Winter has settled in across northern Arizona with snow covering the ground and ice in the canyons. This is a beautiful time of the year for photography if you do not mind being cold while finding that special location.
Bare trees…rock walls…and ice covered streams in West Fork Oak Creek.
We hiked up the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon on a well-traveled but snow-packed and icy trail. Some sort of boot traction (e.g., YakTrax, Kahtoola) would have been useful but with care and an easy pace we were able to move about without any difficulties. The water level in the creek was about normal making for fairly easy stream crossings. And there are quite a few.
Reflections of canyon walls in West Fork Oak Creek.
The afternoon sun bouncing off the high canyon walls and then reflected in the water created the right setup for photographs and all that was needed was some interesting ice to complement the scene. We found plenty.
Canyon wall reflections and delicate ice in West Fork Oak Creek.
This is a moderately high-walled canyon and very little direct sun shines down on the canyon floor so that it remains quite chilly even in the afternoon. As long as we kept moving we stayed warm. Stop to take a picture — and get cold.
Deep shadows in the narrows of West Fork Oak Creek.
Slide Rock State Park is a great place to visit. The water from Oak Creek becomes channeled as it flows through multiple layers of sandstone resulting in some deep and narrow pools of water. On a hot summer day the area is filled with people swimming and having a grand time.
If you arrive here early in the morning you can catch some beautiful light reflecting off the high sandstone cliffs onto the water below.
Water cascades through the sandstone, snow, and ice in Slide Rock State Park.
Earlier this year I had an opportunity to take part in a photo workshop at this location. After that summer workshop I was determined to return in the winter and capture some images with snow on the sandstone. Snow isn’t rare in this location — it’s at an elevation of around 5000 feet, after all. But snow doesn’t last long at these elevations in Arizona, either.
Slide Rock State Park with layers of ice, snow, and sandstone.
A recent series of snow storms put snow on the ground at elevations even lower than Slide Rock so this was a great opportunity. I left Flagstaff before sunrise and the temperature was a very cold 0°F at an elevation of 7000 feet. By the time I had descended down Oak Creek Canyon to 5000 feet the temperature had warmed to a balmier 19°F. To make it even more uncomfortable, there was a down-canyon wind blowing to bring on some wind chill.
Still, I was determined to try.
Slide Rock State Park, Oak Creek Canyon.
The lighting was very challenging as the upper canyon walls began to light up with the rising sun. The normally red rocks were brilliant with snow and it was all too easy to overexpose the upper portions of the canyon walls while being underexposed within the Slide Rock area.
Rather than try to capture “everything” it was more reasonable to focus on the water, rocks and snow that were all still in the deep shadows of the canyon.
A delicate cascade of water produces icicles on the leaves and branches.
As the sun rose higher and the shadows disappeared other photographers arrived. Perhaps they knew better than I that the best light was after the sun was higher in the sky. Or, perhaps just as likely, they weren’t willing to photograph in well below freezing temperatures. Either way, I had the area to myself for over an hour of shooting and I had a great time.
It’s that special time of year in northern Arizona. The thunderstorms and cloudy days of the summer rainy season are history and have been replaced with day after day of perfect weather. Warm days. Cool nights. Cloudless skies. Light winds.
Fall colors near Aspen Corner on Snowbowl Road.
And, of course, the leaves are changing colors.
The view along the road is spectacular.
It’s mid-October and the colors have hit their peak at the higher elevations of the Kachina Peaks. Lower down, the colors are quickly approaching their peak. But it won’t last long. All it takes is one windy day or another hard freeze and it will be over for this year.
Everyone has an aspen image that looks like this!.You should have one, too!
I took some time early this morning wandering around the aspen along Snowbowl Road and found some groves in full color. Interestingly, a few groves were still green and a few others were already done. But most were hitting that perfect peak.
Last week another tornado moved across northern Arizona. The damage produced by this tornado was confined to a small area and was nothing like the tornado outbreak of 06 October 2010.
What makes this tornado interesting is where it occurred. The tornado formed just west of the San Francisco Peaks and then moved up the west flank of Humphreys Peak. Damage was isolated along the early portion of the path at around 9000 feet. As it moved up the mountain, damage increased in intensity and coverage with the peak damage occurring near 9800 feet. Farther up the mountain isolated damage continued until the tornado dissipated near 10500 feet.
The worst damage occurred as the tornado crossed the Humphreys Trail just a short distance from the trail register. In the first few days after the event travel along this section of the trail can best be characterized as challenging. Climbing over and under downed trees — and around others — certainly slows the hiking pace.
Somewhere under all those trees is the Humphreys Trail.
This is not the highest elevation tornado of record. That belongs to a tornado that occurred in the Sierra Nevada mountains a few years ago with evidence of damage at elevations above 12000 feet.
The limited damage inflicted upon the mountain might never have been noticed if it had not passed over a heavily used hiking trail. Now that’s serendipity. Or bad luck.
Nobody saw the tornado so all we have to go on is the radar data. And according to that information the event occurred between 5:25 and 5:35 pm on 14 September 2011.
It’s been an interesting spring as the La Niña conditions of this past winter continue to abate. One of the characteristics of this diminishing pattern has been for low pressure systems to drop southeastward from the eastern Pacific and west coast and then across the southwestern states. Springtime low pressure systems routinely move across the southwest and bring strong winds to Arizona and these systems have been quite normal in that respect, that is, it’s been very windy.
But they have also brought the core of the low pressure system farther south than is typical and across Arizona. The result has been a combination of below normal temperatures and above normal rain along with snow in the higher elevations.
We had three days of snow last week — but only trace amounts fell across the area — and now we are having a real bona fide snow event. A few inches of snow have accumulated at elevations above 7000 feet.
Snowy scene in northern Arizona – in mid May.
Will this be the final event of this winter-like spring? Or will we see snow again? The record books show that snow isn’t rare in May at these elevations — and snow in June has happened on a number of occasions, too.
We’re all looking forward to spring finally arriving before the calendar says summer.
