St Charles Canyon, Idaho

This has been a strange year for fall color.  It seems that wherever I went I was too early, or too late, or the color just never got very good.  The one exception was St Charles Canyon, just a few miles from home.  I went there on a cold, stormy day with Bruce Gregory and Stephen Johnson who were visiting from California.

The mountain maples were incredible.  They had an amazing variety of colors ranging from yellow to red.  Most of the aspens hadn’t changed yet, so there was some green in the mix as well.

Blue Pond Spring is one of the most beautiful spots in St Charles Canyon, but moose have been known to chase people away from here.  On this rainy day, I had the pond to myself and enjoyed the willow reflections.

Some of the maples were yellow, making nice substitutes for the still green aspens.  They made a beautiful background for the white bark of this aspen.

The green aspen leaves contrasted with the brilliant maples, especially the red ones.

Raindrops looked great on incredibly red mountain maple leaves.

As we left the canyon we stopped to photograph one last scene where a line of maples climbed the canyon wall to the top.  I think the wet stormy weather had a lot to do with the amazing color, and St Charles Canyon was the best we saw this year.

Please respect copyright laws, and do not use my photos without permission.  I will give permission to use photos for educational and charitable purposes, but charge a small fee for personal use.

Angel Lake Scenic Byway, Nevada

Most people zooming across Nevada on Highway 80 don’t think there is much to see in the state, but Angel Lake Scenic Byway might change their minds.

It would be hard to beat the fall color I saw here on this trip.  I stopped for the night at Angel Creek campground along the byway near Wells, Nevada, and in the morning drove the rest of the road to Angel Lake.  The entire byway is just 12 miles long, but in that distance the elevation rises from about 5600 to 8400 feet.  The last four miles are narrow and winding with sheer drop-offs, so I left the trailer in camp.  The views were spectacular.

The road ends at Angel Lake, which is pretty, but can’t compare to the amazing fall color along the road up the mountain.  This photo is a three shot panorama.

The lake is in the East Humboldt mountains in Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.  The road is open when the snow is gone, usually from May through October.  There is a great view of the Clover Valley, far below.

Most of the spectacular color comes from aspen trees.  The orange and yellow color variations and occasional bare trees are a photographer’s dream.  Isolating the trees from the mountains creates a tapestry of color.

This was the beginning of my 46^th trip in 35 years of camping with my California photo friends, and it was a great start.

My photos are copyrighted, so please do not use them for any purpose without my permission.

Fremont Indian State Park, Utah

In October 2015 I went on a fall camping trip with my California photography friends.  We met in Ely, Nevada then traveled to Delta, Utah to explore Topaz Japanese Internment Center (see the next post) and the Tintic Mining District.  The last stop was Fremont Indian State Park, Utah, to photograph the Kimberly Mining District and rock art at the Park.

The Fremont Indians lived in central Utah and the surrounding area from about 400 A.D. to 1300 A.D.  It is likely that there were several different tribes, and they may have even had different languages, but their rock art and artifacts set them apart from the nearby Anasazi tribes.  Their culture was named for the Fremont River, which was in turn named for explorer John C. Fremont.

There are hundreds of rock art panels in the park, and we explored several different sites.  One of the most interesting is the Beginning of Life panel located in the Canyon of Life.  Rock Art interpretation is an inexact science, but a Park trail guide states that this petroglyph describes the shape of the canyon and a legend about the sun conceiving life from the east and the west.  Briefly, the sun is shown with its rays, and the center hole represents a natural tunnel in the east side of the canyon.  The sun penetrated the hole and conceived life.  At noon on the summer solstice, a dagger of sunlight goes from the center of the hole to the outer rim of the circle.

The park is in a beautiful location with red rock cliffs, a creek, and views of the Tushar mountains.  We were there in autumn and I enjoyed the fall color in Sam Stowe Canyon and the brilliant squawbush leaves on the Cave of a Hundred Hands trail.

There are actually just 31 hand pictographs in the Cave of a Hundred Hands.  They were made by applying various pigments to the hands and pressing them against the stone.  I posted this photo to Flickr, and received a comment that this is “the most personal kind of pictograph.”  I had never thought of it that way, but now I can imagine the Indians kneeling here as they placed their hand prints on the cave wall.

Petroglyphs along the Parade of Rock Art trail are the most accessible in the park.  This hunting scene shows bighorn sheep, which are common rock art subjects throughout the Fremont culture.  But excavations turn up lots more deer, waterfowl, and rabbit bones than sheep.  Were superstitious artists trying to make the sheep easier to kill by pecking their images in the rock?  Or was a rare successful sheep hunt a reason to brag by creating sheep petroglyphs?

There are also much newer Paiute petroglyphs on the Parade of Rock Art trail.  What could have inspired this “alien” figure?  It was probably created in the late 1880’s.  Older petroglyphs are gradually darkened by oxidation called desert varnish, and since this has no desert varnish we know it is much newer than the Fremont petroglyphs.

The Court of Ceremonies trail is a little more challenging; with a short rock scramble and a brief climb to a ridge that has a good view of the visitor’s center and the Tushar mountains.  There are several interesting anthropomorph (stylized human figure) petroglyphs on the cliffs along the trail.

We also explored the Arch of Art and Sheep Shelter rock art locations, and there were many others that we didn’t get to.  This park is a great place for a family trip to introduce kids to interesting western art and history.  If you would like to see more photos, my Flickr album is here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ross_v_walker/albums/72157660434094621

Please note that my photographs are all copyrighted and must not be used for any purpose without my permission.

Southeast Idaho Autumn

This has been one of the best fall color years in my memory here in Southeast Idaho. Check out the following post for fall color in Joe's Gap, along with this post which shows the leaves in other locations.

The brilliant reds were the most outstanding color this year. Mountain maples kept their color for weeks, instead of the normal three or four days. The tree above was in St Charles Canyon.

Lighting conditions affected the way some colors were recorded by the camera. These red leaves appeared magenta in the deep shade in Home Canyon.

There were plenty of yellows, usually at higher elevation than the maples.  These aspen leaves were in Emigration Canyon.



Maples and aspens were not the only sources of color. St Charles Creek was bordered by yellow willows and purple chokecherries.

Maples had an amazing variety of color. In addition to red, there was orange, yellow, and some pale yellow that was almost white. See Joe's Gap in the next post to enjoy some of this variety.


None of the colors in these two posts were altered or "enhanced".

Orange maples in Goodenough Canyon.

Big aspens in the upper end of St Charles Canyon.

Autumn leaves present an opportunity to create art through photography. The palette of colors contrasts with the stark white of aspen trunks, or the dark wood of maples. They can become an abstract by moving the camera during exposure. The photo above was created with a vertical pan... in other words by moving the camera vertically during a relatively long exposure, in this case 1/6 of a second. The location is Williams Canyon.

I enjoyed exploring a number of locations for this post and the next one. They were Joe's Gap, Emigration Canyon, Home Canyon, St Charles Canyon, Williams Canyon, and Goodenough Canyon. Southeast Idaho was a gold mine for fall color this year.

Joe's Gap Autumn, Idaho

Joe's Gap is a small, but pretty, canyon that cuts through the hills just three miles from my home in Montpelier, Idaho.

This has been an amazing year for fall color in the Bear Lake Valley, with the red, yellow, and orange maples producing masses of color.  But smoke from several monster wildfires has made the color difficult to enjoy.  Joe's Gap is a good place to get into the trees away from the smoke.

The fallen leaves create a carpet of color on the trail where it enters the canyon.


As the trail climbs, the canyon gets more narrow and darker, so water droplets stay on the leaves until late in the day.


Joe's Gap climbs steeply into the hills with spectacular cliffs towering over the narrow gap. When the sun gets high overhead the autumn leaves glow with backlight.

The color is more muted on the valley floor, out of the direct sunlight.

In some places, the fallen leaves have gathered in deep piles against sheltered spots in the rock.

The muted light allows for long exposures, so I tried zooming the lens for about 0.5 second, creating this dynamic effect.

I wonder how Joe's Gap got its name? Who the heck was Joe anyway? This autumn, Joe's Gap was a very special place.

UPDATE - 04/08/15 - Thank you, George Lane, for telling me that Joe's Gap was named after Joseph Phelps, an early settler in Bennington, Idaho

Winter patterns

This has been a strange winter so far in the Bear Lake Valley.  By now we should have a lot of snow on the ground, wildlife should be coming out of the hills, and the ski areas should be going strong.  There have been several storms and the weather has been cold, but there is little snow accumulation.  So what is out there for photographers?

When you add wind to a little snow you get drifts, and a simple weed with it's shadow in late afternoon light can be beautiful.

When the snow isn't very deep a little grass can stick out and add some simple straight lines to the beautiful snow curves.

The Bear Lake Valley often gets fog when the temperature drops and this can produce hoar frost or "rime".  Unlike the snow curves in the first two photos, to get rime there must be no wind at all.  The frost forms on nearly everything, often outlining leaves and branches.  Temperatures had been below zero for several mornings when this photo was taken.

The background in this photo is fog and naturally a little gray in the subdued light.  I was fortunate to find a place where all background detail was obscured.  This beautiful phenomenon will usually disappear soon after the fog dissipates and the sun strikes the frost.



Watch your exposure when photographing snow, frost, and fog.  The camera will try to expose an average gray, so you might need to add exposure to make your photos white enough.  But don't overdo it or you will lose the natural look. If all else fails, exposure can be tweaked in PhotoShop, but it is nice to get it right to begin with.