August 2018 – Ken's Photography and Travel Blog

Yankee Boy Basin

Yankee Boy Basin, located in the Colorado Rocky Mountains near Ouray, Colorado, is accessible via a 4 wheel drive road. My oldest son, who provided the 4×4 Jeep, and I spent several early morning and evenings in the basin, since it was a relatively easy place for us to get to and there were multiple photography opportunities in the area.

It is best to have a high clearance vehicle with skid plates and good off road tires before attempting to travel this road. If the road is not wet, it might be possible for a high clearance vehicle equipped with only stock tires and an experienced driver to make it up the road. On one of our outings there, a thunderstorm came up at our destination, so we went back down to a safer place to wait out the storm. We encountered a young man in a Subaru Outback, who was planning to make the trip up the 4×4 road. His vehicle had stock tires and no skid plates. My son, who has some 4 wheel drive road experience and has been up this road a number of times, advised him not to try the road with his vehicle; however, he told him that he could follow us, if he liked, and at least he would have someone nearby in case he had difficulty. He tried to follow us up the road, but very soon got to a point where his tires could not get sufficient traction on the wet rocks and he turned around.

We ended up aborting one of our planned evening shoots due to a continuing storm. We had hoped to get gorgeous views with clouds and mountainsides illuminated with the late evening light as often happens after a storm; but the storm and sky showed no signs of clearing, so we retreated to our campsites, where we were treated to sky, clouds and a double rainbow; but I only had time to shoot a few iPhone photos before these all faded away.

A view from Ridgeway State Park, Colorado, after an early evening rain.

This is the kind of sky we had hoped to see during our aborted Yankee Boy Basin evening photo shoot.

Yankee Boy Basin is a picturesque setting and can be covered with wildflowers in the early summer months. There were some wildflowers remaining during our visit in late July, but they were mostly past their peak bloom.

The 4 wheel drive road follows a stream much of the way and there are a number of waterfalls and lovely cascades along the way.

Early morning light above Sneffles Creek

Early morning light in Yankee Boy Basin along Sneffels Creek

Close up view of a portion of a waterfall on Sneffels Creek

Close up view of one of the Yankee Boy Basin waterfalls

At the end of the 4 wheel drive road is a small lake surrounded by mountain peaks. A popular hiking trail begins at the end of the 4 wheel road that takes one to Mount Sneffels, 14,158 feet high mountain, which many hikers like to bag.

The elevation everywhere in this area is high enough that one not used to it might have some difficulty with the thin air. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noted that higher elevations are more of a problem, but so far I’ve not had altitude sickness. I can move around quite well at altitude, as long as I am not carrying a load; but as soon as I pick up a loaded day pack and camera gear, the effort to walk up an incline becomes noticeable, requiring frequent stops to catch my breath. I’m sure that my normal sea level life adds to the altitude effect.

One of the fun things about such outings as this is meeting other people with similar interest. On our first morning in the basin, we chatted with the only other person there, who was also into photography and from the same metropolitan area as me.

I hope that you enjoy this post and I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Is King of Wings overrated as a photo destination?

King of Wings (KOW) is a large wing like hoodoo near Nageezi, New Mexico. There are some amazing photos of this feature that can be found via an online search. During my recent visit to Bisti Badlands, my oldest son and I visited King of Wings one afternoon. He had been there once before, knew how to get to the remote parking location, knew how to follow the trails through the desert and had GPS coordinates for the site. We were able to depart the trail and strike out overland using his memory and the GPS coordinates to get to KOW.

It was a hot July afternoon in the desert as we trekked across the barren landscape, up and over low hills. Arriving at our destination, from below it is apparent that KOW is impressive; but smaller than I had imagined from the numerous online photos that I have seen over the years. One has to scramble up a steep incline to get up to KOW.

There it is, in case it is not obvious! (Photo courtesy of Sean Kemp).

Going there in midday, harsh, bright light, we did not take our DSLR gear and it would have been much more difficult to hike across the hot desert carrying the additional gear. However, we both had our phone cameras and both of us shot several photos with those. I did not shoot from the best vantage points, shooting from above, rather than from below. My son got a better shot from a point of view somewhat below the wing.

KOW and smaller Hoodoos in the background. (Photo courtesy of Sean Kemp)

One advantage the wing offered, was a small shade beneath it. It was a mostly still day, with only an occasional breeze, so that shade, being the only around was welcome. There was room for only one person to sit in the shade beneath the wing, which my son quickly took advantage of. He seemed more bothered by the heat at that time, than I was. However, that changed on our hike out, which to me was more strenuous and hot than the hike in, since it seemed mostly up hill, with a few short steep portions at small hills, then long sections of gentle uphill slopes. I had to stop a number of times to catch my breath, calm my heartbeat and consume water from my Camelbak. The water was quite warm and not very refreshing by that time.

The only shade around. This photo of my son sitting in the shade of KOW, shows the barrenness of the desert we hiked through to get to KOW.

Other than KOW, I did not see much of real photographic interest, that is not more easily accessible in other places. There were a few other hoodoos in the area, but many more are much more easily accessible in Bisti. I am glad that I finally got see KOW, but for me, I do not think it worthwhile to ever again expend the time and effort it takes to get to it, especially in the hot summer. Maybe had I been there at a better time for photography, I might have appreciated it more; but still, I think the limited photo oportunities it and the general area offers are not worth more than one visit.

Post Script: In my last post, I mentioned that a post on my trip to Colorado would be next; but I realized that I should at least mention our foray to King of Wings, before getting to that. The next post will be about time spent in and around, Ouray, Ridgeway, Silverton and Telluride.

Bisti Badlands

My oldest son and I recently spent a couple of days in Bisti Badlands, New Mexico and the local area. The rock formations and landscape here are other worldly. There are no trails to follow, one must either explore randomly or find GPS coordinates or generalized directions for particular areas of interest. I have now visited Bisti on two occasions, the first a few years ago and I have not yet seen everything of interest in Bisti, so I will plan to visit again at some future date, hopefully not in the summer, since the summers here are hot during the day, but the evenings and early mornings are fairly comfortable, especially during and after thunderstorms, which we were lucky to have in the evenings, when we were there. In fact one of the storms presented us with a tremendous lightning display, some of which my son captured via a GoPro camera. After the storm passed over us, I put the penthouse top of the Sportsmobile up and enjoyed the distant lightning display and cool breeze as I lay there waiting for sleep to over take me.

We were fortunate to have the area essentially to ourselves most of the time. We did see a few others come and go, but never encountered anyone while photographing and exploring the area.

As we saw storms on two sides of us and one heading towards us, during our last evening of photography in the wilderness, we decided to beat a hasty retreat to the parking area and the safety of our camping vehicle. Upon arriving at the parking area, we found another vehicle parked next to ours, but no one around. So we assumed the vehicle owner(s) were out in the wilderness area. As the storm got closer and darkness began to fall, we saw lights in the distance coming from the wilderness. We left our vehicle interior lights on as a beacon for the hikers, since otherwise it can be difficult to find ones way back to the parking area in the dark. We watched the progress of the lights approaching the parking area, eventually seeing a young couple arriving just before the serious rain began. They had planned to camp in the wilderness, but they realized that it was unsafe to be out there during a severe thunderstorm. The young man made a point to come over and thank us for our lights, which he said were a great help to them in finding their way back to the parking area. They hung around for awhile, then left, leaving the parking area totally to us for the rest of the night.

Even though, there was a hard, blowing rain for awhile during the thunderstorm, the hot desert area was mostly dry the next morning. We photographed during the early morning sunrise, then moved on to our next destination in Colorado, which will be the subject of my next post. So stay tuned for more…

Some (eventually maybe all) of the photos posted here will also be uploaded to my Flickr page, where they might be viewed more easily.