates: 12s 410461mE 4094916mN - Elevation: 5219 ft/1286m ). The picture above is of Josh, one of the fellows along on this trip. He was shooting back towards Twin Buttes, one of the landmarks of the North Coyote Buttes plateau. We were proceeding to The Wave, an surreal formation of eroded layered sandstone. I thought the Wave would be on the floor of the plateau, but no. It resides up in the saddle of a mountain a hundred feet or more above the plateau floor. To give you an idea of how beautiful and unique the area, I shot more than 500 images in about 6 hrs. Look for pictures as I get a chance to work them up. One piece of the Wave corridor is shown here.
The interesting part of the story was the return trip. Unintentionally, we had come as two groups: one with GPS’s and one not so well equipped. As photographers, we had arrived early to experience the “sweet” morning light. The GPS carrying group left around 3pm, the non-GPS group (Josh, Steve and I) chose to stay longer. By the time, I had sufficiently annoyed the others to leave, it was 4:15pm. And we were up further into the mountains at the Second Wave. Assuming the return trip was going to be uneventful, we didn’t fully consider that 4:30pm + 2.5 hr hike = pretty late for this time of the year in the area of the world. For the first part of our return trip, we easily followed footprints and cairns. But at some point, the setting sun played tricks with shadows, and we took a wrong turn. We were clearly off track, perhaps by a mile or so. Hmmm, now’s the time to start worrying. Josh and I had both sent SMS messages to Stacy, the group coordinator: “Lost. Heading back to Wave. Need help.” (Truth was we were heading in the opposite direction of the Wave.) An act of desperation when we both knew there wasn’t a cell tower for 30 miles in any direction.
With less than 30mins of sunlight, we traced our way back as best we could. Finding a wash (a dried up, large flat creek bed that floods during rain storms), we thought we’d be clever and save precious time by going up and over a berm to keep from walking all the S-curves of the wash. Screwed. Retrace again, and luckily found the wash after sunset, but with enough light to see.
Now obvious to the reader, the wash eventually led to a sign pointing the direction of the trail, then only minutes from the car. We all had a long laugh and big sighs in relief, as the sun had already long since set and the dark becoming ever threatening. Spending the night on the plateau without enough water and lows between 15-20⋅F would have written an entirely different chapter to this experience.
We found out later that Stacy realized the return trip looked different that the incoming one, trusting their GPSs to take them back to the car. This from a group of guys who had been to this location many times. Stacy was good enough to leave us a voicemail message wondering if we were okay. Of course, we did not receive it until we reached civilization in Big Water, Utah (population 417).
What is the moral of this story.
- The low season is great for shooting landscape when you want to keep people from being in your images.
- Shooting remote locations where few people have gone is an even greater idea.
- Investing in a GPS now seems cheap, especially before my next trip to the wilderness (which should be June if I am lucky enough to get the grant from the US government bailout package and if 3M continues to employ me).
Longer term, Aidan and Callum will receive (as age appropriate) their own GPS’s. Dad will have to show the boys how to use them. I missed sunrise shots this morning to write this blog entry. But now it’s time to shoot Lower Antelope Canyon.
Rick
PS: Review the gallery, VisionScape, for more pictures of the area. (If you haven’t signed up as a member, you will be steered to a signup page.)