In Between the Snows: Highway 211 to Indian Creek

An overnight dusting of snow on Entrada Sandstone along Highway 211.

During the night our area in San Juan County, Utah received another few inches of snow at 7,000 feet. Quite a bit more was forecast for the following day and night. But for now it was a lull between relatively mild January snowstorms. Time to get out and about while the main roads were freshly cleared by the snow plow trucks.

In certain conditions overcast skies can be an advantage: soft light. One can use that to their advantage. Particularly in the case of a snowy landscape, which highlights details that one otherwise might miss.

Driving north from Monticello on US 191, I turned west onto Utah-211, a scenic back road and the highway to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.

Not far from Hwy. 191 there are outcrops of Entrada Sandstone rising above the sagebrush flats. They are always nice to look at, but this morning with new snow, a light coating, I could see all the waves, folds, and joints in what was left of these sand dunes that had eons ago been turned into rock.

An column of sandstone along the cliff face.

On the flat, the meadow grasses were blonde in their winter color, their season of germination and growth last spring long past. As the slope rose a bit the sagebrush appeared. And higher up, shrubs and Utah Juniper trees.

Highway 211 and eastern boundary of the BLM's Indian Creek Recreation Area.

Several miles in on 211 the road switchbacks down from the high flats to the upper Indian Creek canyon. Just before it does there is a sign announcing the edge of the Bureau of Land Management's Indian Creek Recreation Area. Beyond this sign the area is now part of the newly created Bears Ears National Monument, adjoining the boundary of Canyonlands National Park.

Fresh snow highlights the layers of the Kayenta Formation in Shay graben.

As Highway 211 descends from the upper flats, the geology changes immediately. Suddenly you're going down through a dark red layer of rock. What gives?

A geology guide to this scenic drive says that this spot is called Shay graben. A graben is where there are two parallel faults in the Earth's crust--breaks--and the block in between has downdropped because of them. The red layer is the Kayenta Formation, which the upper flats sit on. The highway is now dropping down through the graben to get down to Indian Creek canyon.

At any rate, I stop a couple of times to photograph the Juniper and Pinyon Pine dotted horizontal layers of the red Kayenta cliffs, set off by the snow coating.

Kayenta Formation red cliffs in Shay graben.

Below the graben the highway straightens out again, because it is following the stream course of upper Indian Creek. Soon after is Newspaper Rock, one of the best panels of petroglyphs (inscriptions pecked into the patina of the rock) in the Southwest.

Newspaper Rock archaeological site, Indian Creek at Highway 211.

Shortly after Newspaper Rock the elevation became too low for last night's snow to stick. So I turned around and headed back up to the flats.

Photo location: northern San Juan County, southeast Utah.

See more of my landscape and nature photography on my website at: www.naturalmoment.com.

© Copyright 2017 Stephen J. Krieg

December Trout Fishing

At Waldens Lake for some more December trout fishing.

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion." -- Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, Henry. I hear you. I continued to fish for trout at the lake (which I have nicknamed Waldens Lake) from the delightful fall into the early winter. On only a few days was there another fisherman on the lake. I had it all to myself almost all the time.

Last catch of Rainbow Trout from Waldens Lake.

I was there almost every day, often twice a day so that I could be there for sunrise and sunset colors when they occurred.

My freezer has plenty of trout to tide me over the winter.

Shortly before the deep freeze weather finally arrived on December 18, I made a short video to wrap up the season. I've embedded it below, from my YouTube channel at YouTube.com/stephenkrieg.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

View From Abajo Peak

Looking down to Monticello from Abajo Peak.

Southeast Utah in October. What a place to be in. The Four Corners country, the mile high (and above) Colorado Plateau.

At the edge of Monticello, Utah, I caught my limit of trout, then drove up the public road to Abajo Peak. It's the forefront, the frontispiece, of the Abajo Mountains. Also called the Blue Mountains by the locals.

Geologically, they are a laccolith. Molten rock (magma) had surged upward but not exploded onto the surface like those photos and videos we see from Hawaii. Later (much later, though in geologic terms quite recent) the overlying layers of rock eroded away. Exposing the long hardened granite that had swelled up.

And there you have it, in as simple of terms as I understand.

You don't even have to care about such scientific things to appreciate what has happened since. What's there now. Forests draping those mountains and foothills. A rural, small town culture surrounding them. Clean air, clean water.

It doesn't get much better than this. Probably not any better.

The road up Abajo Peak, late September.

Photo location: Monticello, San Juan County, Utah.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

Cave Towers and Harvest Moon, Southeast Utah

Apex of the evening: Harvest Moon over White Mesa, from Cedar Mesa.

It was the evening of the September Full Moon. The Harvest Moon, named back in pre-industrial days when the corn had to be cut and tied into shocks to finish drying, and the bright moon rising at dusk allowed the families to work the fields as late as they could stand it. Because it was their year's crop, their income, their everything, on winter's doorstep.

But this was 2016, not 1700s colonial America back East. The moon didn't care. It would rise true in its orbit regardless of who cared.

I cared. I watch for Full Moon time each month. For landscape photos. For the once in a month visual and visceral experience. Weather permitting, you know, so some months are clouded out even here in the high and dry and lovely mostly clear skies of the desert Southwest.

Rabbitbrush in bloom, September, San Juan County, Utah.

This time I was scheming for a different kind of photograph. One featuring the rubble of an ancient tower ruin on Cedar Mesa in southeast Utah. If I could line it up with the rising moon at dusk, that could be so cool. There was only one way to find out.

So I drove out to a ruin that is known locally and in certain guide books as Cave Towers Ruin. It's on public land, but it's unmarked from the highway, so you have to know how to get there. Open the gate, close the gate behind you, and drive on in. Unless you have a high clearance vehicle (AWD, like a Subaru) you should stop at the new (courtesy of Friends Of Cedar Mesa) buck-and-pole wooden fence and walk the rest of the way. It's not far.

West tower ruin at Cave Towers.

Cave Towers? What kind of name is that? Isn't that an oxymoron? Is it in a cave, or is it towering above the landscape? It can't be both, can it?

Well, why not? Towers above the cave? A recess (overhanging) cave in the sandstone layers, with cliff dwellings below and brazen towers above on the canyon rim. Not a subterranean cavern.

Late day sunlight just below the rim on cliff dwellings rubble.

Now it's making more sense. For the Ancestral Puebloans of 800 years ago, a reliable water source was a strategic scarcity to be defended for the livelihood of the community. Building a two story tower out of shaped sandstone slabs and adobe mortar announced to anybody approaching that "we live here, respect us or suffer the consequences". It is also suspected that such towers were used to build signal fires. A communication network across vast distances. Fire light, after all, is speed of light messaging. All is well. Or: enemies approaching, spread the alarm.

Cliff dwellings below the rim, underneath the towers. How to get down there?

Don't ask how I got off on all of that. Obviously there was a lot more on my mind as I walked in to the rubble of the several towers that were in this one spot. This lip of a side canyon of Mule Canyon, with its spring below. Even an historic gravesite fenced off with a small slab of sandstone for a tombstone. (Things are always surprising in Canyon Country).

Peering into the canyon below Cave Towers Ruin. Sleeping Ute Mountain on the far horizon.

 Yes, I was thinking of the Ancient Ones as I again visited this sacred spot. The mid-September sun was already low, sliding quickly toward sunset. I arrived at my favorite tower ruin, the most prominent one, and got out my compass. Using The Photographer's Ephemeris app, I knew that the full moon would rise almost due East. It was already swinging back north from its southeasterly position at midsummer. 

The west tower and its entry doorway, from below.

I worked around the site, but it soon become obvious that I could not get the moonrise in a good composition with the tower ruin this time. Maybe October. So I photographed the tower rubble and its environs and quickly walked back out to the truck. There might still be time to find a better location for moonrise, without any ruins. Though on the walk out I could not help but to photograph a lovely clump of bright yellow wildflowers.

Yellow wildflowers, some of the last of the season.

Climbing back westward up Highway 95, I decided to make my last stand (of the evening) at Salvation Point, elevation 7,110 feet. A wide open clear view to the east.

The Earth's Shadow, and Sleeping Ute Mountain, just after sunset, from Salvation Point.

 The sun set behind me as I continued to stare east. The Earth's shadow grew blue, with the pink Venus Belt fringing it at the top. Sleeping Ute Mountain lay stretched out, a lumpy and slightly darker blue across the state line in Colorado.

Waiting, waiting. Waiting for the moon to show. I knew it would be about 20 minutes after sunset this night.

Harvest Moon emergence, from Cedar Mesa.

Then it began to peek through the blue.  The upper yellow arc of the circle still hidden behind some clouds, or maybe even the La Plata mountain range in southwest Colorado. The haze on the horizon made it a deep yellow-orange orb slowly rising from the blue. Incredibly lovely. Almost orange as a pumpkin, fitting for the Harvest Moon in America.

Lord of the eastern horizon on this lovely September evening...

 Silently creeping up as the Earth rotated beneath my feet toward it.

A lonely highway in the middle of nowhere, so almost no traffic. Wide open skies. Moonrise. The high desert. September, the second best month of the year.

Panorama: Risen moon over White Mesa, from Cedar Mesa, Utah.

It doesn't get much better than this.

Photo location: San Juan County, southeast Utah.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

Send In The Clouds: Cedar Mesa

Monsoon season thunderhead, Cedar Mesa.

The monsoon season's thunderhead clouds had been building all afternoon in southeast Utah's San Juan County (the largest and least populated county in Utah). I was driving east to Blanding to buy groceries.

I had been driving down Cedar Mesa, then over Comb Ridge, past the Cheese And Raisins Hills, lost in thought. Relaxed. Trying to remember if I'd seen a good brand of coffee on the shelves of the little grocery store in Blanding.

I glanced to my left, and the brilliance of the massive elongated thunderhead cloud in the early evening light snapped me out of my lame thoughts. Massively pulling over to the weed choked shoulder of Highway 95 (no traffic to worry about out here) I jumped out, camera in hand. The blues, the grays, the whites; the sunbeams radiating outward above.

No wonder I live here.

So, back toward Blanding. Nice small town. Squeaky clean Mormon town. "The Gateway To Adventure", the welcoming billboard proclaims. Mountains nearby, canyons, too. Clean air and water. Canyon country.

Hwy. 95 intersects with US 191 a few miles south of town. So what? So more opportunity to view the surrounding skies. And on this evening it was teasing me further still.

A prime southeast Utah thunderhead downpour, from Blanding.

I had to turn left onto the street that led to the athletic fields. Because I knew there was a clear view to the west from there, toward distant Cedar Mesa from where I'd just come, the Bears Ears buttes, and--these few minutes only--yet another thunderstorm cloud, rain pouring straight down to make it look like a heavenly version of a nuclear bomb mushroom cloud. Heaven raining on Earth, and on the high desert, to boot. The way it should be.

I didn't linger long in the grocery store. Though it was payday and my larder back home was looking pitifully meager.

Because I wanted to head back home, back toward the sunset and whatever those brilliant blue, white and black monster clouds might bring at sunset.

Sunset thunderhead, Cedar Mesa.

After slipping back down through the red rock cut in Comb Ridge and starting the climb back up onto Cedar Mesa, I had what I'd been hoping for. Lightning flashing to the south. I pulled over and got out to photograph. On this lonely stretch of highway, not a single vehicle passed by as I savored the clouds glowing with sunset on the west side, and blue-black shadow on the east.

Photo location: San Juan County, southeast Utah.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

Down North Wash From Hanksville, Utah

The Silver Eagle convenience store in Hanksville, Utah. Effectively, the heart of the town. The Henry Mountains in the distance. A high desert outpost with...heart.

I must say that I love Hanksville in southeast Utah. But then again I love most lonesome towns. Notwithstanding the opportunity to stock up on gasoline and food, I like the people. In my travels I have noticed that the citizens of rural areas are the most relaxed, friendly, and helpful there are. 

The Henry Mountains, from Highway 95 south of Hanksville.

I believe it has to do with their environment. When you live far from anywhere, you realize how closely you might be to the edge, if you hit a tough spot. In short, people out there tend to look out for each other. And they look out for anyone else that might need a hand, too. Which is why I keep finding myself gravitating to rural places.

Well, except for the beauty of such locations. They go hand in hand, naturally.

Sand dunes turned to rock and uplifted a mile above sea level. After millions of years, I mean.

I passed back through Hanksville recently. There isn't much to the town, really. And many services are closed during the winter offseason. This is a summertime tourist town. Spring, summer, early fall. Outside of that the locals settle back into whatever routine they like to do.

Cottonwood trees with spring growth, North Wash.

Last year I stopped by the single grocery store. Its shelves were sparsely stocked, in keeping with the winter season. Keep inventory low, you know. The elderly cashier at the front said: "I love this place. I wouldn't live anywhere else!" 

At first a new visitor might look around the dusty town and wonder if she was nuts. No Walmart or a major chain grocery store. No national chain motel. Though I can enthusiastically recommend the Whispering Sands motel, right next to the Silver Eagle. The accommodations are splendid, especially for such an out of the way respite. 

Shadow of the Highway 95 bridge onto the Colorado River at Hite Crossing.

However, despite wanting yet again to buy a place there and settle down, I turned my truck east again, out of Hanksville. Not that I won't return soon.

Down Highway 95. The Henry Mountains glowing down at me, with their coat of snow. The high desert below. 

Photo location: southeast Utah.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

San Juan River Goosenecks, Winter

San Juan River, Utah, winter, from Goosenecks State Park.

An extra snowy winter in the high desert canyon country of southeast Utah. In other words, perfect for this time of year. In the desert one always dreams of rain, even while appreciating the lack of it. Cycles and seasons.

Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah.

 Another visit down to Goosenecks State Park, overlooking the incredible sinuous canyon depths there. The muddy river flowing on around the bends it continues to scour ever deeper. Ice floes gently scraping the rocks along the river banks. 

San Juan River and sky reflection, winter.

 The snow reveals: in winter, north facing slopes get no sunlight. Their shade allows the snow to remain, for a while at least. On the south facing slopes the snow is quickly melted. Polar opposites, in balance. 

The stark beauty of the high desert canyon landscape. In winter.

Photo location: Goosenecks State Park, San Juan County, Utah.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

Trail Of The Ancients: Cave Towers, Cedar Mesa, Utah

Tower ruin, Cave Towers. 

I went to see the Cave Towers ruins on Cedar Mesa recently. They are not hard to get to, as long as you have proper information. They are called other names, adding to the confusion. No matter: if you're meant to find them you will seek out the proper (usually local) sources. 

Besides, it's about the journey, right? Exploring a new area is a great journey. As long as it's on public land.

The evening was mostly overcast. For many visitors from far away, especially international visitors, they would not have liked such conditions. They have this image (rightly so) of southern Utah as this high desert red rock canyon country with perpetually clear blue skies. They want them in their pictures. But somehow they think we never get clouds or rain. Imagine that.

I, on the other hand, adapt to the conditions. It was overcast, so what? That makes for lower contrast, softer light than normal. It can bring out details that would otherwise be overwhelmed. 

The drive in from Highway 95 passes through a gate. A public gate, no "No Trespassing" sign. Merely open the gate and close it behind you. The road then quickly turns rocky rough, over and down some slickrock sandstone bedrock. It's just fine for an AWD vehicle, let alone a 4 Wheel Drive vehicle. Sedans and vans can just pull over and walk the rest of the way, it's not far.

At the end of the road there is a parking area (meaning a wide open slickrock area to turn around, nothing constructed. A heavily used fire ring indicates popularity. Not far away is a sign planted firmly in the only other direction down which you might wish to try to drive. It says no coming at the ruins site. Meaning the site must be down that gentle wash. 

And not far down you come to it. A tower ruin. Another pile of rubble almost beside it that could have been another tower, or maybe a different structure. Looking across the head of the draw I see another tower.

Tower ruin, Cave Towers.

I walk around, seeing now that there is a vast canyon right below these towers. They were built on the edge. Why built towers when you're already on the highest point around? It's the same mystery of the even more splendid tower ruins at Hovenweep National Monument about 90 minutes drive east of here. 

There is another tower ruin not far west of here that you can park in a paved lot and take an easy stroll to (not the one pictured). The interpretive signs there suggest that tower and these towers were line of sight in their locations. Thus signal fires could be seen between them, to assure all was well (no fire) or emergency. Signaling at the speed of light. 

Since the ancient ones had no written communication, we can only surmise. It's a detective story, sifting through clues left behind. In this case, they left this area about 800 years ago, so it's a really cold trail. 

I poke around some more. I am impressed by how deep the canyon is immediately below. The landscape had changed from flat mesa top to...abyss...just like that. 

On the next ledge below I could see some cliff dwelling ruins. So that's where they lived. Or lived at times, and stored their precious grown grains (corn and beans). 

Cave Canyon panorama

I walked to the far side of this head of the canyon rim. To the other prominent tower ruin. Now from this side I could see more cliff dwelling ruins underneath where I had been previously. 

This was obviously a special place. A prime location: water flowing down the little wash, over the ledge, to more places for collection down below. 

Were the towers built to say: we own this place? Or we live here, don't come here unless you walk in peace? Or were they like round vertical church towers, a symbol of worship, of thanks for the life giving surroundings?

Such questions occurred to me as I wandered, photographed, and then headed back to my truck before dark.

Cave Tower ruin, evening panorama.

Photo location: Cedar Mesa, San Juan County, Utah.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

Copyright © 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Not The Magic Bus

The non-magic bus, and the Henry Mountains.

A windy early spring day on the Colorado Plateau in southeast Utah. I'd been driving and photographing since about 6 AM. A wonderful day. Now it was time to head home, wearily. 

I left Hanksville, itself a rather lonesome but friendly little town in the middle of nowhere, after enjoying a buffalo burger at "Stan's Burger Shak". Thus fortified, I drove east on Highway 95, one of the wonderfully lonesomest roads anywhere. 

The bulk of the Henry Mountains -- last mountain range in the U.S. to be explored and mapped -- loomed above the low cliffs south of town. It had been windy all day, and the dust made for a thick haze in the air. (As the motel owner in Hanksville had joked the previous evening, the sand here is so fine that it comes through the walls. Not just the windows and door frames. Bragging rights.)

Then, out on the high sagebrush plain, amidst the free ranging cows, was that RV again. I pulled over to photograph it, again. It's kind of creepy looking, being out there all alone, no visible road to have driven it there on. Busted out windows, door gaping open. Graffiti sprayed all over the side. Before or after its abandonment? Who? Why?

Mysterious. And so it deserves my Lonesomest RV In Utah award. Somebody let me know who to mail the award to, won't you?

Photo location: Wayne County, Utah. Maybe Garfield County. Somewhere near the county line. 

© 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

High Desert Winter Sunset, Southeast Utah

[Navajo Mountain in the distance, from Natural Bridges National Monument] 

It's been so still here these winter days. For weeks, with not much breeze. Oh, one more winter storm to freshen things up, then back to stillness.

In the middle of winter, stillness has its advantages. Especially on the high Colorado Plateau in southeast Utah. Cold nights but sunny days. Without wind, the sun feels extra warm. 

An atmospheric inversion of unprecedented longevity has been around for something like a month. Nobody around here has seen this. Fog clouds hanging down in the river bottoms: Colorado River, San Juan River. It moves around a little without leaving. 

[Cedar Mesa Sunset panorama, from Natural Bridges] 

Up here on Cedar Mesa, we're above it. We watch it from afar. People call up here to see if it's foggy way up here, too. Nope, we say. Come on up and bask in the winter sun. 

Being a dedicated sunset watcher, I always find myself scanning the skies to the west in late afternoon. How will the sunset colors be? It all depends on the clouds, because they are the reflectors. Or they close the curtain completely. Or they are totally absent, in which case the sunset is merely, um, nice. 

[Navajo Mountain from across Cedar Mesa at sunset.] 

So here are some from a recent evening here. The inversion was still nuzzling about in the distance. It made the high buttes and cliffs even more prominent. 

Photo location: Natural Bridges National Monument, San Juan County, Utah. 

Winter Approaches

[Photo: Moss Back Butte November Sunset Storm Silhouette].

Another mid November evening of brooding skies. Rain mixed with snow. A slit in the clouds over the western horizon at sunset ("Never bet against sunset" is one of my mantras) and there it was again.

Actually I had missed another shot about ten minutes before that I was aching to get. I knew it was out of reach by just a few minutes, but sometimes you get lucky and things seem to stand still.

No such luck this time. But I established my position anyway as soon as I could. Sit in the truck with the cold rain splattering diagonally down the window, and wait. Waiting is good. Someday I might even get better at it, too.

A few minutes later came my reward. Sunset-lit rain curtain over Moss Back Butte, with way distant Navajo Mountain off to its left. 

Then I left. But off to the right.

Photo location: Cedar Mesa, San Juan County, Utah.

November Evening Storm, Cedar Mesa, Utah

[Photo: Evening Rainbow, Natural Bridges National Monument entrance, Utah].

Mid November in the heart of the canyon country of wild southeast Utah. Or near the heart, one of them at least, since this vast, uncrowded region has many. On Cedar Mesa, elevation 6,500 feet. The upper limits of the high desert, just below the Ponderosa pine - aspen mountain zone up above on Elk Ridge. 

After a two week lull in the weather that produced balmy conditions for late fall around here -- by about ten degrees F. -- some more seasonal weather moved in. Rain mixed with snow in the afternoon. The streams will be running in the canyons again. We could see Woodenshoe Buttes and Bears Ears Buttes coated with white above us when the clouds parted enough for a look around. 

At sunset time another thunderstorm slid through. I drove to my go-to sunset spot near here, with an uninterrupted view to the west. To Moss Back Butte and the Red House Cliffs. Navajo Mountain way to the southwest, too. 

[Photo: Thunderstorm sunset over Moss Back Butte, Cedar Mesa, Utah].

Lovely. Soothing though I didn't need soothed. Enriching, then. 

Photo location: Cedar Mesa along Utah Route 275 just outside Natural Bridges National Monument, San Juan County, Utah. Camera: Olympus E-PL5. Development: Adobe Lightroom 5.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© Copyright 2014 Stephen J. Krieg