Saturday, July 31, 2010

Rock formations on Mount Hope


Snapped these on the way down. A storm was blowing in.

AZ Sunset


Sunset over the hill separating Homestead from Headquarters, taken on our first night at the ranch.


An earlier shot, reflected in the pool.

Climbing Mount Hope

Two years ago Tracy and I tried to climb Mount Hope - but weren't able to make it to the top: I picked a lousy route and we ran out of water. This time, we tried again.


We parked in about the same spot - a good long way from the base of the northern face of the mountain. You can get an idea of the distance from the picture above. There are no trails - we just pick a direction that looks good. The route we took went past some cool rock formations - still far from the base of the mountain.



From there the route ran around clumps of junipers until the ground started to slope up. We walked up the slope to the pine tree in the upper right of the photo, then to the right of the tree.




After that, things became much more difficult. The scrub forced us to either walk straight up the mountain or left and down. Left was good - down not so much. We zigzagged up and over along the base of the cliffs on the right-hand peak until we actually met the cliffs. The going was very steep.




The cliffs were manageable on the edges, so I went that way. Tracy bushwhacked to the left of the cliffs, not wanting to climb them.




But we made it to the top. The views were spectacular - but with all the rain, it was actually a little hazy. Fairly rare for high desert!




More later. These are original iPhone 4 pictures. No retouching.

Quick Test from the Ranch

Just a quick post to test BlogPress since I have signal. Here's a shot of Mount Hope:




More to come later!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Crabtree Falls

Charlotte Vanverdeghem is visiting us from France this week and next. Next week we'll be at the O RO Ranch (expect photos when we return!) but for now, we're hanging out at home and doing stuff in the area. Yesterday, we braved the near 100ยบ temperatures and hiked Crabtree Falls. Here's a photo of the lower portion of the falls. I'd taken my tripod in the car so I could shoot the falls with the neutral density, but some wiseguy told me there wasn't any water. And I believed him, since it was and had been so hot. This is handheld at 1/10 second; still has nice motion blur, even without the multi-second exposures possible with the ND and tripod. No good for pixel peeping, but plenty good at lower resolutions.


Here's another picture of the lower falls, with Charlotte in the foreground. Another handheld 1/10 second exposure - Charlotte held nice and still for me.


At one of our breaks, I caught her taking a picture. She was on top of a rock and I was below her shooting up. Despite the angle, it looks natural, and the angle generated fantastic fore- and background blur. No Photoshopping here - this is straight from the lens (with minor color correction).


It was hot, but there was a decent breeze near the water, which the trail followed pretty closely. So in spite of the heat, we pressed on and made it to the top. There, we had lunch and enjoyed the view before heading back. It was hazy, which was too bad, but the view from the summit was still impressive.


Tracy, however, refused to smile when I took a picture of her and Charlotte.