Sun Dog

A sun dog is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates patches of light about 22° to the side of the sun.  Usually we see them on cold clear mornings here in the Bear Lake Valley, but this one showed up in the middle of a misty afternoon.

Suns dogs, or parhelia, are created by sunlight refracting through icy clouds of hexagonal crystals.  I was out looking for photo opportunities with Bruce Grayum when we saw this one from a back road near Georgetown, Idaho.  The cows didn’t seem impressed by the huge apparition in the sky near their pasture, but they did provide scale to show the size the sun dog.

It was a cold day, 9° F as we continued to explore.  We stopped at the bridge over the Bear River on the Nounan road and saw the sun dog again, but this time no clear sky was visible at all.  I liked the reflected light in the river.
Sometimes the arcs of light form a complete halo around the sun, and some have faint rainbows of color like this one.  Photographing them can be tricky because the camera must be pointed directly at the sun.  A clean lens is needed to prevent flares, and there is danger of getting a burned retina.  If your camera has it, live view might be a good option.

Our last stop was along Creamery Lane between Georgetown and Nounan where the sun dog appeared in icy mist over a winter landscape of drifts and sagebrush.  Shooting into the sun causes the lens to stop down, darkening the photo, but if the exposure is lengthened, the sun dog seems to blend with the sky and disappear.  I think the darkened exposure presents an other-worldly appearance anyway.

Why are they called “sun dogs”?  No one knows for sure, but the term has been around since the 1600’s and the origin seems to be lost in time.  Some say it is because the "dogs" follow the sun around.

I hope you like this post, but please do not use my copyrighted photos without permission.

Bear Lake Ice Breakup

Bear Lake doesn’t freeze every year, but when it does there are sometimes good photo opportunities when the ice breaks up.

 On this February day, a snowstorm was blowing in, and the gray clouds were a strong contrast to the blue and white piles of ice at Rainbow Cove on the Utah end of the lake.

Most of the ice blows ashore at just a few places.  Here at Cisco Beach huge piles of ice stack up, and as they scrape across the rocks, boulders are sometimes lifted several feet off the ground.  Strong blue colors show up in ice protected from snow and frost.

Sometimes vertical slabs of ice melt into fantastic delicate patterns.  Maybe their angle to the sun helps them melt faster than horizontal slabs.  The ice at Rainbow Cove had several of these wonderful delicate shapes.

The lake was covered by a fog bank in the distance, behind another delicate ice formation at Rainbow Cove.

Every time I explore Bear Lake I find something new.  The lake seems to have different moods every season, and I never get tired of the beauty of places like Rainbow Cove.  The fog and ice on this day was really special.

My photos are copyrighted, so please do not use them without permission.

Ice Blocks and Hoarfrost

My January 12, 2016 “Mysterious Ice” post was in about this same location.  At that time, the ice was piled up in delicate sheets about a millimeter thick.  Now, huge blocks of ice have blown against North Beach jetty at Bear Lake State Park, Idaho.

Tons of ice stacked up here, and after a few days they were covered with hoarfrost.

Most of the piles of ice reached five to seven feet above the surface of the lake, but this one was at least ten feet high.  Backlighting by the sun really made the blue color of the ice stand out.

This photo was taken from about the same location as the opening photo from my January 12 post.  The boulders have been covered by the blocks of broken ice.

I noticed a delicate feather trapped in one of the ice blocks.  Access was difficult because it was in a little alcove in the ice, and I had to kneel on a jumble of slippery ice blocks.  There must have been billions of tiny hoarfrost crystals.  These photos were taken with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. 

There are a few open leads in the ice at the north end of the lake, but most of the lake is still covered with ice.  It will be interesting to see what happens when it warms up, especially if there is a strong wind to blow the ice to the shore.  This could be an exciting spring.

Please note that my photographs are copyrighted, and you cannot use them for any purpose without my permission.

Mysterious Ice At Bear Lake, Idaho

Winter is a beautiful time to photograph Bear Lake in Idaho and Utah.  The lake freezes over only about seven out of ten years despite the very cold winters.  Yesterday Bruce Grayum and I went to one of my favorite locations at Bear Lake State Park on the Idaho end of the lake.

I had trouble understanding what I was seeing when I looked down on the lake from the North Beach jetty.  There were mysterious streaks across speckled gray areas of ice.  I could hear faint, almost musical tones coming from the lake.

I walked down the boat ramp and around the shore, and discovered that the streaks were caused by a thin layer of ice being blown over thicker stationary ice.  The thicker, gray ice had beautiful frost crystals that were being wiped out by the moving thin layer of ice.

The noise I had heard was the windblown thin ice breaking and stacking against the shore.  It was no more than a millimeter thick, so the broken, glass-like ice was very sharp.

I don’t know if this thin ice will be enough to trigger a complete freeze of Bear Lake as long as the wind keeps shifting it around, but this is not what I am used to seeing here.  In previous years there have been blocks of ice like boxcars along the shore.  There always seems to be something new to see at Bear Lake.

I hope you enjoyed these copyrighted photos.  Please do not use them without my permission.

Bear Lake Polar Plunge

The Bear Lake Polar Plunge has grown to a big event since my first post about it January 2011.  This year, for the first time since I have seen it, the lake is frozen, and a big hole had to be cut in the ice.  The air temperature was about freezing.  Participants paid $25 each for the chance to jump into the frigid lake.  For this they received a t-shirt and the proceeds were donated to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City.

The Plunge takes place at Garden City Marina on the Utah end of Bear Lake.  Many of the jumpers were in costume.

There were so many spectators that the ice started to sag and water flowed out of the hole.  People moved away from the edge because they thought the ice might break, and the water flowed back into the hole again.

A viking family went in together.  This little boy didn't seem to be having a very good time.

After the Plunge ended, we went out for pizza with two other couples from our Sharp Shooters Camera Club.

I have heard people say that there is nothing to do here in winter, but I don't think that is the case at all.  There are plenty of events, and there is so much to see.

Cisco Fishing at Bear Lake

Bonneville Cisco are a small fish found only in Bear Lake, and fishing for them with dip nets is done nowhere else in the world.  I left home in the dark this morning for the 45 minute drive to Cisco Beach in Utah.  It was snowing lightly, so the light was not very good for photography.

There were quite a few people there when we
arrived.  Cisco can only be caught for a couple of weeks around January when they gather around the shoreline rocks to spawn.

The lake is frozen this year so we needed to chop holes with an ax.  Years when the lake doesn't freeze, people wear boots or waders and stand in the lake with their dip nets.

In this photo, my friend Bill watches his son, Ben, catch some fish.  In back, my neighbor, Dan, brings more fish onto the ice.  The ice was thin where we cut our holes because it had shifted around, opening cracks which then refroze.  The lake ice was still roaring and cracking as it continued to move with the wind and currents..

We all caught our limits of 30 fish.  I cleaned half of them to eat, and the other half will be used for bait to catch lake trout.  Cisco don't taste as good as trout to me, but aren't bad battered and fried.

I was glad to have the chance to participate in this unique activity.

Pine Creek, Wyoming

Pine Creek, Wyoming, is one of my favorite locations for winter photography.  Linda and I went there with our neighbors, Connie and Larry Hymas, today to see what our frigid weather had created. We had a good lunch at Blondie's in Cokeville then headed for the creek.

Pine Creek is in a deep canyon that gets very little sun during the winter.  The sunlight in this photo was striking high on the canyon wall and reflecting in the creek.

Deep in the canyon, the light shifts toward blue, so sometimes photos are much more pleasant in black and white.  Droplets of water splash onto rocks and freeze quickly, then more droplets add to the ice until fantastic, delicate formations are created.  Some of these formations hang over the waterfalls that created them.

The moving water of the creek brushes against snow covered branches and creates ice plates that spread over the water's surface.  All of these delicate ice formations disappear very quickly when there is a day or two with temperatures above freezing.

There are a lot of small cascades along the creek, and this is the largest waterfall with a drop of about ten feet.

When a big tree falls across the creek, the tangle of snow covered limbs tells an interesting nature story.

A frosted tree and a waterfall make a nice winter scene.  Just a little wind would destroy this delicate frost.

To take these photos, I used a tripod and set the ISO to 100, which is as low as it will go on my camera. This allowed me to use slow shutter speeds to blur the moving water in the creeks and waterfalls.  It was very cold, so I kept an extra battery in an inside pocket.  High boots were needed to climb down banks and through deep snow. I have trouble using gloves with camera controls, so I had to stop to warm my hands frequently.

We had a great time with Connie and Larry, who are active members of our camera club.  I can't wait to see their photos.

Cisco Beach Wave Ice

Bear Lake went through huge changes over the past year when the water level rose at a record pace and reached capacity for the first time in many years.  Trees and other plants that had been growing on the dry lake bed for years started to die off as they became submerged.

Many of these trees were just off-shore at Cisco Beach on the east side of the lake in Utah.  Waves that often keep the lake from freezing splashed against the dying trees and formed unique ice shapes.

Sometimes the splashing water ran down the trees and formed bell-shaped ice formations.



Photography was a challenge here.  Strong wind, freezing temperatures, and icy uneven footing made it an interesting day.  I plan to go back again soon!


Bear Lake is located half in Idaho and half in Utah.  Our home is 20 miles north of the lake in Montpelier, Idaho



Millions of shoreline bullrushes also died when the water rose.  These reeds washed ashore and were hit by the freezing waves.



Encased in ice.  Nature's beauty can even be found in dying plants in freezing weather.