By Phil Bard, OFWU steering group member (October 19, 2024)
All photos © by Phil Bard Photography 2024.
Two years after moving west from the East Coast in 1975, I took my first trip to the Colorado Plateau. It was a life altering visit, I came home energized by the complexity of the landscape and the seemingly endless possibilities it held for exploring the plateau’s phenomenal geology. Although I was only an amateur photographer, I dragged a camera everywhere. Now, after retiring from a career as a commercial shooter, I’m still hauling my gear along every time my partner Alice and I head to the redrock, still making new discoveries in this unique part of the world.
Hiking Coyote Gulch in Escalante in 1981 using “state of the art” backpacking gear
For the last several years we’ve taken off for a month in spring and also in the fall, staying in the Four Corners area and spending as much time as possible in both familiar and never before visited wild places. Though there are many unprotected and partially protected areas in this region, some of the ones that are safely locked away from commercial exploitation, that is, the National Parks, still call us back despite the fact they are often crowded. They are magnetic to a camera lens but its a bit harder to find a new image there compared to in less traveled places. I try nonetheless. We manage to find trails with fewer visitors, the Needles District in Canyonlands being one of our favs. There are few amenities there and many of the trails are long, strenuous and not particularly suitable for the light hiker.
On the Peekaboo Trail, Canyonlands
Sandstone towers and hoodoos above Big Spring Canyon, Canyonlands
Our go-to is the hike to Chesler Park. Once out there its usual to see only a handful of others, and the huge ring of Cedar Mesa Sandstone pillars is majestic as it dominates the grassy meadow that lies within.
Towers and Cirrus formation, Chesler Park, Canyonlands
This year we managed to spend a couple days in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, somewhere I’ve wanted to go for years. The 45,000 acre area is co-managed by the BLM and the Navaho Nation (most is public land, except for a few Navaho-owned parcels). The most visited and accessible portion is at the western boundary, 40 miles south of Farmington, New Mexico and down a three-mile gravel road from main highway. A one-mile hike up the broad wash takes you into a land of carved valleys populated by thousands of hoodoos, which parade merrily about everywhere you look. Its one of the most photogenic places I’ve ever been to, and there are usually very few other visitors so you feel like you have it all to yourself.
Bisti Badlands
Bisti Hoodoos
Highlights include petrified logs, shale and sandstone towers and a group of weird, rounded hoodoos called the Alien Egg Hatchery. My preferred areas, however, are amongst the surreal mud flows and scattered boulders that present endless possibilities for photographic abstracts.
Hardened mud and boulder field
We are back home in Portland now, but sad to be away from the plateau. Our photos will have to get us through the winter until the next time we point the car towards the southwest.