After a long pandemic / baby / toddler hiatus, my brother and I took a short trip out West this summer. Our original plan was to visit Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains, but we made a last-minute switch to the Wind Rivers when (as is now all too common, alas), a fire broke out close to where we’d planned to hike. The highlight of the trip was a day hike to Lonesome Lake and the Cirque of the Towers, a destination I’ve long wanted to visit that is often listed as one of the most amazing locations in the Rockies. And that’s right! The Cirque is genuinely incredible, and the 18.5 mile / 3,600 feet of climbing out-and-back is challenging enough to make for a fun day out. One piece of advice: take it easy on the final ten miles of dirt road to the Big Sandy trailhead. It’s true that you can drive there in a regular car – we spotted a small Hyundai EV parked up – but it’s legitimately rough going and it would be easy to damage your vehicle in a pretty remote spot.
Hiking in the Yukon
The static pages on my website have remained, well, pretty static in recent years! Over the winter, though, I went back and reprocessed images from my hiking trip to Kluane and the Tombstones in 2010, which I’ve now put together into a brief Yukon hiking page.
Zion in black and white
Long Island’s Pine Barrens
I’ve been enjoying the quiet trails in Rocky Point Pine Barrens State Forest, about a 30 minute drive from home. Wildlife here seems to be pretty elusive, and it’s by no means a spectacular landscape, but it’s peaceful and a good escape from the general built-up environment on Long Island.
Yellowstone 2011
Looking back at images from a winter trip to Yellowstone ten years ago. These were all taken with a Canon 5D Mk2, which was not known for its weather resistance. In fact, mine gave up the ghost in wet conditions on the Berg Lake trail later that same year! But it did fine in the cold and snow.
Mount Fuji
An image from way way back! I spent part of summer 1996 working in Tokyo, and toward the end of my stay joined a group for an ascent of Mount Fuji. We climbed overnight with the goal of making it to the top for sunrise, though that turned out to be a bit optimistic and the sun rose a bit before we reached the top. It was a holiday weekend in Japan and the crowds making the climb were more extraordinary than any of the scenery! (Though, just before dawn, there was quite an impressive fireball.)
Snow, sand, sunset
Wednesday brought the first snowstorm of the Long Island winter. Compared to other places on the East coast it wasn’t too bad – about 6-8 inches – and by Thursday afternoon the skies had cleared and I went down to West Meadow beach to see how the sand, snow and sea looked. (“Sand” here is a bit of an optimistic description, but there is some and it’s always a good spot for a walk or run.) It was deserted! Sunset was quite special.
Comet NEOWISE from Long Island
Comet NEOWISE did not, alas, brighten into anything that could be mistaken as a Great Comet. That said, it’s probably been as good as anything we’ve seen since Comet Hale-Bopp back in 1997, which I saw easily from downtown Toronto. This week it’s been visible, with a bit of effort, from moderately dark locations, and (much) easier to photograph.
After my first attempt earlier in the week, I followed up with a wider time-lapse sequence from the harbor at Port Jefferson, and then images at 200mm this evening. From a darker location I finally got a glimpse of the comet with the naked eye! The image below is a composite median filtered (using the excellent Starry Sky Stacker) from 13 frames, shot with an iOptron SkyTracker at ISO 1600, f/4.0, 20s.
Comet NEOWISE
I made a first attempt to see Comet NEOWISE after sunset this evening. It’s already easy to photograph, but from a brightly lit location at the side of the road I couldn’t really see it with the naked eye. Weather permitting, I’ll try again over the next week as it rises higher into darker skies.
A hike to the Wheeler Geologic Area
Wheeler Geologic Area, Colorado
THE WHEELER GEOLOGIC AREA, in Colorado’s La Garita Wilderness, is something of an oddity. Twenty five million years ago, vast volcanic eruptions – among the largest to have occurred on Earth during the last 500 million years – created the La Garita caldera and laid down a hundred meters or more of volcanic deposits. The eroded remains are visible over just a small area in the Wheeler Geologic area, where they form a landscape of spires that resembles a less colorful version of Bryce Canyon National Park. The area was Colorado’s first National Monument (somewhat amazing when you think of all the other spectacular landscapes in the state), but visitation never took off and it now sees relatively few visitors. In summer 2019, my brother and I explored the area on a day hike.