Tag Archives: burr

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

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Cottonwood Trees, Autumn
Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

Cottonwood Trees, Autumn. Southern Utah. October 26, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A grove of autumn cottonwood trees in Utah red rock country

After a few days “in the field” in a remote southern Utah location with a group of friends, I left our camp and headed back out to what passes for civilization in this part of Utah. Truth be told, by the end of the day I arrived in a quite civilized place! After driving a bit I ended up in the town of Boulder, where I was to meet my cousin and her husband to share dinner and conversation. But I arrived a bit early, so I decide to explore a bit first.

I headed right on through Boulder and onto the Burr Trail route, following it for a few miles to an overlook where the road descends into a long canyon. I arrived at close to the perfect date to see brilliant colors from autumn cottonwood trees in this valley — although the color peak may have come a few days earlier, I like the combination of colorful trees and the skeletal shapes of partially bare trees. This little valley has a flat bottom, and the trees grew across its width and right up the red rock cliff on the opposite side.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees, Gulch

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Cottonwood Trees, Steep Creek
Cottonwood Trees, Steep Creek

Cottonwood Trees, Steep Creek. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 26, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cottonwood trees in full autumn color line a gulch as it passes between sandstone hills

I came upon this beautiful cottonwood-filled valley on a short drive I took out of Boulder, Utah while waiting for my late-afternoon check-in on my first day in a motel after a week of camping. As you can imagine, I was looking forward to this change in accommodations and the chance to get a shower and sleep in a real bed!

My drive took me a short distance out on the Burr Trail, which ends in Boulder. I’ve been over a good portion of this route (which is a road, despite the “trail” in its name) a few times in the past, using it to get to Boulder from a somewhat isolated area of Capitol Reef National Park. My goal on this little drive was a long, narrow sandstone canyon that is just a few miles out of town, but it turned out that the canyon was less interesting in the light I had to work with than this stretch of cottonwoods was. I came upon this site in a spot where the road descends through a sharp set of hairpin turns as it drops toward the valley. Along this section there are turnouts that provide open views into the valley and along its course as it winds into the distance. From this spot the valley was filled with more cottonwoods than I usually see around such a creek — typically they line up along its banks, but here the filled the valley between the red rocks from side to side.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Burr Trail, Strike Valley

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Burr Trail, Strike Valley
Burr Trail, Strike Valley

Burr Trail, Strike Valley. Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. October 22, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Burr Trail route as it ascends from Strike Valley towards the ridge of Capitol Reef National Park

The Burr Trail is one of the back routes through this section of Utah. It ranges from some decent paved sections to portions that are gravel and somewhat “rustic.” This is one of the latter section, at least for a short distance, as it climbs from the valley seen in the photograph to the top of a ridge behind my camera position inside Capitol Reef National Park before heading west toward Boulder.

This climb exposes some amazing geology, most of which I can only understand in the most basic of terms. This is the Waterpocket Fold area, where the strata are inclined steeply upwards as they rise to the west, and almost everywhere the evidence of these ancient layers of rock is abundant. Here the road enters a narrow canyon at the edge of the valley and soon climbs steeply up to the ridge that runs north-south for a good distance inside the national park. The view here is across the valley — with its central ridge “rib” — toward the steep cliffs on the opposite side of the valley and then rough terrain rising to mountains beyond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Canyon Walls and Brush

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Sandstone Canyon Walls and Brush - Brush including some autumn foliage stands against a bright red sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park
Brush including some autumn foliage stands against a bright red sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

Sandstone Canyon Walls and Brush. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Forest, Utah. October 7, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Brush including some autumn foliage stands against a bright red sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

This area was yet another surprise – though perhaps only because I’m a California guy still very much in the early stages of discovering the landscape of Utah. We had driven a long route down a good part of the length of Capitol Reef National Park, climbed over the higher portion of the north-south ridge, and were heading back to our lodgings some distance away. As we drove across this new (to us!) landscape we descended into a long, narrow canyon that had some of the most beautiful red rock walls I had yet seen.

Such canyons provide a wealth of photographic opportunities and require some slightly different thinking about timing and about light. In so many situations, we look for the “good light” at the edges of the day, in the very early morning and then again in the evening. However, in these canyons that is not the only good time to search of the light. At times that are later in the morning and earlier in the afternoon, the higher sun strikes the upper walls of such canyons and reflects beautiful light down into the canyon bottoms, like that may be colored by the rocks from which it reflects. In this spot it was not very bright, but the light was beautiful! Because we were “on our way” from one place to another we almost didn’t stop, if you can believe that!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.