Sycamore Canyon Picture of the Week

As you would expect, the edge of the Colorado Plateau isn’t smooth and polished. It’s quite the opposite. Over eons, the streams that drain the plateau have eaten away the walls and carved a series of steep canyons. These parallel canyons look like an evil witch with rheumatoid arthritis pressed her fingers into a curb of wet cement.

Capitol Butte and Sedona - a place of natural beauty overrun with loving fans.
Capitol Butte and Sedona – a place of natural beauty overrun with adoring fans.

Oak Creek Canyon—and the village of Sedona—is probably the most famous example that I can name. The creek has cut into the iron-rich sandstone leaving behind beautiful red-rock formations that attract visitors from the four corners of the globe. And why not? There’s a lot to see and do here. Magazines have called Slide Rock one of the ten best swimming holes in the country (Havasupai Falls also made that list, not bad for a desert state, eh). Sedona always makes the top of the list for romantic getaways for Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and on and on and on. If you want to be romantic in Sedona these days, you have to be careful not to bump the couple making out next to you.

When people visit Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona, they understandably fall in love and don’t want to leave. Over the past 50 years, I’ve seen Sedona grow from a gas station intersection to a resort town that’s on a par with Aspen, Telluride, or Santa Fe. The catch is that there’s not enough water to support all of the rich people building second homes there. We all visit to see nature at its best, but now the McMansions are in the way. We love it to death.

But there’s hope for us tree-huggers. Less than 17 miles northwest of downtown Sedona is Oak Creek Canyon’s sister—Sycamore Canyon. Here there are no McMansions, Gucci Stores, or Whole Foods because, in 1972, the Feds set it aside as a Wilderness Area. While standing on the rim at Sycamore Point, you can begin to imagine what Oak Creek Canyon was like before the mobs got there. Imagine a time when a campfire was the only tell of humans in the area.

Sycamore Canyon - Oak Creek Canyon's twin sister was set aside in 1972 as a Wilderness Area so we can remember what nature looks like without people.
Sycamore Canyon – Oak Creek Canyon’s twin sister, was set aside in 1972 as a Wilderness Area to remember what nature looks like without people.

My friend Deb and I camped here before Queen Anne ever arrived on the scene. When she finally did, this was the first place Deb and I took her camping. As we ate a dinner of grilled stuffed pork chops and watched the sun go down, she was hooked. That’s when we convinced her that everything tastes a little better with dirt on it.

I wanted to come back this year after watching the fire news early this summer. One fire had ripped through here, and I wanted to see how much damage it caused. Queen Anne and I found black scars on the ridge on the canyon’s far side, but only a couple of pinions had burned on the edge where we stood. Overall, the canyon fared well, except years of drought have left Sycamore Creek dry. We didn’t see any remaining pools of water from our vantage point.

The BLM has moved camping back a half mile now. They’ve removed all of the rock fire rings and built a parking area. If you want to come here, your best camp is at one of the small lakes up the road. Since Sycamore Point is less than twenty miles from Williams, it’s an easy drive from town and back in one afternoon.

As the sun got low, it reached a crack in the clouds and lit the cliffs while I had my camera in hand. I snapped a couple of shots, and this is the version I preferred. I named the photo Sycamore Canyon. I like how the setting sun makes the cliff faces glow, but you can still see the dry creek bed below. Along the rim in the center-left, you can make out the black scar left by this summer’s fire. That’s ok though, unlike a McMansion, it’ll heal soon.

You can see a larger version of Sycamore Canyon on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we return to the bright lights of Williams. Come back then and see what we found.

Until next time — jw

Courthouse Rock Picture of the Week

After five years of retirement, I realize I slowly get things done by putzing. As I grow older, I don’t have a young person’s stamina, so I limit how much time I work in my shop or office. I am organized about it. I have certain days that I do things. There’s wood-Monday where I work in the shop; music is when I manage my music catalog; web- Saturday is when I update my website; and today—blog- Sunday—I write my posts. Each week’s highlight is dump-Thursday when Queen Anne rewards me for taking out the trash by treating me to Eggs Benedict at Nichols.

The remaining days are our weekend. Like the rest of America, we go shopping, on photo outings, visit our ever-growing list of doctors, and do chores around the house—if I must. I can also appropriate these days if I need more time for another priority. So, I’ve organized my interests into neat little day-packets. That way, I get to play with all of my toys. That’s important because if I don’t use them, Anne has threatened to haul them off to Goodwill. My system keeps me busy, yet there’s plenty of time for naps.

Imagine how frustrated I get when a week—like this one—comes along and upsets my routine. With this month’s I-10 project, I must go out each week to get a new shot. I planned to go out on Tuesday, but afternoon clouds moved in. Wednesday, it rained, so I swapped it with music Friday because Anne wasn’t here to gripe. The clouds remained on Thursday, but that didn’t stop me from going to the dump and buying my breakfast (there was hell to pay when the restaurant staff wanted to know what I’d done to Anne). Friday was still dull and gray, and I’d already done music Friday on Tuesday, so I had to sit on my hands. I needed a picture for Saturday’s update.

Yesterday, I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. and drove down to Courthouse Rock in the dark. I repeated a mantra as I went, “Please let there be good light. Please let there be good light.” When I arrived, I was rewarded with high clouds, but the eastern horizon was clear. I only had about an hour to shoot as clouds were already gathering. This is the shot that I liked the best; I call it Courthouse Rock.

Courthouse Rock - Located in the north-east corner of the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness Area, Courthouse attracts rock climbers across the globe.
Courthouse Rock – Located in the northeast corner of the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness Area, the Courthouse attracts rock climbers across the globe.

The rock is the northeast corner of the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness west of Tonopah. You can see it on the south side of Interstate 10, less than a half-hour drive from the truck stop. If you take the dirt roads—as I did—the time doubles. The road in the lower right section of the photo gets closer, but I was running out of the golden light. I was still a mile away from the rock when I took this photo.

Courthouse Rock is well known to rock climbers, so it gets a lot of worldly visitors. As I left, at least a half-dozen SUVs loaded with people were on their way to the Courthouse. The vertical wall that looks like a curl from a Dairy Queen machine presents a challenge similar to Yosemite’s El Capitan. Besides the height, the most remarkable difference is that California’s is granite (lava that cools slowly underground). At the same time, ours is Rhyolite (thick air-cooled lava squirted out of an ice cream machine).

You can see a larger version of Courthouse Rock on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, I’ll present another of my favorite I-10 landmarks. Because it’s sunny and clear today, I’m going out to shoot it this afternoon—none of this last-minute panic for me. Of course, it will have to wait until after my nap.

Until next time — jw