Posts Tagged ‘Oregon’

Northern Sierra Nevada Fall Color

November 9th, 2011

Fall Color In The Northern Sierra Nevada Of Northeastern California

Indian Creek Above Indian Falls, Fall Color, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2011 by David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90. Single exposure. I saw this scene with the sunlight on a large area of the trees making an array of reflections as I drove home from the annual Apple Harvest at the Dawn Institute near Indian Falls. By the time I turned around, came back, parked and set up, the sunlight had faded down to this one small spotlight. There were no more still afternoons on Indian Creek when I looked before the trees lost most of their leaves.

Autumn 2011 has been the strangest Fall color season yet in the Sierra Nevada of Northern California. Many types of trees in the Northern Sierra have had a leaf disease. I have seen it mainly effecting black oaks and some maples, but also showing up on the leaves of some Indian Rhubarb. The leaf disease has caused many deciduous trees to turn brown and not produce any Fall color at all. Because of erratic weather and temperatures, some trees without leaf disease dropped their green summer cloaks slower than usual, others changed into their Fall color dressing much faster than usual.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service puts out a report called Pest Alert. The following is what Pest Alert said about this leaf disease:

A phenomenon known as Sudden Oak Death was first reported in 1995 in central coastal California. Since then, tens of thousands of tanoaks (Lithocarpus densiflorus), coast live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), and California black oaks (Quercus kelloggii) have been killed by a newly identified fungus, Phytophthora ramorum. On these hosts, the fungus causes a bleeding canker on the stem. The pathogen also infects Rhododendron spp., huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), bay laurel (Umbellularia californica), madrone (Arbutus menziesii), bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita), and California buckeye (Aesculus californica). On these hosts the fungus causes leaf spot and twig dieback. As of January 2002, the disease was known to occur only in California and southwestern Oregon; however, transporting infected hosts may spread the disease. The pathogen has the potential to infect oaks and other trees and shrubs elsewhere in the United States. Limited tests show that many oaks are susceptible to the fungus, including northern red oak and pin oak, which are highly susceptible. On oaks and tanoak, cankers are formed on the stems. Cankered trees may survive for one to several years, but once crown dieback begins, leaves turn from green to pale yellow to brown within a few weeks. A black or reddish ooze often bleeds from the cankers, staining the surface of the bark and the lichens that grow on it. Bleeding ooze may be difficult to see if it has dried or has been washed off by rain, although remnant dark staining is usually present.

Indian Rhubarb Near Indian Falls, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2011 by David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90. Single exposure. The wild Indian Rhubarb had just begun to change color as I made this photograph. I probably missed the peak of the Indian Rhubarb because I haven't made it back since.

I have seen the red ooze or the dark stain on many leaves of many trees this Fall season. Some disease has also infected the aspens, the leaves of which in many cases this Fall turned straight from green to brown, or from green briefly to gold and then to brown. Before the last storm, some of the Indian Rhubarb looked like it was starting to show some good color. At first, in early October, it seemed all the tree species leaves were turning faster than usual, then for about a week everything turned very slowly. It was unusually warm into early October. We went skinny dipping in Indian Creek on October 1. It was a bit too cold to feel the elation Walt Whitman described in Leaves of Grass, but it was the first time we have ever swam in Indian Creek that late in the year without wetsuits and river rafts. In early October the oaks were just starting to go yellow and I’m sure the aspens were already turning up high. In the second week of October I heard that the aspens at higher elevations had gone straight from green leaves to brown. Here the few my mother planted were normal: their leaves turned from green to yellow and gold.

Maple Impressions, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2011 by David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90. Single exposure. I tried a number of soft focus images of this composition. This was the frame that seemed to work best, but I'm still not sure if it is as I would like it to be.

After being warm enough to skinny dip on October 1, it snowed the morning of October 5. The temperatures dropped from 85 plus degrees Fahrenheit in a few days down to 34 degrees with a light dusting of snow. The temperature drop brought on the Fall color. During the first week of October, in a sea of green leaves I saw only one yellow Indian Rhubarb leaf. Today I will go check on more patches of wild Indian Rhubarb, but I believe I missed the peak of the Fall color for the Indian Rhubarb, which is a shame. I had looked forward to a lot of Fall color photography this year, but it has been for the most part a disappointment, except for in my mother’s garden right around the house where her dogwoods and Japanese maples were consistently brilliant in oranges, yellows, and reds as usual. The Virginia Creeper also proved disappointing, changing straight from green to red without much in between this year. For more contemporary landscape photography see the blog post, “David Leland Hyde Archival Print Pre-Launch.”

Was your Fall color season unusual this year? Where did you photograph?

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Oregon Cascades Conservation: Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area

August 15th, 2011

The Cascade Mountain Range, National Parks and Wilderness Areas Of The Northwestern U.S.

Mount Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, Oregon, copyright 1959 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph large: “Mount Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades.”)

The Cascade Mountain Range, a string of volcanic peaks and vertically thrust rocky crags, runs from Northern California through Oregon and Washington and into Canada. Land battles in the 1950s and 1960s over the lush forests of the Cascade Mountains in the Northwestern United States, helped shape future strategy for wilderness conservation campaigns across the nation.

As the U. S. Forest Service and the timber industry, on one side, grabbed for more trees to mill, recreationists and environmentalists, on the other side, attempted to save their beloved woodlands, river valleys and rainforests from destruction. When enough public outcry supported the protection of an area, it became a National Park such as North Cascades or Olympic National Park. However, just obtaining wilderness status for many wild areas engendered a terrific political and often legal war.

The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area became one of the many controversies of the 1960s. Mount Jefferson is Oregon’s second highest peak (10,249 feet) behind Mount Hood (11,497) and not to be confused with the Mount Jefferson in Montana, or in Utah, or the mountain bearing Thomas Jefferson’s carved likeness in North Dakota. Mount Jefferson of the Central Oregon Cascades is surrounded by plentiful lakes, steep raging rivers and lush river valleys riddled with gold and silver mining claims, cattle grazing and thick stands of mixed conifer trees.

In 1959, after conferring on strategy and partial funding with David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Philip Hyde hired mountaineer and wilderness guide Fred Behm as a horse packing guide. Fred Behm led Ardis and Philip Hyde by horseback pack trip into the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area. Philip Hyde made photographs for use by the Sierra Club and local Oregon environmental groups working to attain permanent wilderness designation or national park status for the Jefferson Wilderness Area.

U.S. Forest Service’s Controversial Redrawing Of Cascades Wilderness Area Boundaries In The 1960s

Mount Jefferson Primitive Area, one of the largest in Oregon, formed in 1930. It stretched across the Deschutes, Mount Hood, and Willamette National Forests. Each of these National Forests helped manage the primitive area. Lumbering slowed significantly during the Great Depression, but took off again during and after World War II. In the Willamette National Forest, the volume of logs cut more than quadrupled between 1945 and 1955 and continued to increase for decades. The Forest Service began to reclassify many primitive areas as either multiple use or permanent wilderness without any input from locals. Frequented by hikers, fishers and small boaters, Mount Jefferson Primitive Area had some of the highest recreation levels of any wilderness in the Northwest, second in Oregon only to the Three Sisters Wilderness to the south.

In his autobiography, In The Thick of It: My Life In The Sierra Club, Michael McCloskey wrote:

In the early 1960s, the Forest Service was using its administrative powers to decide how much land it wanted to put into its new wilderness system. Wilderness areas in this system would have carefully considered boundaries and would be permanently managed as wilderness, without roads or logging. In contrast, primitive areas, which had been set aside earlier under regulations of the 1920s, allowed some roads, had boundaries drawn with little study, and were only provisional in nature. In response to pressures to better protect primitive areas, the Forest Service had decided to either reclassify them as wilderness areas or to drop the provisional protection it had accorded them.

When reclassifying the Three Sisters Wilderness, the Forest Service dropped 53,000 acres from the wilderness area. After a 25 year struggle from grass roots activist groups and conservationists, Congress finally added 45,000 of these acres back into the Three Sisters Wilderness in 1978, part of which consisted of the west side of beautiful Waldo Lake.

U.S. Forest Service Preserves ‘Everything But The Trees’ In The Mount Jefferson Wilderness

The Mount Jefferson Primitive Area ran in a long, narrow strip along the spine of the Oregon Cascade Mountains with Mount Jefferson on the north end and a peak called Three Fingered Jack on the south. In the Oregon Cascade Mountains, most of the largest and thickest timber stands in the 1960s were below 3,500 feet in elevation. Unlike the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, the Mount Jefferson Primitive Area was mainly above 3,500 feet and did not contain as much valuable timber. Kevin R. Marsh explained in Drawing Lines In The Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas In the Pacific Northwest:

Since the crux of wilderness debates in the Northwest focused mainly on valleys below 3,500 feet, the creation of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area out of the old primitive area focused on whether to protect from logging some of the lower forests outside the original boundaries…. In 1963, the Forest Service agreed to expand the boundaries outward east and south, adding more acreage to the protected area, but it stopped short of including the forests of the western valleys. In fact, the new boundaries would reduce the protection offered… lower-elevation forests contained in the existing primitive area and open them up to the timber sale program. By 1962, as the debate over proposed new wilderness boundaries continued, the Forest Service built a road and sold timber deep into the Whitewater Valley, close to the boundary of the primitive area…. Increasingly, the attention from all sides focused on Wildlands outside the existing boundaries of formally protected areas: the “de facto wilderness.” The Mount Jefferson debates reflected this changing aspect of wilderness debates throughout the country after passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. The Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area has not garnered much attention from historians and others concerned with wilderness in the United States, but the Mount Jefferson debates are important because they demonstrate a new emphasis on de facto wilderness lands and on struggles over the definition of ‘wilderness.’… The Obsidians, a Eugene, Oregon hiking club, joined five other groups, including the Oregon Cascades Conservation Council, to submit a proposal to increase the size of the area…

Leapfrog Logging Keeps Old Growth Timber Wilderness In Reach Of Lumber Companies

Michael McCloskey acted as legal council and Sierra Club adviser to those working to prevent land from being cut out and removed from within the final wilderness area boundaries. In the process he carefully explored the periphery of the primitive area to see how suitable the old boundaries were. He identified the practice of “leapfrog logging,” the Forest Service tactic of trying to define future boundaries by building access roads right up to the original primitive area boundary while passing by large sections of untouched timber. The presence of the road and logging at the end of it, blocked the land from potentially being designated as wilderness. Environmentalists led by Michael McCloskey applied their own techniques to build a case for expanding the existing wilderness. Michael McCloskey described the method himself:

The technique involved sampling the core values of the area (via a backpacking trip, a horse pack trip, or an overflight); driving every road to the edge of the wilderness area; looking at every peripheral development; evaluating competing values and alternative uses of the resources found there…. People valued these areas for many reasons: to experience wild country, to see mountain scenery, to walk through old-growth forests, to hunt and fish in less crowded areas, and to simply get away from civilization.

Local Citizens Lead Grassroots Environmental Campaigns To Preserve Cascade Mountain Wilderness

People were willing to fight for these wilderness values. Kevin R. Marsh explained one reason why:

The Forest Service roads and clear cuts deep in the Whitewater Creek valley were powerful examples of why wilderness activists focused so much energy on codifying a wilderness system created and maintained by Congress. In the long run… the Wilderness Act resulted in a massive increase in the acreage of land protected as wilderness in the United States…. Following that mandate, the Forest Service reexamined the Mount Jefferson area, the first primitive area in the Cascades to undergo review under the requirements of the Wilderness Act. Expanding wilderness protection into more valuable, lower-elevation forests, however, carried too much additional cost to the industry…. The conservationists proposal would reduce the available timber supply to the local economy by eleven million board feet annually, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield claimed, and ‘serious economic hardship  could result….’ To add the forested areas proposed by conservationists would result in the loss of six hundred jobs in the local economy, regional forester Herbert Stone claimed. As a result, the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area, as approved by Congress in 1968, did not include the Whitewater Valley.

Even though the final boundaries of the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area did not include the Whitewater Valley, conservationists did succeed in persuading Congress to include other expansion areas such as Marion Lake and a few other tracts of undisturbed forest.

To learn about how conservation strategy in the Cascade Mountains had national impact and to discover more on how Cascade Mountain wilderness battles helped environmentalists refine their message into the Wilderness Act see the blog post, “The Oregon Cascades’ Impact On Conservation.” Also, discover more about the protection of the Cascades Mountains in blog posts to come, particularly the creation of North Cascades National Park and the protection of Glacier Peak Wilderness, both in the state of Washington.

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New Release Pricing Extended

December 20th, 2010

Current Blog Post below this announcement…

Two 2010 New Releases Are Still At New Release Pricing Extended Through January:

1. “Men of Oaxaca Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1990″ Click Here to view,

2. “Mt. Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, 1959″ Click Here to view,

Find also at PhilipHyde.com in the “New Releases Portfolio.”

For a breakdown of new release pricing see the blog post, “New Release Pricing.”

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November 2010 Digital Print Contest

November 6th, 2010

Philip Hyde Authorized 11X14 Archival Digital Print Of Your Choice Awarded To The Winner ($450 Value)

Alder And Redwoods In The Fog, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California, 1962 by Philip Hyde. Widely exhibited and published including as the promotional photograph for a Documentary on the Redwoods that won the Adademy Award.

(To see the photograph full screen Click Here.)

As announced at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, I will be giving away an 11X14 Philip Hyde photographer authorized special edition numbered archival fine art digital print of your choice from the images available as archival digital prints on PhilipHyde.com, a $450 value.

As a side note remember that Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes exhibition at Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver is still up for another week, as is the Golden Decade Exhibition in the San Francisco Bay Area at Smith Andersen North Gallery.

Photograph, Film And Contest

The photograph above, “Alder And Redwoods In The Fog, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California, 1962,” was the promotional photograph for a documentary film produced in the mid-1960s about the Redwoods that won the “Oscar” or “Academy Award” from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. My father, landscape photographer Philip Hyde, in taped interviews I did of him mentioned the film and that it had won the Academy Award. Also, Michael McCloskey, Executive Director of the Sierra Club after David Brower, wrote about the Academy Award winning film briefly in his book, In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club. Michael McCloskey is still around and active working in conservation. He was famous for stabilizing the Sierra Club after its civil war, for being a legal advisor to the Sierra Club and earlier for helping to organize and systematize the grassroots conservation efforts in Oregon and Washington. I asked him recently if he could remember the name of the film and he did not know for sure. It may have the same title as the book of my father’s photographs, The Last Redwoods, it may not. I have already checked with the Sierra Club and they don’t know. However, somebody who knows films or knows how to research films in Hollywood may be able to win fairly easily. There may even be a book or a website that lists the Academy Awards.

The Game And The Rules

The rules of the contest are simple. The archival fine art digital print can be won by correctly identifying which year the film came out between 1962 and 1968, the proper full name of the film and whether it won the Academy Award or was merely nominated, as well as some descriptive information, how long it is, summary, etc, about the film including where and how it can be viewed or purchased. Also, here’s the most challenging part, you must prove, either with an image, link to an image, a third-party witness or in some other documented way that it is indeed the film that “Alder And Redwoods In The Fog, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California, 1962,” was the promotional photograph for. The first person to get this information to me wins. I will keep the contest open until the end of November. Winning merely requires a bit of digging in the right places. I could probably find it myself, but I have too many other facts to verify and research. Besides, I thought this would be a fun way for someone to participate in finding out. Good luck and don’t hesitate to comment here or write me if you have questions about the contest.

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The Oregon Cascades’ Impact On Conservation

June 14th, 2010

The National Implications of Land Wars Over the Oregon Cascade Mountain Forests

Ardis Hyde On Horseback With Packer Tom McAllister From Portland At Waldo Lake, Oregon Cascades, Oregon, 1969 by Philip Hyde.

Heated land use debates in the 1950s and 1960s concerning the forests of the Cascade Mountains in the Northwestern United States, helped define the future of wilderness protection nationwide. While the battle over the dams in Dinosaur National Monument took the national stage sooner, launched the modern environmental movement and set a precedent that would keep industrialists out of the National Park System; the land battles over the lush forests in the Northwestern U.S. began around the same time and cannot be underestimated in their national impact.

Decisions in Oregon and Washington State affected forest management policy in the National Forest System more than the National Park System. Nonetheless, the resulting conflicts and their outcomes played a significant role in the eventual forging of the Wilderness Act in Congress and provided a blueprint for grassroots environmental campaigns all over the country, particularly in the West where wilderness came under the greatest threat of desecration by resource exploitation.

The main purpose of the post-World War II Forest Service was to supply timber. The policy of multiple use often translated into allowing various uses of public lands, as long as they could co-exist with logging. Lumber companies kept pressure on the Forest Service to provide a guaranteed supply of logs. “An era of stewardship of the nation’s public forests gave way to an emphasis on rapid extraction of timber resources,” wrote Kevin R. Marsh in Drawing Lines in the Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas in the Pacific Northwest. “This spawned a grassroots movement that ultimately challenged the managerial power of the Forest Service.” It was 10 years in the making, but the Wilderness Act of 1964 finally opened the process to citizen participation, giving the public a say in the drawing of wilderness boundaries. Before 1964, small citizen groups had less power, but after 1964, the two opposing forces of industry and conservation shaped the Wilderness System.

Cascades Wilderness Battles Helped Conservationists Tune Their Message To Become The Wilderness Act

In the Cascade Mountain Range, a string of volcanic peaks and up thrust rocky crags extending from Northern California through Oregon and Washington and into Canada, many groups played a role—the U. S. Forest Service, the timber industry, recreationists and environmentalists. The opposing forces consisted of timber interests and the Forest Service on one side and local groups such as the Obsidians and Chemeketans on the other side, often supported by national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society. When enough national outcry supported the protection of an area, Congressional Law made it official but not without a tremendous fight and wrangling in and out of Congress right up to the final signing as in the case of North Cascades National Park or Olympic National Park. Needless to say, merely obtaining wilderness status for many areas engendered a terrific political and often legal war.

Originally in 1893, President Grover Cleveland established the Cascade Forest Reserve encompassing nearly 5 million acres, from Mt. Hood in Northern Oregon to Crater Lake in Southern Oregon, to limit the cutting of mountain forests and to protect watersheds. Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, a pro-wilderness polemic, set a national example as his worked within the Southwest agency of the Forest Service to found the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico in 1924. Forest Service leaders such as Arthur Carhart in Colorado and Elers Koch in Idaho thwarted the inroads of “progress” into wilderness and fostered the agency atmosphere in line with Gifford Pinchot’s vision from years earlier. These new leaders in the 1920s reformed management practices and created Primitive Areas in the National Forests, which limited but did not end industrial use. “The Forest Service would later argue that these boundaries were not meant to be permanent,” wrote Kevin R. Marsh.

Lumbering slowed significantly during the Great Depression, but took off again during and after the War. In the Willamette National Forest, the volume of logs cut more than quadrupled between 1945 and 1955 and continued to increase for decades. The Forest Service began to reclassify many primitive areas without any input from the locals. Frequented by hikers, fishers and small boaters, Mt. Jefferson Primitive Area had some of the highest recreation levels of any wilderness in the Northwest, second in Oregon only to the Three Sisters Wilderness to the south. The Three Sisters Wilderness lies directly east of Eugene Oregon, a progressive college town that participated fully in the 1960s anti-establishment, anti-war “revolution.”

Conservation Strategy From The Cascade Mountains Became A Blueprint For Local Efforts Nationwide

In 1954, when the Forest Service proposed reclassifying the Three Sisters Primitive Area, a widely divergent range of local hiking clubs, conservationists, scientists and social liberals, began to evolve over the next few decades into a powerful grassroots movement in Oregon and across the nation. Since 1951, when the Forest Service had tried to pass off shrinking the primitive area as beneficial to the local economy, Carl Onthank and his wife Ruth Onthank, Ruth Hopson and other local activists rallied supporters to form the Friends of the Three Sisters Wilderness. Karl Onthank, dean of students at the University of Oregon, described the leaders of the new group as “scientists who know something of our Cascade Mountains and are interested in seeing a little of them preserved for future enjoyment in their natural state and for scientific study.”

Friends of Three Sisters became an example for later site-specific grassroots campaigns. At a 1955 Forest Service hearing, local groups from all over Oregon such as The Mazamas, the Obsidians, chapters of the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society groups, Wilderness Society leaders, the Oregon Federation of Garden Clubs, the Mountaineers, Olympic Park Associates, the Izaak Walton League Eugene Chapter, the AFL and CIO unions and many others rallied against reducing the Three Sisters Wilderness. The Forest Service expected a one day hearing but had to carry it into a second days when a total of 79 speakers wanted their turn. Some voiced concern for retaining recreational space, some for not allowing wilderness to be reduced over and over as in other states, some wanted to protect areas for scientific study, and others thought logging interests could make more efficient use of the existing public and private timber lands.

On the second day of hearings, Howard Zahniser, executive director of the Wilderness Society arrived and testified with hints of the language from the Wilderness Act that would not pass Congress until 1964, but that he had already begun to draft in 1955. The Three Sisters campaign was pivotal to the national cause of wilderness preservation as it would set a precedent for whether people had a say when Federal lands were reduced to benefit private industry. David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club corresponded with Karl Onthank to stay informed of developments. David Brower and other Sierra Club leaders contributed to the campaign by writing letters to the media and leaders in Washington DC, just as Ruth and Karl Onthank and their associates were doing.

Disperate Conservation Campaigns Organized Into The Modern Environmental Movement

Nationally the tide was high for conservation as the wilderness ideals of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau were hitched to a new environmental movement that employed the media, Congressional lobbying, letter writing campaigns, the courts, full-page newspaper ads and grass root organizing. At first it the purpose was wilderness protection, but later environmental campaigns strived to limit water and air pollution and other environmental destruction brought on by land development, growth and a booming industrial age.

In 1955, The Sierra Club published This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers, edited by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Wallace Stegner with photographs by Philip Hyde, Martin Litton and others. A copy of This is Dinosaur landed on the desk of every Congressman just as they were deciding how to vote on the Colorado River Storage Project Bill. David Brower testified in Congressional hearings against the dams and the Sierra Club ran full page newspaper ads warning Congress not to endorse a hotly opposed expensive project in an election year. The new brand of environmentalism worked. The bill passed Congress without the Dinosaur Dams and with a phrase added barring dams in national parks or monuments.

Following this national land conservation victory, Three Sisters activists communicated their position with a growing effectiveness that surprised the Forest Service, but as the struggle went on, the Forest Service defined the debate and wilderness advocates had to stay on the defensive. By 1957, the Friends of Three Sisters had lost the battle and the Forest Service went through with their original planned boundaries. The loss confirmed the fears of wilderness proponents across the country but solidified determination to push for a Wilderness Act to prevent “having this kind of battle on every one of the primitive and the limited areas,” said Karl Onthank. Oregon senators responded by sponsoring the Wilderness Act and helping Howard Zahniser and others draft it. The Forest Service decision on the Three Sisters Wilderness, swung support toward the Wilderness Act but years of conflict over it were yet to come.

Future Blog Posts will share the story of the making of North Cascades National Park, the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area Skirmish and the role of Philip Hyde’s landscape photography in both.

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New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition

May 4th, 2010

New Philip Hyde Photographs Never Before Seen By the Public Make A World Premier In The Exhibition At Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery

Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1990 by Philip Hyde. Never before printed or published.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

Philip Hyde’s “Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station, Oaxaca, Mexico” photographed in 1990 will be part of the “Pioneer Photography of Philip Hyde Exhibition at Mountain Light Gallery” in Bishop, California opening May 8 and running through August 31, 2010. (See also the announcing blog post, “Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery” and the related blog post,  “Galen Rowell, Philip Hyde And Outdoor Photographer Style.”) The people photograph, “Men of Oaxaca” breaks the pattern of the typical Philip Hyde landscape photograph. Philip Hyde made a good number of people portraits but rarely published or printed them. “Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station” is also unusual for Philip Hyde in that it was photographed with a 35 mm camera. While “Waiting For The Train” can be viewed on the Philip Hyde Website, several other new releases in the exhibition are not even on the website yet and have not been printed or published for many years or ever.

One release that is new to archival fine art digital prints is a 1968 photograph called, “Base of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Arizona.” Philip Hyde made only two dye transfer prints of this image that are long gone. It was never publicly exhibited as far as the records show. This will be the first gallery exhibition for this photograph. The restoration of this image was very time-consuming because the original Kodak E-3 transparency has deteriorated significantly. The raw drum scan of the original transparency had an orange-magenta caste overall with concentrated streaks, fingerprints and other blotches in the water throughout. Carr Clifton spent over 10 hours working on this one photograph. His process I will write up in another blog post, but suffice now to say that it involved a complex combination of the lasso tool, hue, saturation, color adjustment, color balance, select color, edit-fill, and several other general tools in Photoshop to get all of the flaws out and make the white water look right.

Another photograph that will appear in the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition that Philip Hyde never printed but that was published by the Sierra Club is “Mt. Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, Oregon” made in 1959. This photograph the Sierra Club published as a beautiful postcard in 1961. The original transparency and drum scan of it show large, dark forested areas. In the digital age, we were able to lighten the nearly black forests without changing the character of the photograph. As an archival fine art digital print this image has become more beautiful than ever. The lightening of the dark areas has brought out remarkable features in the finished print that could never have been achieved with any older printing process. Philip Hyde had a packer guide he and Ardis Hyde’s gear into the Jefferson Wilderness Area by horseback, while Ardis and Philip Hyde hiked in on foot. Philip Hyde went in to get photographs of the Jefferson Wilderness Area because it had been part of a proposed Oregon Cascades National Park that had some renewed interest in 1959 but not enough to go beyond speculation.

Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California, 1970 by Philip Hyde. Never before printed or published.

Philip Hyde photographed “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California” in 1970. This beautiful photograph sat in the files and was never published or printed. In 2008 it was drum scanned and sat in digital form for another year and a half. Finally near the end of 2009, in search of more good California photographs, particularly of the High Sierra, and considering another image of Kearsarge Lake, I showed “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess” to Carr Clifton and he agreed that it ought to be prepared for printing. We printed an 8X10 proof that needed work. Carr Clifton is the Photoshop genius, but I sit in with him sometimes and make suggestions. We at times disagree, but that makes for good discussions and usually better results. I greatly respect him and his photography and he respects my work ethic and how dedicated I am to doing what my father would like. In the case of “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess” after we fixed a few technical problems and made another 8X10, it turned out beautifully. Then we printed an 11X14, Wow. We were so enthused about the image that I decided to put it in my 11X14 portfolio book that I take everywhere to show. I decided that we had to print a 16X20 and put it in the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition. I put it on the website for a while but took it down to await a special announcement like this.

The three new releases that are not yet up on the website will remain off the website and only viewable at Mountain Light Gallery until the exhibition is over at the end of August. In addition to the four prints mentioned above that will be completely new, the exhibition will include 14 images that have never been exhibited before this Century. That makes 18 new prints that will be shown for the first time since Philip Hyde passed on.

Besides new prints, the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition will include an original black and white silver print of Philip Hyde’s iconic “Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza, Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sierra Nevada, California, 1950.” This photograph of the Minarets Ansel Adams said he liked better than his own. Also in the show will be an original color Cibachrome print of  “Ice On Continental Divide, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada, 1992.” This newer Canadian Rockies image is of sheer rock peaks with forested foothills. Come see all of the new imagery.

Read a Recent Interview of this blog’s author by Richard Wong about Philip Hyde Photography Click Here.

Pioneering Photography of Philip Hyde Exhibition
May 8 Through August 31, 2010

Talk and Opening Reception May 8

Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery
106 South Main Street
Bishop, California
760-873-7700

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Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 1

March 29th, 2010

Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log: June 14-September 14, 1971 By Ardis Hyde

(Ardis, David and Philip Hyde in Their Avion Camper on a GMC 3/4 ton Utility Body Pickup)

Part One: Northern California to British Columbia

Mt. Lassen from Manzanita Lake, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California by Philip Hyde.

(See photograph full screen: Click Here.)

June 14:  Left home at 8:15 am. Sunny with scattered puffy clouds. North to Susanville, through Adin to Alturas. Brief lunch stop along roadside. David piled out with his “new” twin lens reflex camera (out of commission) and tripod Philip gave him. David’s purpose was to “take pictures of flowers.” Marvelous to behold David’s detailed imitations of his father. He woke up knowing this was the day we were leaving for Alaska. “My head is shaking because I’m so excited.” The land showed beautiful lush green evidence of the wet season we’ve had. The pluvial lakes were all extra high as well as many no-name lakes in low places. Farm country, range cattle and open space. First open range, bluffs of lava flows, then into lodgepole pine forest. Spent the night at Lava Butte, Oregon in the planted pine forest for possible pics in the morning. The Three Sisters, Bachelor Butte, Mt. Brokeoff all snow-covered.

June 15:  Woke up about 6 am and drove up toward the top of Lava Butte, but the gate was closed until 9:30 am. Started out on foot, David and Philip with their cameras and tripods over their shoulders. A park ranger stopped and gave us a ride to the top. On foot again we circled the crater, David and Philip taking pictures of good views of the peaks including Mt. Shasta and Mt. Theilsen. Into Bend, Oregon to Jerry’s Trailer Supply to see about repairing the Camper’s Monomatic Toilet that had been leaking. Philip bought the faulty valve and repaired the toilet himself. I grocery shopped in the meantime. North to Madras where we turned into the Warm Springs Reservation to go swimming at Ka-Nee-Ta again. David enthusiastic and worked hard practicing swimming. Leaving the reservation we were treated to masses of wild flowers in all directions: Mules Ears or Wyethia especially abundant, lupine and buckwheat grass lush everywhere. Snow-topped Mt. Jefferson was glorious. North to Dalles Bridge. Wheat fields turning gold. David woke up from a nap in his bunk over the cab, just as we crossed the Columbia River, looking upstream at Celilo Dam (Dalles Dam) that submerged the once mighty Celilo Falls. After dinner we drove on to Yakima State Park, Washington, on the banks of the Yakima River.

June 16:  Before leaving Yakima State Park, David had a swing and play on the equipment nearby. Beautiful clear morning going over Snoqualmie Pass. Cold, lots of old snow, some fog on top. Into Seattle traffic lineup across Lake Washington floating bridge. Into worse congestion trying to reach parking lot at Seattle Center.  Finally found our way around traffic by going way around Queen Anne Hill to get to the other side of the city. We rode downtown on the Monorail. Shopped at the REI Coop, then returned to Seattle Center. We walked through the Fire Engine Museum. David chose a fire engine to ride on in the nearby concession. Just made it to Mukeliteo in time to get on the ferry to Columbia Beach on Whidbey Island. We drove the length of Whidbey Island in late sunlight to Deception Bay State Park (Deception Pass State Park). At Deception Bay State Park we ate a quick dinner at Rosario Beach while watching a couple put on all their diving equipment. We walked down the beach and around the headland as we had on a previous visit. David enjoyed the tide pools and rock scrambling.

June 17:  Caught the 8 am ferry from Anacortes. Another perfect sunny day with the water glassy and smooth. Ferry stopped at Lopez Island and Orcas Island, then on to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. At Sidney, Vancouver Island, no trouble with customs. They only wanted to know about stone fruits and didn’t want to look into anything else. In Victoria we parked downtown and walked to the harbor, tourist information and the Provincial Museum. Also parked on Government Street and looked around in the shops. Parking lots and streets were nearly empty. Canadians very pleasant and the lack of automobile traffic is refreshing. The Provincial Museum exhibited Indian Canoes, Totem Poles, Lodges and many other artifacts. We bought David a small hand-carved dugout canoe.

June 18:  North up Vancouver Island on Canada Route 1 in intermittent rain. Drove into Goldstream Park to admire the lush, undisturbed rain forest. Around Comax, development has reduced the charm and the natural setting. Pulled into Miracle Beach Campground. Picked out a campsite on Maple Lane. They were all like private rooms with leafy walls and ceiling. Rain stopped, so we cooked hotdogs over alder wood fire. We walked out to the beach of large pebbles and many driftwood logs. Coming back we wound around a network of trails through the woods. The wild roses were the largest we have ever seen, as big as Philip’s hand. Found a flame-colored honeysuckle, foam flower and other delicate white blossoms in the deep shade. Mosquitoes are bad here.

June 19: At Black Creek we stopped to walk along driftwood on the beach and rocks of the breakwater out to an old ship hull beached in the sand. David was singing and beachcombing along the way. Soon his pockets were bulging with crab skeletons, shells and driftwood.  When we returned to the Camper, he arranged them in a display in his “studio.” David sleeps in the bed above the cab and rides up there sometimes while we are driving. He calls it his “studio.” He is also very busy building a float plane with Nuts and Bolts and a ferry and a fire boat out of Lego. Lunch at Elk Falls in Strathcona Provincial Park. Philip walked to the overlook. He said there was only a trickle of water because it had been diverted for the hydro-electric works. Up to Middle Lake and across the crest of the mountains. Everywhere logging and fire scars but many small lakes covered with blooming water lilies. Some light rain, but a stiff south wind raised the clouds until we could see the snow patched mountain peaks. The Strait of Georgia narrows and the opposite shore was close, with the dark red vertical faces of the mountains, and forests on their layered shelves, all easily visible. Made another stop for the view down into Crown and Zellerback’s Duncan Bay Mill and Pulp Plant, a vast layout of mill, plant, sawdust barges, log booms and machinery with lots of activity and smoke emissions. No road sign for Morton Lake Park, missed it completely and the town too. Signs and even towns not visible where they were shown on the map, we’ve found is typical of British Columbia. Ended up camping in a gravel pit on the left side of the road. At least David had a big pile of white sand to play in.

June 20:  The Canadian ferry at Kelsey Bay depends on tides for its arrival and departure times…

(CONTINUED IN THE BLOG POST, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 2.”

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A River Will Run Through It

February 23rd, 2010

Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River, during removal looking upstream. Courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Grants Pass, Oregon–The momentum continues for removing dams and freeing America’s wild rivers. Dams on the Rogue River and Klamath River in Oregon, Hetch Hetchy Valley on the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park, California and Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in Arizona and Utah, are just a few of the targets of dam demolition campaigns.

Nearly 90 years ago the Grants Pass Irrigation District built Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River to provide irrigation water for nearby farms. Farmers benefited; fish did not. Fish ladders were installed for coho and chinook salmon and steelhead, but they did not change the dams status as the biggest fish killer on the river.

A Portland, Oregon organization known as Waterwatch, spearheaded campaigns to remove Savage Rapids Dam, Gold Ray Dam, Gold Hill Dam, Elk Creek Dam and Lost Creek Dam from the Rogue River, historically Oregon’s second largest salmon spawning watershed behind the Klamath River. Projects are also in motion on the Klamath River that will eventually set the mighty river completely free, supported by the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath Tribes.

River ecosystems are the basis of all life on Earth. Not only do dams kill fish, they destroy other native species, increase the negative effects of drought as opposed to alleviating these as often publicized, increase the water’s salinity, encourage non-native trees and shrubs, remove sandbars, marshes and other habitat for small land and marine animals and waterfowl, waste more water than they save, especially in arid climates, and often lose money as they fail to produce the levels of hydro-power projected. Technologies have recently been refined that allow for hydro-power to be generated without damming rivers; by merely diverting a portion of the flow through large pipes into turbines.

Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River, former site immediately after breaching, looking downstream. Courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Waterwatch staff fearlessly decided three years ago that Savage Rapids Dam must go. Demolition began in October 2006, the dam was completely breached in October 2009 and one of the largest dam removal projects in the country is now almost complete. To get the project going, Waterwatch representatives argued about water rights, rallied fishermen and kayakers, and they got in touch with Earthjustice attorneys Mike Sherwood and Claudia Polsky. Earthjustice, a spinoff from the Sierra Club, started as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in 1971, and changed its name to Earthjustice in 1997. Mike Sherwood and Claudia Polsky recently succeeded in gaining Endangered Species Act protection for the coho salmon. They were thereby able to charge the dam operators with illegally harming a protected species. Eventually all parties agreed that the dam would come out and be replaced with pumps that divert water straight out of the river for farms, with no impoundment necessary.

American Rivers, based in Washington DC, “has led a national effort to restore rivers through the demolition of dams that no longer make sense,” said American Rivers promotional materials. “The organization’s expertise and advocacy have contributed to the removal of more than 200 dams nationwide.” American Rivers released a statement last month that in 2009, 58 dams in 16 states, were taken down.

“In the 1950s and ’60s, a dam went up in the United States every six minutes to generate electricity, provide irrigation water and protect against floods,” wrote Matthew Preusch in the New York Times. “As a result, there are an estimated 75,000 aging dams blocking rivers large and small today.”

Hetch Hetchy Valley, Field of Stumps, Yosemite National Park, 1955, by Philip Hyde, who discovered that the water level was very low and drove straight to the Sierra Club Headquarters in San Francisco to tell David Brower. David Brower dropped everything, grabbed his movie camera and they rushed back to photograph and film. To this day Restore Hetch Hetchy uses the David Brower film and Philip Hyde photographs in their campaign to restore this paradise lost. The Sacramento Bee won a Pulitzer Prize for their series covering the Hetch Hetchy debate. Philip Hyde's widely published photograph appeared on PBS Television's Jim Lehrer News Hour in a segment about the controversy in 2008.

A California group, Restore Hetch Hetchy, continues to fight for the restoral of Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. Hetch Hetchy is a sister valley to Yosemite and at one time approached Yosemite Valley’s beauty, with waterfalls, rich grasslands and wildlife, verdant forests, and the Tuolumne River lazily winding through the center. However, after the 1906 Earthquake, San Francisco proposed damming Hetch Hetchy Valley to form a reliable water supply. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, led the opposition to the dam. Many say he died of a broken heart after the O’Shaughnessy Dam flooded Hetch Hetchy Valley. Gifford Pinchot, leader of the U. S. Forest Service, who many now claim was an environmentalist, was one of the leading proponents of the dam. Ironically, modern studies show that San Francisco could obtain the same amount of water with less expense downstream.

Hetch Hetchy was the first and last time any agency built a dam on National Park lands. A coalition of environmental organizations, led by the Sierra Club and David Brower, successfully defeated two dams proposed in Dinosaur National Monument in the early 1950s and lobbied Congress to pass legislation that strengthened laws preventing such development in the National Park System. However, to save Dinosaur National Monument, the coalition of environmental groups had to endorse the damming of Glen Canyon as a better alternative. Few people had ever seen Glen Canyon. By the time wilderness proponents Eliot Porter, Philip Hyde and other Sierra Club landscape photographers published spectacular images lamenting the loss of one of the world’s most beautiful wild places in the early 1960s, it was too late. The Bureau of Reclamation had already closed the gates on the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell had begun to consume the canyon wilderness.

Glen Canyon Dam and "Lake" Powell, Utah and Arizona. Creatas Photos Royalty Free Photograph.

Today, the granddaddy dam removal proposal of them all is to redeem Glen Canyon and make it a National Park. The Glen Canyon Institute has piloted this endeavor since 1996 with support from David Brower, Philip Hyde and currently Philip Hyde Photography. Read Philip Hyde’s expression of grief over the loss of Glen Canyon and part of the Escalante Wilderness in the blog post, “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde.” “Lake” Powell, or Powell Reservoir to be more accurate, has drawn down over 100 feet in droughts several times and reached an all-time low in 2003. The reservoir was only completely full for a short time in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The sandstone bedrock leaks more water than the net storage for irrigation and the “lake” surface evaporates more water every year than the “lake” holds. Glen Canyon Dam has prevented the Colorado River from the periodic flooding that forms sandbars vital to the survival and propagation of plant and wildlife species downriver in Grand Canyon National Park. In contrast, small daily fluctuations due to power generating releases have carried away most of the sandbars and threatened endangered species, disrupting the natural ecosystem of Grand Canyon National Park. Reportedly, the soft sandstone that Glen Canyon Dam is anchored in, nearly failed in 1983 after a flood on the upper Colorado River. Glen Canyon Dam is aging and its lifespan is estimated at as little as 100 years by dam removal proponents and 500-700 years by the Bureau of Reclamation. The heavy-laden Colorado River and San Juan River are rapidly filling Powell Reservoir with silt that decreases electricity generation and can interfere with Glen Canyon Dam’s proper operation. A breach of Glen Canyon Dam could cause a floodwave that would top the downstream Hoover Dam by as much as 230 feet, resulting in a potential megatsunami disaster downstream. Much more on Glen Canyon Dam, “Lake” Powell, Edward Abbey and the The Monkey Wrench Gang in future blog posts. See also the blog posts, “Glen Canyon Lament 1 By Philip Hyde,” “Glen Canyon Portfolio 1” and “Glen Canyon Portfolio 2.” For more about who Edward Abbey was read the blog post, “Who Was Edward Abbey?”

References:
Earthjustice Press Release.
The Portland Orgonian, Oregon Environmental News, “The Rogue River Dam Removal Moves Forward”
Waterwatch
American Rivers
New York Times, “Dams Go Down, Uncorking Rivers For Kayakers”
Restore Hetch Hetchy
Glen Canyon Institute
Scientists Struggle to Preserve Grand Canyon Wildlife

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58 Years In The Wilderness Intro 1

January 18th, 2010

Cathedral In The Desert, Glen Canyon, Utah, 1964, by Philip Hyde. Named One of The Top 100 Photographs of the 20th Century by American Photo Magazine

(See the photograph full screen: Click Here.)

Revised January 17, 2010
Originally written 2005

From 58 Years In The Wilderness:
The Story of Ardis and Philip Hyde Traveling, Defending and Living in the Wilderness

Introduction First Draft

Two days of rain battered our white plastic rain fly. The 20-foot-square white tarp hung from ropes tied to trees on the two diagonal corners and to stakes in the ground on the remaining corners. Under the tarp our orange four-man tent billowed in gusts of wind.

I snuggled into my down sleeping bag in the tent and listened to the drone of rain. Just outside the front flap of the tent, though well under the rain fly, squatted Mom. She held a Sierra Club cup with a decaf coffee freshly poured from the small teapot on the grate down at the fire.

It was April 1970 and we were backpacking in Coyote Gulch in the Escalante Wilderness, Utah in an area that later became inaccessible as the waters of “Lake” Powell drowned the mouth of Coyote Gulch. My dad, Philip Hyde, a freelance landscape photographer, often worked with the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations such as the Wilderness Society and National Audubon. He found out about this spectacular red-walled canyon full of arches, overhangs and green seeps slipping over hidden ledges, because the area was part of a proposed wilderness and more than once put forward as a potential National Park. By 1970 Dad’s photographs had already appeared in dozens of books and before the United States Congress, Senate and many other state and local political leaders on behalf of wild lands all over the Western U.S. His photographs were applied to more environmental campaigns than those of any other photographer of his time.

Ardis and David, Camp at Icicle Springs, Coyote Gulch, Escalante Wilderness, Utah, 1970, by Philip Hyde. Baby Deardorf 4X5 View Camera taking a break, Hasselblad in operation. Ardis Hyde writing in the trip log.

The wind picked up and the rain fly pelted the tent roof, keeping me from dozing off and getting my daily nap I usually had in the afternoon at age five.

“Where’s Daddy-O?” I asked, up on an elbow to see Mom.

“He’s getting firewood.”

“In the rain?”

“He must have had to go farther than expected and decided to hole up under an overhang or something,” Mom said.

“Hmm. I hope he’s all right.”

“Now David, your father is a very capable man. Do you want more hot chocolate?”

“Yeah,” I sat up, pulled my Sierra Club cup out and held it up to her.

“Say please,” she responded.

“Please,” I said.

She carried my cup down to the fire in the rain, balanced it on a rock, lifted the larger kettle from the campfire with pliers, tilted it and poured into my cup spilling only slightly. She delivered the hot chocolate to me, safely squatting and dry still just inside the tent and without shoes.

“Let that cool again now,” she said.

“OK,” I said, balancing the cup to the side and scrunching back down into my bag. “It seems pretty dark.”

“There is plenty of light left,” she said.

The wind and rain blended into a rising roar. I was back down into my bag but up on my elbows. I shivered though I was a mummy in down. I sipped tiny scalding tastes of hot chocolate. The light from the campfire flashed and flickered dimly on the tent ceiling. The shadows deepened. Every few seconds I heard the splitting of limbs or the thunk of twigs on the tarp. The fresh smell of masses of water pounding sand and sandstone was punctuated with bursts of lightning followed by deafening cracks in the sky.

Just then Dad appeared with a large arm-full of wood.

“You sure are soaking wet,” Mom said. “Why don’t you come in and take off those wet clothes?”

“I need to get a few more armloads of wood,” he said. He began to jog off into the rain but she stopped him.

“Philip?”

“Ardis?”

“There’s hot chocolate here,”

“Ummm,” he said kissing her quickly on the lips and running. “Thank you love, I’ll have some in just a minute.”

I snuggled deeper. Mom poked the fire. The rain fell even harder. It seemed the raindrops were bunching together in torrents and falling like waterfalls on the flap bucking in the wind.

Mom never doubted Dad’s capabilities. She added her talents to the collaboration perfected and imperfected by time and exposure to a spectrum of weather conditions. Dad fixed flat tires, dead batteries and broken equipment with patience, ingenuity and often little resources. Mom planned and prepared. She managed the food and supplies. She supported emotionally, physically and spiritually. She kept the daily trip logs, read the guidebooks and for fun studied plants, animals and especially birds.

Preparing for excursions, Dad studied the geology of the area he would scour for picture possibilities. In the field he knew the weather. On his studio wall he kept a chart of more than 20 types of clouds. He could often accurately predict the weather by looking at the sky or indicators like the barometer and thermometer. He kept a constant vigil for the light and atmospheric conditions favorable to photography.

From their marriage on June 29, 1947, until Dad began to lose his eyesight in 1999, he spent an average of 99 days a year in the field. Mom accompanied him more than half the time. They traveled mainly between April and October in the Western United States camping, backpacking, driving, riding horses, mules, trains, planes and boats to access wilderness for almost one third of every year of his working life. Summers were not the best months for photographs, but that was mainly when he traveled, so that Mom could go along in her time off from teaching kindergarten.

The summer of 1955 was typical of Dad’s early career. After buying a 1954 Chevrolet Pickup in March from Brett Weston, a contemporary photographer, Mom and Dad spent 12 days in April in the California Redwoods, across the state, 300 miles west of their home in the mountains of Northeastern California. Then Dad turned around and journeyed alone 600 miles south of home, May 3-14 to photograph Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Continuously for the next three months Mom and Dad backpacked, camped, river rafted and drove thousands of miles through Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. This included three river trips: 13 days on the Colorado River through little known Glen Canyon, 26 days on the Yampa River in Utah and Wyoming inside Dinosaur National Park, and five days on the Ladore River, also in Dinosaur. By August 16, after three weeks in Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park on a Sierra Club Pack Trip, Mom got a ride home with participants, but Dad continued on to Glacier National Park, Montana for 10 days and Olympic National Park, Washington for two more weeks. Dad did not see home until September 10.

Why did the pair spend one third of their lives pursuing this unusual brand of adventure?  (Rhetoric question. Part of the text.)

(CONTINUED IN BLOG POST, “58 Years In The Wilderness Intro 2“)

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