Winter Fog

This has been a cold foggy winter with some hoarfrost and beautiful soft light.  I showcased hoarfrost in my January 28, 2014 post, so this time I will show a few photos of the fog that creates the frost.

December 21, 2019 started out as a very foggy morning here in Montpelier, Idaho.  It was just 10 degrees (F), so I had to psych myself up to grab my camera, bundle up, and go outside before the sun appeared over the eastern hills.

I didn’t have to go far.  The cemetery and adjacent golf course are nearby where the fog was rolling in.  The sun barely appeared through the fog over the snowed-in golf course.

Naturally fog and a cemetery work well together to create an eerie atmosphere.  The subdued light and extreme cold tend to create blue light.  I converted some of these images to black and white to present more neutral tones.

There are fields on the north side of the cemetery where this fence and the irrigation lines in the first photo seemed to stretch into infinity.

Here are some tips for taking photos in these cold damp conditions.  Batteries die in the cold so I keep one in an inside pocket or in my fairly warm truck.  Don’t keep your vehicle too warm because cold lenses will fog up when you get in out of the cold.  Try not to change lenses or your cold camera mirror can fog up.  Fingers get painfully cold in a hurry so I use warm mittens with fold-off finger covers.  I hope this helps your winter photo adventures.

Please respect my copyright and do not use my photos for any purpose without permission, and probably a small payment.

Living Nativity

It has been a long time since I posted anything to this blog.  Some problems kept us from getting out much, but we hope to do better soon.

This is the story of a living nativity staged every year just before Christmas in Montpelier, Idaho.  Over the years it has been presented in various locations around town, and I think this year at Wells Stock Park near the National Oregon California Trail Center is the best one yet.

Joseph led a donkey with Mary riding through the snow.  A manger was set up under a tree and the wise men visited Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus while shepherds looked on.  There were even two camels.

It was a cold day just a few hours after a big snowstorm, and a local caterer, David Ream, supplied homemade donuts and hot chocolate.  David has been instrumental in putting this event together over the years.  Despite the cold, a good crowd listened to him tell the story of the baby Jesus’ birth in the manger.  There was live music and kids scrambled to have their pictures taken with the animals.

It isn’t every day we see camels in the snow in Montpelier.  They were very friendly, but “Dude” snacked on the pine trees around the Oregon Trail center.

  The community is grateful to Jeral and Jenine Williams for bringing the animals from Pine Tree Dairy in Idaho Falls every winter.  This year, the roads were terrible, but they still made it.

This sort of event helps us remember what Christmas is really about.  We can forget the commercialism and stress for a little while and reflect on the birth of Christ.

I hope you enjoy the photos and story, but please remember that my photos are copyrighted and must not be used without permission.

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.

Feeding An Elk Herd

This winter has been the most difficult one I’ve seen in the Bear Lake Valley since we moved here in 1999.  So far, snowfall has been over 10 feet and we are sure to get more.  Of course, it was more compact on the ground so it was just a few feet deep, but when combined with thick layers of ice it has been very difficult for wildlife to find food.  There are places where people feed deer and elk every year in this area, but this year new feeding stations have been set up to take care of animals that normally make it through winter on their own.

Micah Rigby and R C Hymas on their three-horse sleigh.

In Bear Lake County alone, 20 emergency feed grounds have been set up for deer, and 4 for elk.  I was fortunate to be able to ride along on a horse-drawn sleigh with fellow photographer Jim Parker to feed a herd of elk at Banks Valley, Idaho.  The public was asked to stay away to avoid stressing the animals.

Even the horses seemed interested in the elk herd.

A work sleigh with three horses was driven a couple of miles by R C Hymas and Micah Rigby for the cross country trip to where a herd of about 400 elk was waiting.  The elk have become accustomed to sleighs at the annual feed grounds, but here the elk were wild, and they kept their distance.  As the sleigh was driven along the line of elk, sections of hay were kicked off from four big bales so they would be strung out enough for all the elk to get to some.  They lined up like kids in a school lunch line to be fed.

These animals were easily spooked and if one started to run, several would go along, but they wouldn’t go too far as long as they had hay to eat.

I admire the way these guys handled their horses.  The jobs of harnessing and driving these beautiful animals were second nature to them, and I appreciate all they are doing to help Idaho’s wildlife.

Jim Parker holds the tired horses while they are unhitched from the sleigh.

Please be aware that my photos are copyrighted and must not be used without permission.  I often donate usage for charitable or educational purposes, but require a small fee for personal use.

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. 

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.

Elk at Hardware Ranch

Our Sharp Shooters Camera Club went on a field trip to Hardware Ranch in Utah last Saturday to photograph a big herd of elk up close and personal.

This has got be one of the best deals anywhere for family entertainment.  This year there are about 400 elk at the ranch, and we rode a horse-drawn sleigh to see them, for just $5.00 each.

There are many more cows than bulls on the ranch, and the ladies seem to be good at ignoring this bull.  We were told that about 80% of the cows are pregnant, and they need to eat more than the bulls, so they are more likely to come down to the feeding grounds.  All the elk will leave when the snow melts and food becomes available in the mountains again.

Elk need to leave the mountains to find food in the winter, and most of their historic feeding areas no longer exist because of development.  Hardware Ranch, and many other locations in the Rocky Mountains, has been established to grow hay during the summer and provide food for the elk in winter.

This little guy is an elk calf.  It may look small, but an adult bull Rocky Mountain elk (wapiti) can weigh 700 pounds.  The elk here are completely wild and unfenced, so getting this close is a great opportunity.

This is the largest bull elk on the ranch at the moment.  His massive antlers are really impressive, but will shed by the end of winter.  Antler size is determined by age, nutrition, and genetics.

Why do the elk tolerate sleighs full of people?  Our guide said she thinks they are used to being fed from a sleigh so they don’t associate them with danger.  But, if someone gets off the sleigh so the elk see a human shape, they run off in a hurry.  In fact, our sleigh lost a “tug” which had to be reattached.  A second sleigh was placed alongside so the repair could be done while hidden from the elk.  None of this could be done without the beautiful, patient draft horses, and they seem to like attention after each ride.

I recommend Hardware Ranch as a great family destination in the winter.  The kids will love it.

Please note that these photos are all copyrighted and should not be used 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.

Chesterfield In Winter

Chesterfield, Idaho is an agricultural ghost town in the southeastern part of the state.  It was founded in 1880 by Mormon pioneers.  It was a hard place to make a living, and gradually became a ghost town due to drought, harsh winters, and the depression.

Today, Chesterfield is undergoing a revival of sorts as descendants of the early families are restoring the town.  The Chesterfield Foundation recently purchased the beautiful Muir-Butterfield house, and has started restoration by rebuilding the porch.

The LDS Meeting House is probably the best preserved building in town.  When I first started visiting Chesterfield it was a museum, but now it has been restored back to its original form.  In summer, many of the buildings are open for visitors and tours.

In winter, the town is boarded up, deserted, and resting quietly in the snow and cold.  Linda and I visited with three other members of our Sharp Shooters Camera Club.

There is a lot to see and photograph in the quiet of winter.  A restored tractor is parked near the shadow of rusty farm equipment, and interesting details are everywhere.

Old equipment, frosty fences, interesting buildings, ancient gas pumps, snowdrifts – the photo opportunities are wonderful.

The buildings include log cabins, stately brick homes, religious structures, and stores.

A windmill stands alone on a hilltop.

There are 41 buildings in the historic district, and most near the center of town have been restored, but many around the outskirts of town still are in “ghost town” condition, so there is a nice mix of photography subjects.  If you want to see the interiors and talk to knowledgeable people about the town, visit between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  But if you want to see Chesterfield when it is deserted and quiet, visit in the winter.

Please note that all of my photos are copyrighted and must not be used 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.