Kolab Canyon, July 2009

Our last hike on the vacation was in the Northern end of Zion. It's a smaller canyon called Kolob Canyon. If you were to drive up there to look at it, you probably wouldn't be as impressed as you were with Zion. There is a small five mile road which takes you to a view point where you can see the entire canyon. Along the way there are turnouts and parking spaces at the trail heads. We took the Middle Fork Taylor Creek trail up to the Double Arch Alcove. I think the actual arch is further up, but we stopped at the alcove and went back. The hike was around 5 miles round trip but worth it.

Here is the link to the album:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/sets/72157621900442248/

I think this is my favorite photo of the trip (actually two of them. I can't decide which I like more):




Here are some photos of the alcove.






The trail heading into the alcove was cool, too. It crossed the stream multiple times.


This is leading back out of the trail up to the parking area.


And finally, here's my Dad doing a victory dance to the Rocky theme after making it out of there alive.


Kolob Canyon was my second favorite trip of the vacation. The alcove was absolutely amazing. It was enormous. One of those situations where you really hope the pictures even remotely do it justice.

Also, big thanks to the rangers we ran into on the trail who hooked us up with some additional water. My Dad's little water bottle wasn't cutting it. Maybe I'll buy him a camelbak his next trip out here. I know I wouldn't have survived this weekend without mine.

Zion National Park, July 2009

The day after visiting Bryce Canyon, we headed up to Zion. Unfortunately we weren't able to spend nearly as much time in Zion as I would have liked, but I did get a few pictures along the way. I'm not nearly as impressed with Zion as I was Bryce Canyon. Maybe if I was able to hike Zion more, I would have gained more appreciation for it, but based on my limited experience, Bryce has it beat in terms of shear awe.

My Zion photos can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/sets/72157621888893306/

Here are a few of my favorites...

This is the fall that leads to the Emerald Pool. If you get there earlier in the year, there is much more water if you hit it earlier in the season when there is runoff coming down from the mountains above. The hike takes you back under that rock, behind the waterfall.


There was a little bit of water coming down, but not much:


At the very top of Zion you hit a point called Big Bend. From that point forward, you can hike into the narrows. I would like to go back to hike them at some point. Clouds were coming in at this point and I was able to catch this one blowing in over the back of this mountain here.


One of my favorite things about this area is the random places plants find to grow. This is a pretty common scene down there. A large chunk of rock falls off and creates a ledge. Plant life finds its way up there and is able to get enough moisture to grow.


That's all I really liked about my Zion trip. Next up is Kolob Canyon which is part of the Zion park, but much further north than the main canyon. I will be editing those photos and posting soon.

Bryce Canyon Utah, 2009

Mushna and I visited Southern Utah last week. We left Wednesday morning the 22nd at around 9:00 am and decided to make a detour to Bryce Canyon on the way down. I'm glad we did because I think it was my favorite hike of the trip. We took the Queen's Garden trail down and connected to the Navajo Loop trail to get back up. All around it was about two and a half miles.

You can view the entire set of photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/sets/72157621743222311/

Here are a few of my favorites (click for larger photos):


These are the switchbacks heading out of the canyon up to the rim. It was pretty steep.




The trail is named after a rock that resembles a queen (Queen Victoria) which can be seen in this photo. Clicking on the photo will take you to my flickr photo which includes a note as to where exactly this rock is. Since I was using my 10-20 exclusively down there, my reach was limited.




This is one of my favorites from the entire trip.


This is another of my favorites.


We also spent some time at Red Canyon which is near Bryce Canyon. Here's another one of my favorite shots, taken in Red Canyon.


Red Canyon is small, so we didn't spend too much time there. Here is the gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/sets/72157621867621316/

We decided to take the scenic route down through Arizona then connect back up to Utah and finally land in Hurricane where our hotel was located. We made it there at around 10:00 that night exhausted, but excited.

I used Adobe Camera RAW to saturate the skies a bit, but the sun shining down on those big red rocks gave amazing exposures to begin with, so I didn't have to do much in order to get these to where they are now. I did bring my Cokin filters down, but forgot my adapter ring and holder, so I was pretty glad these came out as well as they did.

I will post Zion and Kolob photos when I get them finished. I was also volunteered to take family photos, so I will post a few highlights from that as well when I get there.