On a dreary Cordova afternoon, during a break from meetings, I strolled out onto the beach and found a pair of Black Oystercatchers, rather joyfully bathing in the water’s edge. The light was gray and dim, with a few spits of rain falling from the sky. Clouds hung low obscuring the still-snowy mountains. The bird’s bills and eyes were the only flash of color in the otherwise black and white landscape, of water, and clouds.

If the conditions were black and white in the first image, in this one they were solid gray. And wet. And rainy. I was standing in the damp weather just outside of downtown Cordova where a small creek enters the sound. High tide had pushed a few small flocks of shorebirds up onto the rocky beach and while defending my camera from the steadily falling rain, I snapped a few images of the passing flocks. As the tide rose higher most of the flock disappeared down the coast, and I was left alone on the shore. Until this single, tiny, Least Sandpiper dropped with a chitter onto the beach a few feet in front of mt camera’s lens. So close in fact, I had to back up to allow the 500mm to focus on the sparrow-sized bird. The rain pattered down with increasing intensity and the sandpiper tucked in amongst the rocks. I made photos, until my ride appeared and I slipped away, the Least Sandpiper still hunkered alone by the cold gray water.

I have the excellent fortune to sit on the board of Audubon Alaska, in my opinion, one of the finest and most effective environmental groups currently working in the state. Twice a year I join the rest of the board and we discuss the progress, direction, and of course, the less glamorous inner workings of the organization. It’s a great group of people, and the science-based conservation efforts are notably effective, (a welcome change from the usually unsuccessful, emotional pleas that come from other environmental groups). So please, send them some love.

The annual meeting this spring was in Cordova, Alaska. And not accidentally, the timing corresponded to the peak of the shorebird migration through the Copper River Delta. The vast mud flats, and wetlands of the delta each year host the entire world’s population of Western Sandpipers. Some 4-6 million strong. Hundreds of thousands or millions of Least Sandpipers, Dunlin, Dowitchers, Whimbrels, Godwits, Surfbirds, Knots, Oystercatchers, and other shorebirds also pay the place a visit.

In my three days there, I got a few hours of good shooting, (meetings or snotty weather interrupting all too often). It was but a taste of the photographic potential. I think I’ll be making the journey to Cordova a yearly tradition.

(Plus with an excellent photographer like Milo Burcham to host and show me around, I got the best scoop right from the start. Thanks Milo!)

This week I got an email with a pdf of a double page spread of one of my images that has just been published in a new book: “Country: Heart and Soul“. The image is a couple of years old, made during a hike from Wonder Lake to the McKinley Bar in Denali National Park.

(Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO200, f4.0, 1/40th second, handheld)

Our last days were on a river, that was no longer a river. At least not the one we had come to know. As we approached Lake Mead, though the water still flowed, visible on the canyon walls 10 or fifteen feet up, there was defined bathtub ring of dried silt. Though the reservoir hasn’t been at full capacity for many years, its fingerprint remains solidified on the rocks of the canyon.

The rapids we were accustomed to encountering every mile or so vanished, in their place were growing walls of silt, and marks on the map noting where rapids used to be. Further down, we entered a new kind of canyon, one carved not from the rock, but from millions of tons of silt deposited by the Colorado into the stagnant waters of Mead. For miles we drifted down slowly flowing water between these walls as small avalanches of silt tumbled down in a dusty plume.

It was with great irony that the water (I hesitate to call it a river) regained something of its natural color as it died in the lake. But it did. The eroding walls of silt turned the lake into a mucky brownish red.

Our last night we camped on the top of a cliff. At least it would have been the top of a cliff had the reservoir not swallowed the canyon. But as it was we stepped a few feet up from the boats onto the desert rock, and that’s where we laid our sleeping bags.

Beyond the final walls of the Grand Canyon, the Sonoran desert opened up, the skies grew large and the desert rolled rather than soared. When I turned my mind away from the dead river and murdered canyon, it was extraordinarily beautiful. The slowly moving water. The evening light on the distant cliffs.

The fire campfire crackled as the sun slipped from the tops of the bluffs, and the river whispered past and waited, waited patiently for its chance to break free.

(Wildflowers in amphitheater above Deer Creek, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO100, f8.0, 1/80th second, handheld)

The Grand Canyon is spectacular. Make no doubt about that. And you’d think, with nearly 3 weeks spent down in that maze of canyons, creeks, and soaring red walls that the photography opportunities would be limitless. You’d be wrong. The fact of the matter is that the Grand Canyon is so deep that sunlight often doesn’t reach the bottom until late in the day when the light is blistering hot (at least to a camera). During the sweet light of morning and evening, those beautiful long shadows seen in photos from the canyon’s rim, are entirely covering the depths in dark, flat, light. As one of my trip-mates said on this trip, “When I want to photograph the landscape I go into the alpine, not to the bottom of the deepest ditch in the country.”

What all of this means is that photographing the landscape was done opportunistically when the canyon opened up or when we climbed above the inner gorge into the open amphitheaters above. The rarity of those opportunities, to leave the almost-claustrophobic walls of the inner gorge, made them all the more valuable, and treasured.

(Wildflowers in Granite Park, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO100, f6.3, 1/100th, tripod)

(Colorado River and our camp across the river from Deer Creek Falls. Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @39mm, ISO100, f8.0, 2 seconds, tripod)

It seems ironic that water held such an important role in my recent trip to the deserts of the Grand Canyon. We floated our boats on the water, swam and bathed in it, while the surrounding walls and plateaus of the canyon were almost entirely deprived of it. From another perspective the importance and even abundance of water in our lives on the river was also entirely appropriate. When the Colorado Plateau rose slowly into the path of the river, some bazillions of years ago, it happened so slowly that rather than being pushed around by the geologically rising land, the river instead cut into it. One micron at a time, the water devoured the earth and created the mile-deep ditch we know as the Grand Canyon. The river was the knife, the land the bread, while the canyon is the crumbly, jagged cut of the too-dull knife.

Side canyons were born in much the same way, but unlike the main river, where the water tumbles in rapids, many of the side canyons involve water falls. These vary from small trickles of water down a cliff face to torrents gushing through hundreds of feet of space. Some were hidden high up almost inaccessible canyons, others plummeted straight into the river.

Falling water in the desert. I love the irony and juxtaposition. 

(Upper Deer Creek Falls, Deer Creek Canyon. Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @19mm, ISO100, f14, 0.3seconds, tripod)

(Deer Creek Falls, Detail. Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @39mm, ISO100, f8.0, 2 seconds, tripod)

(Sam and Matt take a beating in Deubendoff Rapid, Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8LIS @120mm, ISO400, f5.6, 1/4000th, handheld)

Horn, Granite, Hermit, Crystal and Lava. For anyone who runs rivers, those words are famous. They are the names of five of the biggest rapids on the Colorado River. Horn is technically tricky with a nasty area of holes and waves in the bottom known as “the land of the giants”. Granite has long, breaking, lateral waves that reach out from an encroaching rock wall and threaten to flip any poorly aligned raft. Hermit has the biggest waves on the river. Crystal, created by a flash flood in 1966, has killed more river runners than any other rapid on the river. Lava Falls is huge, simply huge, and the Colorado’s fastest water with speeds well above 20mph. The run through Lava must be done to perfection.

Rapids make noise, and a lot of it. Rarely, at our camps were we out of earshot of one rapid or another, and when we were, the canyon seemed strangely silent, maybe even a little foreboding. Each rapid sounds a bit different from every other rapid. The different holes, waves, and rocks each contribute a tone, or note to the song, and those sounds dictate how the rapid made me feel.

The riffles, the easy tongues of glassy of water followed by a wave train, laugh. They chuckle and giggle, as the rafts roll over the waves and splash water happily into the air. Some of the bigger rapids, like Hermit, also laugh, but deep and throaty. A laugh that can be at your expense. Crystal Rapid snarled, mean and threatening. It’s clear from the sound alone that Crystal Rapids does not like you, and will not hesitate to send you and your boat head over heels into the churning river. It’s done it hundreds of times, it did it to one of our boats and it will do it again and again without regret . (More on that in a later post).

The rapids of the Colorado held some of the greatest obstacles, risks, and joys of the trip. They have to be run, it’s the only way down, but running a rapid poorly can be scary, outright terrifying, and even dangerous. However a rapid shot cleanly, holding the perfect line, riding the waves like a roller-coaster, while dodging the rocks and boat-flipping holes,  is a pleasure beyond measure.

If you can see the faces in the photos you’ll know which side of the white-water coin these boatmen have received.

(Plowing through the huge waves of Hermit Rapid, Canon 7D, 70-200 f2.8LIS @75mm, ISO200, f6.3, 1/1000th, handheld)

(Patrick takes a breather after running a few rapids in his packraft, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO100, f6.3, 1/400th, handheld from nearby raft)

(Almost airborne in Deubendorff, Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8LIS @100mm, ISO400, f5.6, 1/2500th, handheld)

(Granite Rapid gives the raft a smack, Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8LIS @100mm, ISO400, f5.6, 1/2500th, handheld)

(Hiking through the lower reaches of Tuckup Canyon, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO200, f5.6, 1/125th, handheld)

River trips aren’t easy. They require an extraordinary amount of work. Packing and unpacking, rigging and de-rigging the boats, hauling equipment, cooking and cleaning, setting up and disassembling kitchens, folding chairs, fire pans, tarps… There is a sea of daily work that has to be done. Yet, somehow, between the obligatory chores we found time to get out and really play.

Funny how the word “play” seems to indicate that what we did was frivolous. It wasn’t. What we did, (though I don’t think we were always aware of it at the time), was immerse ourselves more deeply in the place. The desert isn’t a world of flowing water and river sounds. It is a region of dry rock and hardy, prickly vegetation. It is a place that bakes in the sun, and survives, by holding on to the cracks in the rocks. By wandering away from the water, we found ourselves outside the river-world that was our daily routine. We experienced the canyon in a much fuller sense. The little-visited side-canyons we accessed by clawing ourselves up wet, dripping cliff faces, were fun interludes, certainly, but also gave us a broader perspective on the canyon experience. Sure it was play, but play with purpose.

As for jumping off cliffs into the river? Well there is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but it sure was fun.

(Matt soars over the Grand Canyon near Deer Creek, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO400, f6.3, 1/1250th, handheld.)

(Red stands in silhouette against the canyon at the top of the 7th step of Elve’s Chasm, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @40mm, ISO200, f9.0, 1/500th, handheld)

(The Colorado River from Lower Tuckup Canyon Camp, Canon 7D, 17-40 f4L, @17mm, ISO 800, f4.0, 30seconds, tripod)

I’m spoiled by stars. Alaska is big and wild, and even at my home just a few miles north of Fairbanks, the city lights are only a distant nuisance, and the night skies are a wide-open beach of stars. But the desert… Wow, what nights! The cloudless skies, distance to cities, and the clear desert air allow an almost unsurpassed view of our galaxy. Combine the astral scenery with the rising canyon walls, the river, the warmth of a campfire, and its hard to imagine anything better. In fact, I don’t think it actually does get much better. Some of my favorite moments of the trip were spent around the evening fire. There was a lot of laughter and reliving the day’s adventures and misadventures. I’d tilt my head back to block the light from the fire and stare up at the slowly rotating mosaic above, identify the few constellations and planets I recognized, sip my beer and stare. When the moon rose, it was like a muted daylight as the formerly silhouetted canyon sprang back to sleepy life. The cracks, aretes, and ridges regained texture in the gray moonlight.

Occasionally, I’d make a few images.

(Camp at Upper Tuna, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L, @17mm, ISO400, f4.0, 30seconds)

(Camp, Lower Tuckup, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L, @17mm, ISO800, f4.5, 20seconds, tripod)

(Tent, illuminated by headlamp from within, Tuckup Canyon Camp, Canon 7D, 17-40f4.0L @19mm, ISO 800, f4.0, 20seconds, tripod)

(Canyon walls and night sky, Whitmore Wash. Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @17mm, ISO800, f4.0, 30 seconds, tripod, wall lit by handheld flash off camera behind and above camera, gelled with two full cuts of CTO)

These image and others from the Grand Canyon are available for purchase as prints or digital downloads on my stock site right HERE.

The Grand Canyon was… well it was… I guess it was actually something like…

What do I say about nearly three weeks rafting down the Grand Canyon? Every day was different, so I guess I should just start at the beginning and see what happens:

(Early morning on the south rim from the Bright Angel Trailhead, Canon 7D, 17-40 f4L, @28mm, ISO 100, f4.0, 1/40th second, handheld)

My father, another member of our trip, and I hiked down into the Canyon via the well-used Bright Angel Trail. It was a long nine miles and 4600 vertical feet down (the soreness from too much weight in my pack lingered for several days afterward). We joined our group at Phantom Ranch, the rest of whom had started ten days earlier at Lee’s Ferry, 80-some miles upstream. We were late arriving and were hustled by my friend and trip leader Hugh Rose to get our stuff transferred to dry bags and get dressed in river-wear for the late afternoon run through Horn Rapid, one of the five major rapids of the trip. Weather was rolling in and though the skies remained bright and sunny, a menacing wind had begun ripping up the canyon and throwing sand from the beach into our faces. Within the hour we were floating down river, through some riffles and small rapids to the scout at Horn. We climbed onto a rocky outcrop above the rapid and stared down at the churning water below. It was my first big water rapid in the Grand and it looked ugly. Smooth water flowed down from river left where two points of rock (the “Horns”) created doming formations of water. The run over the horns, the safest option in high water, looked dangerously shallow. The alternative route to the right of the horns, runs the risk of a slide into the turmoil of huge waves and holes at the bottom of the rapid.

I was passenger in the first boat, rowed by Hugh. We floated in the slow water upstream from the rapid and peered down over the horizon line, unable to make out anything but the occasional plume of spray launched by the waves below our line of sight. Slowly, slowly, we eased down into the current until we were whisked away by the increasing pace of the tumbling water. I could see our line was imperfect, a bit right of where we needed to be. Hugh pulled hard against the oars, but the pressure of the water was too much to overcome and we sped into the mess. Hugh straightened the boat out just as we plowed through the first hole. Water poured over us, and then we were up onto the standing waves. Up and down, spray tumbling until, quite suddenly we were out and Hugh was pulling into the eddy below the rapid. We hollered in celebration and looked up at the rest of the group who were watching from the scout above, all cheering our wild but successful run. One by one the rest of the boats followed, all opting for the safer route between the horns.

Another couple of miles and we pulled into our first camp just above Granite Rapid at the outflow of Monument Creek. With impeccable timing, just after dinner the storm arrived and rain pattered hard on the tent throughout the night as wind tore through the tamarisks around our camp. In the morning, the rain had reduced to a drizzle as the group slowly arose for a lazy layover day.

The storm came and went, and with it, the lovely and rare storm light. Patrick Endres and I scurried about during these interludes, making images when we could. By evening, the sky was clear as the storm yielded to the dry desert air.

(These images, and others are for sale on my stock site HERE as prints and digital downloads, more canyon images are being uploaded daily until they are all processed)

(Clearing storm over the Colorado River near the Confluence with Monument Creek, Canon 7D, 17-40 f4L @29mm, ISO 100, f22, 1/20th second, tripod)

(Granite Rapid and moss-covered wall. Canon 7D, 70-200 f2.8L IS @195mm, ISO 100, f18, 1/8th second, tripod)

(Storm light on the Canyon from Monument Creek, Canon 7D, 17-40 f4L @17mm, ISO 100, f8.0, 1/125th second, tripod)

(Desert brush and the cliffs of the inner gorge, Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @19mm, ISO 100, f11, 1/15th second, tripod)