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.

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.