WatershedEvents

Three Fingers

The great nature photographer Eliot Porter rarely included the sky in his photographs. “The sky is too blue,” he is reported to have said on more than one occasion. I have reflected on Porter’s approach more than a little, particularly of late. It is very difficult to capture the moment in Owyhee Country when the clear sky is included in a shot. As Porter noted, the color is so strong and devoid of texture it overpowers the more subtle complexities of the landscape. But it is also very difficult to capture the broken tops of the giant rocks that crowd most canyons without showing a good deal of the sky in the process. The shot above is a perfect illustration of the quandary so often presented to shooters in these circumstances, as you can prove for yourself simply by using something opaque to crop out the sky.

There are a couple solutions for this problem, one that I am certain Porter utilized many times in his own work and another that he may have been too much of a purist to use. First, get on top of the image. In other words change your position in such a way that the sky helps guide the viewer's glance deeper into the center of the shot. I tried that approach in the photo below but unfortunately ran out of hilltop before I reached the vantage point I wanted. That particular spot was just fifty feet above my head, but what my GPS map had failed to mention was that this particular fifty feet was a vertical column – a basalt plug – that I was both too ill-equipped and too ill-disposed to climb. Still, I think the shot below gives a better sense of the enormity of the place, even if it cost a little in the way of detail to pull it off.

In addition to changing perspective you can try to milk the sky for any variation in tone and texture it might be able to give you. In this day and age of digital image manipulation the ease of making “corrections” is pronounced that most shooters simply can’t resist the temptation to take liberties with the documentation of the scene. In Porter’s day this kind of post-production “artistry” would have been both difficult and expensive, particularly where color imagery was concerned. In the image below I messed with the sky to the east (frame right), adding a little density and motion to the edges of an approaching thunderhead that was just a few miles out of frame. Nothing too heavy handed I hope, but maybe enough to make the sky even less obtrusive?

Finally, you can check off your initial approach completely and crop the damned thing down until the sky is a non-factor. But this shot is more about the contrasting colors and textures than it is about the rugged grandeur of the place.

At any rate, isn’t this place magnificent? I am sorry to say my pictures only hint at the overall power of the area, but I’m pretty used to that kind of shortfall where things Owyhee are concerned. 

On the way up to the vantage point I happened to spot a herd of Rocky Mountain sheep on a distant hillside. When I first saw them they were scattered all over the slope, but minutes later they had crowded together in the herd shown here. No doubt some kind of predator on the down slope, but exactly what I could never tell. They stayed like this for more than fifteen minutes before swiftly leaving the area. (Double click on the image and it should open to a larger size.)

Seems like where ever you hike in the canyons or along the rims there’s some wonderful rock or rocky feature that you  just have to shoot. I’m not sure what kind of bird is perched on the rock in this first one. It wasn’t there when I took the shot!

This outcropping has the look of turrets to it, a common characteristic of crumbling basalt formations.

Back down on the road to the parking area I was surrounded by these kinds of columns. Just wish I knew more about geology. I’m sure there are several interesting stories showing here, if only I could read them.

I'll return to this wonderful place as soon as possible. There's a trail here that leads all the way down to the lake and I am very interested in seeing what that stretch is like. And then there are always the rocks....

Owyhee - September Sojourn

Cow Pasture, Owyhee style. 

In my last post I focused on Antelope Reservoir and wrote about re-covering some fairly familiar ground; but the main emphasis of the September trip was to look into three places new to me: Gin Basin, Painted Canyon and Three Fingers Gulch. By “look in” I mean to say that I was scouting them in preparation for more extensive exploration in the future. I was traveling alone, if you don’t count Buddy, who more often than not would not get out of the truck during midday. I wasn't prepared for anything like a long hike over unknown and possibly difficult ground. As I’ve mentioned several times in the past, I’m not so much afraid of being injured out there so much as I am of having to be rescued. What a humiliation that would be. At any rate my plan was to drive to a convenient look-in point, take a few shots and maybe a short hike to establish my grasp of the terrain, then move on.

The headwaters area of Painted Canyon lie in some wonderfully jumbled up terrain about 10 miles north/northeast of the Leslie Gulch campgrounds as the crow flies. I’m using Leslie Gulch as my reference point because (1) some folks who occasionally visit this site know of it, (2) the road to it from Highway 97 is a good one, passable for all but a few days out of the year and (3) there’s a cutoff on this main road that leads to both Painted Canyon and Three Fingers Gulch.

There's a sign at the cutoff, one that I've never seen out this way before. It gives information on collecting petrified wood. If there is any sign out here that isn't riddled with bullet holes I've never seen it.

The road isn’t too bad by Owyhee standards meaning you can get up and down it in dry weather without needing a Humvee. I’d have to think twice about trying it in wet weather using my Escape. Several areas I passed through had that strange viscose feeling that so much of the ground has out here even when it is dry. Put a little water with this stuff and you come up with something like a hybrid between mortar and quicksand.

Half the fun of getting anywhere around here is found in the drive itself. The landscape is so full of wonderful rock formations that you'd have to stop every five minutes if you wanted to collect them all photographically.

It's been a good water year so many of the stock ponds are full and still relatively algea free. There are many of them in this improbable landscape. 

A reverse angle highlights the contrast between water and rock. I can't blame the cattle for hanging around here on a hot late summer day.

In several areas along the route I came across these outcroppings, places where bubbles in the volcanic flows were frozen in time until weathering brought them to the surface millions of years later. In these areas the rock, if you could see it in cross section would look like Swiss cheese.

What with all the poking around it was midday before we made it to the rim of Painted Canyon. Buddy was hungry! (No, I don't give him sardines. He had a few chips with his water and dog cookie however. That's why he's smiling.)


It was at this site where I stumbled upon the idea of making some Sun Coffee. I'd left one of my water bottles lying in the sun on the dash and discovered that it was hot to the touch. I happened to have a box of VIa in the glove compartment and the next thing you know a reasonably OK cup of coffee was brewing away on the canyon rim.

The next image shows one of three main drainages to the lip of the headwaters area (upper center); the next several after that take you on a progression of stops around the southern rim and illustrate both the ruggedness and a little of the beauty of this canyon. There’s supposed to be a trailhead somewhere near the top of Painted Canyon but I am not sure I actually found it. There are “trails” along both rims in the area but I think these may have been game trails. I followed one for about half a mile along the rim of the canyon and found a place where it looked as if it would make for a fairly safe and rope-free entrance. But a real bushwhacker would probably sniff at that kind of sissy approach and have gone for the short rappel that would be needed in order to get down into the uppermost reach of the canyon.

To begin with, what might be the trail head if you are prepared to rope your pack down into the ditch and then follow it down with some nifty rock climbing or maybe a bit of rappeling. It would be simple enough to back the truck up to near this spot and use the trailer hitch as a tie-off point. Not in my future, since I think I found a less macho but far "easier" in-route further down the canyon.

Along the rim and looking back at the head area. Remember what I said about Swiss cheese? If you enlarge this image a little you will be able to see my coffee brewing! The bottle and the little bush next to it are perched on the top of the small rise (two little side-by-side specks upper right center).

A little further along the rim and a little deeper into the canyon. That notch in the distance is about two miles down canyon. From that spot the canyon (which overall is oriented northeast to southwest) makes a half mile long jog furtherto the south and then intersects Carlton Canyon. Carlton Canyon in its turn runs east to west and opens up on Lake Owyhee.

Looking back up canyon from roughly the same spot you can just see the truck on the rim.

As unlikely as it may seem from this photo (below) the ravine that runs in from the left (just behind the rock) may offer the easiest access to the floor of canyon, from this rim at least. And it may be the only one as well, according to my maps and my eyeball. The walls look very steep from this point onward. This vantage point lies about half mile down from the headwaters area. Elevation is at about 4000 feet and the floor of the canyon is around 200 feet further down. The ravine runs for about 1500 feet (quarter of a mile) and looks to be reasonably passable. Maybe another day I will find out for sure. 

On the way back to the truck I stopped to admire a sun bleached bone that someone (or something) left perched upon a boulder. 

I was suddenly being scoped out by one of the area's more brazen beasts. He refused to move until I actually poked hime with my finger. Which then he attempted to bite! You don't suppose....?

Next post I'll cover the Three Fingers look-in. Stay tuned....












 

 

Back To Camp Rabbit

Buddy and I returned to Camp Rabbit earlier this month. I've lost track of how many times I've perched on the rocky ridgeline that provides this view of Antelope Reservoir. Six or seven at least. It's become sort of a last-day ritual. I'll fill a thermos with coffee, saddle up my camera bag, put the leash on Buddy and then head for the ridge. That small trailer in the upper left hand corner is Shorty, our new pop-up camper. It's parked in the space I tent camped in the first time I ever visited the place. That was a decade ago, back when I was still using film in my camera instead of micro chips. I didn't get really serious about the area until a trip in late August of 2007. By that time I had purchased a relatively decent digital camera (Nikon D-40) and was able to take shots of the reservoir at a time when it had been drawn down for irrigation purposes to almost the point of non-existence. The shot below, taken from almost the same vantage point as the one above but with a slightly wider lens, provides a glimpse into the situation.

The trailer in the shot above belonged to someone else. That trip (and most others after the first one) I pitched my tent on a point that lies just off camera to the right. The location offers a great deal more privacy. Not that privacy is usually much of an issue at this BLM campground. I've never seen all its four sites in use at the same time and on all but a couple of occassions I have been the only multi-day user. The site also priovided a view of a wonderfully tough little cottonwood that struggled for years to adjust to the height fluctuations of the water.

This scruffy little tree came to figure significantly in the visit-lore I brought back from these trips. Many times it would be the first thing I would see as I emerged from my tent in the morning.

On a trip my son and I made to the place end of summer 2010 the tree was a major focal point for us as well as for the resident blackbirds. One afternoon we saw more than two dozen males crowd into the tree all at one time. Interestingly there were as many or more females around but they stayed on the ground.

May of this year the situation for the tree had changed drastically. I came with my son-in-law Matt and we camped in the regular place. In the shot below you can see that the tree was barren. Given that it was late in May, that was not a good sign.

It's been a good water year for the state, Owyhee Country included, so when I returned myself for a second visit this month (September) I wasn't surprised to see that my favorite campsite has become totally overgrown. The landmark tree had been reduced to a dead snag.

In all its parts the Owyhee Country is a harsh and ever-changing place. In a strange way that's why I am so drawn to it. This last trip was very productive in the sense that I tool a lot of photos and looked in at some areas I've never visited before. I am way behind getting to the imagery and information, but I'll post more as soon as possible.