Grand-Staircase – In The Loupe

Part Two of my new favorite place on the planet, Escalante Grand-Staircase, with a few from Capitol Reef sprinkled in.

The desert floor was filled with tiny purple wildflowers, I lit them up at night, using a purple gel to make them glow a bit more.

Temple of the Sun and the Moon in Capitol Reef, catching the first light of day.

Finding beautiful in the smallest details…

A dying leave seeps oils into a puddle in Coyote Gulch.

An old granary hidden in a cliff face.

A magnificent grove of hoodoo in the backcountry, 10 mi. north of Big Water.

A cool dwelling just off the road south of Page, AZ.

The barn at the Gilford Homestead in Fruita, Capitol Reef NP.

Some more old structures and antiques around the homestead.

A few more from Zebra Canyon. Was quite a squeeze!

Looking down on Hamblin Arch in the Coyote Gulch.

Day breaking on the Temples, Capitol Reef.

Clouds cut sharp shadows across the Devil’s Backbone.

So often it feels like all you see in the desert is browns and green for days, so nice to get a splash of an unexpected color.

Coyote Gulch is a truly awe inspiring place. The alcove and cliff walls rise up and span what seem an impossible height. For scale, on the image below, see those tiny black dots on far right shoreline? Those are hikers. To get here, I scrambled down a 700ft. sandstone wall, of course with my giant pack I wasn’t able to scramble back out so it was a nice 18 mi. hike out of the gulch and through the desert to find my home base.

A view from Alstrom Point, a 180 degree stitched panorama looking out towards Lake Powell in the distance.

Zebra Canyon, for obvious reasons.

This magnificent hoodoo is with a patch of others, probably a 10 mi. hike up a wash just north of Big Water.

Just some random fantastic slot canyon.

A few more with the vantage from Alstrom Point.

This isn’t a mirror image, its a 180 degree pano stitch of 14 wide angle shots, I’m inside a giant arch looking out onto the meandering river in Coyote Gulch.

These strange formations are called Moqui Marbles. I read the Wiki on how they were formed and its fascinating, and I won’t butcher it by summarizing so just look for yourself. My favorite factoid was that they resemble very closely formations found on Mars which are aptly called Martian blueberries.