August 1, 2022
Jay Dash is a great friend of mine. One of the few best friends that I have. We met each other working for a ski photography company based at Snowbird ski resort in the winter of 09/10, which may have been the best snow year those mountains since I’ve lived in Utah. We got a snowpack of above normal that year, and the never-ending supply of fresh powder kept gracing the local snow sport enthusiasts traveling up the canyon from Salt Lake City. This photography gig was the first full-time photography position either of us had had up to that point. Since then, we’ve both grown into photography careers and through the years Jay has become an accomplished action sports photographer with a focus on skiing. Awesome guy. He’s a Jersey boy who worked on wall street and moved to Utah to try on a different scene, and fell in love with the place and his new passion for photography. Jay is hilarious, if you know Jay, you’re a lucky person. Authentic, cheeky, intelligent, intense, unbelievable work ethic, a person who cares about improving himself… he’s just an awesome guy and a true friend. Anyways…. In addition to ski photography, as the years have progressed he’s become involved in shooting assignments for the Utah offices of tourism. A Milky Way project came up that he couldn’t take on, so he referred me to his contact. We worked something out and I was assigned to photograph Milky Way images from 5 different locations in Tushar mountains of Beaver County. I was really excited about this project, as it would be a good challenge, and obviously I would tackle it based off the bike.
Holy cow! It has been an amazingly active monsoon season this year. We get a monsoon pattern each year typically starting mid-July, and ending mid-September. This year it started mid-June, and it has been consistently active, offering “good-for-the-desert” levels of moisture. Every crusty desert rat around here is thrilled about it. The clouds and rain keep things cooler, keeps the dust down, and the desert and its inhabitants get a nice dose of life sustaining water. Seeing blue skies is great, but for those of us living in a place with a bottomless amount of clear sky days, we end up longing for the diversity that the monsoon brings with it. The monsoon greatly alters the mood and character of the desert, you see it, but even better it is felt. It just turns into a different place, and I’m finding right now that it’s difficult to put words to. While I can not but help for extremely active monsoon patterns, it can become problematic for photography. Mucho clouds. Awesome for sunsets. Monsoon season is sunset season. Generally after sunset the clouds dissipate, but this year, it seems like most nights have had clouds. But on this particular day that I left out on my bike to embark upon the Milky Way project the monsoon hadn’t begun…, until later in that day. I saw it in the forecast. Just looking at the weekly forecast, the pattern certainly looked very monsoonal, and it seemed like this could be day number one of our moisture season.
After submitting to the realization that the mountains would be cloudy, and I wouldn’t be able to get work done, I decided I would go explore a couple of areas on the north rim of the Grand Canyon that I’ve been looking at for the past few months on satellite imagery. When people hear “North Rim”, they think the National Park where there are lots of day hikes and the visitor center, which is at high elevation. The north rim of the canyon itself is actually very long, running across the entire width of Arizona. That’s a lot of miles of canyon rim. Only a small portion of that is at the high elevation portion of that rim where the visitor center is. The rest of it is around 5,000ft. Temperatures at 5,000ft are pretty dang hot in June. But the monsoon is promising cloud cover, and cooler temperatures, so I feel my exploration of this area at these lower elevations is reasonable for this time of the year, where it otherwise would not be without these conditions. The rim of the canyon that I was looking for was maybe around 40 miles off of the pavement. After an easy, straightforward cruise on maintained dirt road, I hit a lookout on my way to my goal destination. I had been on the bike for a while and was excited to finally see the canyon. For the entire way, you are in flatland with dead-looking, crispy yellow grasses and periodic sagebrush, so it’s pretty amazing to see the earth just fall away out of nowhere into one of the most amazing scenes that graces our planet. I got off the bike and really enjoyed seeing this view of the canyon. But the most enjoyment from the area came from seeing two different agave plants.
The first agave plant that I saw drew me in with a magnetic force. I barely brought the bike to a stop before I hopped off as the plants tractor beams sucked me into it. Like a zombie, no control over the draw. This life was so out of place! The landscape for the past 40 miles was the same… a few rocks, low lying grass and some sage brush. But here is a 17 foot tall towering plant with big, fat, juicy, luscious fruits exploding all over it, enjoying it’s days overlooking the Grand Canyon. Upon returning home from this trip I did a little research I got home, and what I found was that these plants only bloom once in their lifetime! Life in the desert…. still such a mystery to me. The flowers that were on these fruit I missed seeing in full affect by about 5 days. I just couldn’t stop the amazement of it. While I had more locations I wanted to see this day, I couldn’t help but spend some quality time looking at this plant. I changed out of my moto boots and into flip flops, threw on a big fat sun hat and grabbed my camera gear. I can have a tendency to stay in go mode, to not slow down enough. Fortunately the draw of this piece of amazing life on our planet drew my attention too much to leave, and I was grateful for the time that I spent to live slowly and observe the intimacy of this small piece of existence. This really helped my photographs I believe. I spent enough time just looking and enjoying, not thinking about image creation, that I got to really have my soul inspired, then took the time to try and convey that in the photos. Seeing insects approach this precious and limited source of life was one of my favorite experiences. My only regret with my time spent with this plant, was that I didn’t try eating one of its fruits. Perhaps I’ll get the chance again at some point.
I saw one other Agave plant in the distance, but this one was quite a bit different. It was shorter, and the flowers/fruits were not dense. Still, I had to investigate. As I approached it, I really enjoyed the soft tonality of the plant and the cloudy background. This was the first day of monsoon season!!! A very special day for any desert dweller and photographing the plant, standing alone in it’s solitude amongst its incoming change in life was fun to see and I imagined its gratitude for the life giving water that it would be receiving in the near future. This plant was also different than the tall Agave in terms of its colors. They were so vibrant!! Especially the yellow stem, and the blades of the Agave. I probably spent around 2 hours just hanging out and photographing these two plants. It was Zen. Hopefully I can learn from that photography interaction and will get better at slowing down in the future.
While scrolling up and down quickly and in small increments on this photo, it makes the sun rays look as if they are moving side to side. You should try it.
After shooting these two plants, I continued my commute to the location I originally mapped out for this zone. Unfortunately, the feature I thought would be prominent would not photograph well with sunset light, so I got on the road to hit a location I had mapped out at the high elevation portion of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. This location is actually based on National Forest land. I was able to roll up to the edge of the canyon and find a campspot without the need for a permit or advanced reservation. I set up the tent and went about looking for compositions for sunset that was a couple of hours away. I wandered around and found a great location, went back to camp to eat dinner, then headed back to my spot in preparation for what promised to be a great sunset. It was excellent!!! I haven’t spent a whole lot of time at the Grand Canyon, but this was definitely the best sunset that I have experienced. The sunset photo that I got during that shoot is the one at the top of this page. On my hike out, I ran into a public lands ranger, and had a great time chatting with him as we walked. Great time spent in a new to me location.
I got a great night of sleep and woke up and started my commute to the Tushar mountains, which is where I had the Milky Way project to get started on. I stopped at Jacobs Lake for their famous cookies… most amazing cookies you’ll ever have, then headed north. As I got closer to the Bryce National Park area, I saw a young man hitchhiking. While I realized picking him up would likely not work out, I also had the thought of “well…. maybe he’s totally desperate for a ride, and perhaps he’d be game to have an adventure.” I pulled over and he looked confused. I turned off my headphones, took off my helmet and offered him a ride. He stroked the facial hair on his chin, and was legitamitely considering it. During the process I got to know him a bit. An Englishman, living in France who was currently hitchhiking across the U.S. He was already well into his journey. An interesting chap, matter of fact, and seemed to be a fairly serious person, but very kind and engaging. After considering how to get his pack on my bike, along with all of my gear, and both of our bodies squeezed in there somewhere, along with him not having a helmet and cruising at highway speeds, we both finally admitted to ourselves that this was not a good idea. However, at this point on his trip he had already been picked up by cars, and boats. He had never gotten an offer from a motorcyclist, so he requested a ride, just so he could get that as part of his claim to have also gotten a ride on a moto. Getting a ride in flight was his last goal for pickup transport. I gave him a ride up and down the mean streets of Hatch, Utah. Once we pulled back up to where I picked him up, he asked if he could take it for a ride. I said absolutely, and he was quite surprised, he wasn’t actually expecting a yes from that. He knew how to ride and busted out his leather jacket. At that point he said “let’s trade hats”. I was wearing the helmet still, and he had a fine felt hat that I could tell meant a lot to him as he handed it over to a grimy, un-showered, dirtbag motorcycle traveler. He went on a short ride, and I can tell he just had an amazing experience on it. As we parted ways, his dry and serious demeaner completely changed into an explosion of warmth as he said “oh…. we’ve gotta hug after all of this!”. We had a really awesome brief moment of connection and gratitude for the experience that we both shared. I have to say…. this was my favorite moment of this motorcycle trip. It was a beautiful, simple, in the moment life experience.
From here I continue into the mountains and am keeping my fingers crossed for the monsoon weather to clear for some good clear Milky Way shooting. You just never know with the monsoon. I got up there, scouted a bit, and got a little “just for fun” riding in. The clouds rolled in and out, but I had a successful night of astro shooting during the clear periods. There were some beautiful moments that night. The highlights were experiencing a very fast moving lightning storm roll through as I hunkered in the tent for 10 minutes, a deafening period of complete silence with no wind and hearing elk call in the distance as I sat in solitude in the dark, under the Milky Way exploding in all of its glory. The next morning I jump straight on the freeway (the least desirable of all of the “ways”) to get home quick for other work stuff. All in all, a really great trip. As always, thanks for taking the time to read and follow along. Next up is a trip to Iceland that happened early to mid-July.
