Bear Lake Monster Encounter

I should have written about my encounter with the Bear Lake monster just after it happened, but I didn’t want trouble from the skeptics.  But since Idaho Magazine published my article about the event in the February 2019 issue, the secret is out.  I might as well talk about it.

It was a dark and stormy night.  Well actually, evening just after sunset, and Linda and I were camped at Bear Lake State Park on the east side of the lake in Idaho during July 2018.  A storm was dropping beautiful sheets of rain on the western mountains across the lake.  I set up my camera on a tripod to photograph the storm and hopefully get a lightning strike.  It got darker and darker, so my exposures got longer and finally I got a photo of some lightning.  The wind got stronger, indicating the storm was getting closer, so I knew I had to leave to avoid the lightning.  But just as I got ready to pack up the tripod I saw something leaping and bounding across the water coming right at me!  My first thought was the famous Bear Lake monster was coming to get me.  What else could it be?

I started taking photos as it got closer and closer, but it was dark and my photos of the charging monster were all blurry because of the long exposures.  The monster hit the beach nearly at my feet.  It was a giant black inflatable turtle that must have blown all the way across the lake from the west shore eight miles away.  Heart pounding, I packed up my gear and returned to our trailer just as the rain hit.

During the night a second thunderstorm hit, and when I looked for the turtle the next morning it was gone.  The wind must have blown it to Wyoming.

I’m glad the folks at Idaho Magazine thought enough of this yarn to publish it, and I got a kick out of telling the story.

Please remember, my photos are copyrighted and must not be used without permission.  I usually charge a reasonable fee to use them, except for charitable or academic purposes.

Trumpeter Swans Nesting

I haven’t been able to get out much lately, so this is my first post in a long time.  I went with Bruce Grayum to Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge and saw quite a bit of wildlife, including a few trumpeter swans.  They are the world’s largest waterfowl, and were very rare here just a few years ago.  Now there are several nesting pairs in the refuge, and they can be seen in several places in the valley.

There was one pair preparing to nest on an island in the biggest pond along the auto tour route.  We could see the female dragging reeds into a pile for the nest.

Soon she left the nest and swam out to the male, then both took off and flew close to where we were watching.  Because of there size, trumpeter swans need a long runway for takeoff.

The two swam together, often bobbing their heads, which is flirtatious behavior in the swan world.

They were beautiful to watch swimming together and I hope we will be able to see baby swans soon.

Thank you for viewing these photos.  Please do not use them for any reason without my 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.

Mule Deer Migration

This winter is the harshest one I’ve seen since I moved to the Bear Lake Valley, Idaho seventeen years ago.  Winter is half over and we have already had over 100 inches of snowfall.  Of course it has been compressed on the ground quite a bit, but there is still so much snow that deer are unable to forage in many areas.  The east side of Bear Lake usually has less snow than the rest of the valley, so mule deer are migrating there in amazing numbers.

There are lots of shrubs in the area; sagebrush, rabbitbrush, and more.  Mule deer are browsers, and can live off these plants that grow above the deep snow.  They look pretty good so far, but there are so many that I’m afraid the food will be gone soon.

Almost all the deer we see are does and fawns.  This fawn is browsing on sagebrush.  The bucks are more cautious and have been staying back in the hills, but a few are showing up now.  Since they took longer to get to the food at the lake, they look skinnier than the does.

It is a lot of fun to drive to Bear Lake and see these beautiful animals.  Usually, deer run away from cars here, but these hungry animals have become bolder, and will often stay close enough for photos.

The deer are up to their bellies in snow in many places, so feeding stations have been set up for deer and elk in areas with the deepest snow.  I hope the Bear Lake deer won’t need to find their way to one of those stations to survive this difficult winter.

Please respect the copyright on my photos, and do not use them without my permission. 

Canada Goose Goslings

Spring has finally come to the Bear Lake Valley in Idaho.  There still aren't many leaves on the trees since we live at nearly 6000' elevation, but the Canada Geese have been here for awhile, and now their babies are starting to appear.  Linda and I drove out to Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge today, and while we saw hundreds of adult pairs, we only saw three with goslings.

It might be awhile before we see more goose families.  The parents are very protective of their babies and swim with them in a tight group.  After a minute or so, they swam into the bulrushes and the babies nearly disappeared as they blended in to the surroundings.

Who can resist these little balls of yellow fluff?  They will stay with their parents for up to a year.

161 bird species have been counted here at Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge.  Hay fields in the area are cut to provide feeding sites for the birds, and alfalfa, wheat, and barley are grown around the edge of the marsh to provide food for wildlife.  We are lucky to have this resource so close to home.

Please note that my photos are copyrighted and should not be used 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 Valley Fog

Every winter, there is a week or so of heavy fog in the Bear Lake Valley.  If the temperatures are cold enough we are treated to a display of hoarfrost on the trees and fences.  Some years, the temperatures stay low enough to allow the frost to build up over several days to amazing thickness, as I showed in this 2014 post:
http://rosswalkerphotos.blogspot.com/2014/01/hoarfrost-in-bear-lake-valley.html

So far, this year has been a little different because the temperatures have warmed up enough in most places for the frost to melt in the afternoon.  So, every night a thin layer of frost starts to accumulate in the fog over again, but we haven’t had the very thick hoarfrost like last year.

But the fog is still beautiful, and a challenge to photograph.  My autofocus had difficulty with many scenes because objects are so indistinct.  Setting the camera on a single spot focus helped when I placed the sensor on the most distinct area I could find.

I walked around the edge of the golf course in Montpelier, Idaho, then a little way up a steep hill in fairly deep snow, and had the place to myself.  There was more frost here than in some other places, perhaps because the hill blocked the sun quite a while.

Later, Linda and I went out for a ride, looking for more fog scenes, and enjoyed this barn in Bloomington, Idaho.  The fog helped clean up the background clutter, and added some nice frost to the tree.

These big fog events can totally fill the valley with fog, and I had never seen it from above the clouds, so we drove to Garden City, Utah where we could find an overlook.  I wanted to go on an old abandoned road that has a great view, but it has been blocked off, so instead hiked along a ridge in fairly deep snow to get this view.  It is hard to believe that big, beautiful Bear Lake is buried in those clouds.  It was fun to see the valley from a new perspective.

These photos are all copyrighted.  Please do not use them without my permission.

Photo Piracy

Photographers need to be aware that there are people who will steal your photos off the internet.  I have caught several people lately and would like to share the experience with you so you can protect yourself.  None of these photos were used with my permission, and none gave me credit for the images.

First, who are these people, where do they get the photos, and how do they use them?

This photo was used on Facebook for an outdoor oriented radio station in Montana, posting a regular outdoor editorial feature.  It was taken from our personal web site.  Someone tipped me off about the misuse.

This photo was used as her own on 365project.org by a photographer in India.  She got it from my posts on the same site where I posted a photo a day for two years.  I recognized photos from many other 365 photographers, and alerted them as well.

Three photos, including this one, were taken from this blog by a prominent former resident of the Bear Lake Valley and used in his own blog.  His written information was even similar to mine.

This one was used by a Salt Lake City law firm on their business web site.  It was taken from our personal web site.  They certainly should know better.

All of the above photos were removed upon request.  No one offered to pay for the images.  The next one is purely a scam.  There is no way to directly track down the people doing this.

This is another one taken from our personal web site and it was used on a commercial wallpaper web site with false contact information.  There are tips on the internet on how to get these people, but it is complicated.  I may give it a try.

How did I find these?  All of my photos have embedded key words that show up on image searches. I googled key words like “Bear Lake” and found my photos attributed to other web sites.  There are also web sites that can search by image content, like tineye.com, but I have never found anything that way.

How can you protect yourself?  You can be sure that if you have photos on the internet, they can be stolen, and people won’t want to pay you.  It is common for photographers to take credit for someone else’s photos.  Many people simply think it is OK to use anything that is on the internet, but it isn’t OK.  It is illegal.  Other people know it is wrong and will try to use other people’s photos for profit.

First, embed copyright information and key words in the metadata in the photo.  Knowledgeable people can look at this and see who the owner is and that it is copyrighted.  One way to embed data is in Photoshop Elements, File > File Info > Description.

Second, put a visible copyright notice on the edge of the photo, such as © Ross Walker 2014.  It can be cropped off, but if it is, that is proof that there was intent to steal the photo.

Third, a semitransparent watermark can be placed across the image.  I choose not to do this because it degrades the quality of the photo too much for my taste.

Fourth, be vigilant.  Look for violations and contact people who are stealing your photos.  Let them know that what they are doing is wrong.  They are in violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).  It doesn’t hurt to ask for payment, but good luck collecting!

All images on this blog are copyrighted by Ross V. Walker, and can not be used for any purpose without permission.

Pickleweed Autumn

Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge covers about 19,000 acres of the Bear Lake Valley in southeast Idaho near Montpelier, and most of it is bulrush marsh, open water, and flooded meadows.  But, this year I found a surprising landscape on the eastern edge of a public tour loop.

This red salt marsh must have been placed here just for photographers!  There are acres of pickleweed scattered over several large areas east of the main driving tour loop.  Normally this stuff is green, but it turns red in autumn, and this year the color is really vibrant.

 Pickleweed (genus Salicornia)  is also known as glasswort or samphire.  It thrives in salt marshes where it stores excess salt in pod-like sections.  It is edible, in the same family as spinach, and has even become a gourmet delicacy.

We didn’t see much wildlife, but there were insects living in the pickleweed.  We found a few dragonflies that didn’t cooperate very well, but this huge spider (argiope aurantia) posed for photos with a grasshopper that had been a recent meal.  Geese nest in the grassy islands scattered around the marsh, and we found a few broken egg shells.

The red color varies a bit depending on the direction in relation to the sun, so we saw variations of red, pink, and magenta.  No filters were used for any of these photos.

The salt marsh had dried enough to explore on foot, and we found some yellow pickleweed. It added a little variety to the red scenery, and a wide angle lens emphasized the great distance to the mountains surrounding the valley.

Several photographers from our Sharp Shooters Camera Club have been here, and I returned to the scene three days in a row.  I found this Z pattern on the last day.  There is always something interesting to see at Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge.

Groundbreaking at Bear Lake Memorial Hospital

We are a long way from a big city hospital here in Montpelier, Idaho, so our small rural hospital is an important part of our community.  Fortunately, it is an excellent hospital with great doctors and a community spirit.  But, the patient rooms are 50 years old and have two beds per room.  Two million dollars had to be raised in order to upgrade the rooms, which seemed like an impossible task for a city with just 2600 people in a county with a population of just 6000.  We did it, and the groundbreaking was held on April 3, 2014.  This may not be a great photo opportunity, but it is such an important event for the community that I had to share it.  Hospital administrator, Rod Jacobson welcomed a large crowd, told about the vision and fund raising efforts, and thanked contributors.

The variety of activities used to raise money was amazing, including recycling abandoned cars (rust to rooms), raffling a restored Volkswagen donated by Patricia Talcott, and Auxiliary volunteers earning money at a Thrift Store, annual snowball dance, and more.

Three large checks were presented for $200,000 by the Hospital Auxiliary, $200,000 from hospital employees, and $1,400,000 from individual donations, including one of $500,000 from Ted and Liz Schmidt.

Several groups took turns breaking ground, starting with hospital board members and officials.

The hospital Auxiliary took a turn.  My wife, Linda is fourth from the left.

Photographically, this isn't the most interesting post, but as an important local event and a source of community pride, it is hard to beat.

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.