First Creek & The Grotto

First Creek Trail is a popular hike outside of Red Rock Canyon.  The trail head is located about 4 miles west of the Red Rock entrance. The special part of this hike is a little waterfall oasis called “The Grotto”.  About a mile into the hike start looking for a path that leads right towards the creek. Follow a path down to the creek and you will arrive at the grotto. It is a nice place to have a snack and listen to the frogs croaking. Once you are ready to leave, an alternate route is to follow the river back towards the road. Eventually it runs dry and you can find a path back towards the main trail. This hike is short and easy. Like most hikes in and around Red Rock it gets crowded.

First creek & The Grotto is a perfect hike for desert photography. You get many great views of the Mountains and red rocks. Along the trail you get all of the classic cactus and yucca flora. On this hike was the first time I really started to notice that when using a fisheye lens it is near impossible to get your shadow out of the image. It was maddening trying to shoot images with foreground in them and every time my shadow was in half of the photo. Shooting in the grotto is another challenge. It’s such a neat little area but because of its location down in the river the light is always a little off. It’s too bad because this is an area where the wideness of the 8mm lens really comes in handy. With some decent light there is potential for some great images. Following the river out is more interesting than the official trail. Make sure to keep looking back to get nice views of the river and mountains.

This is a hike I would recommend if you want something short and easy. It offers something you don’t get to see often on a desert hike, a grotto with a waterfall. I would advise going during the week or early to avoid the crowds. The grotto is a very small area so it doesn't take too many people to make it feel a little too crowded.

Mary Jane Falls

                If you hike in Las Vegas long enough, you will be told “You should hike Mary Jane Falls”. So I finally gave in and headed to Mt. Charleston to hike the famed trail. I was told Mary Jane Falls is a popular and easy trail. The “popular” part is very true.

There was less traffic driving to the trail than there was on the trail. If you hike to find solitude in nature, this is not the hike for you. As for the “easy”, although this hike is not technically challenging, it is almost two miles all up hill. On the positive side, Mary Jane Falls has beautiful views of old growth pine forest and snow caped mountains. It also offers much cooler temperatures to avoid the summer heat.  I will try this hike again on a weekday to see if the crowds are less, but from my first experiences, I would not recommend this hike.  From a photographic viewpoint, it does offer some nice vistas and terrain that is not available in the lower desert. On today’s hike the light was rather poor and light snow flurries made picture taking tough.Hopefully next time fewer hikers and better light will improve my Mary Jane Falls experience.

White Owl Canyon

       This past weekend I went for a hike in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. I had high expectations for this hike and it did not disappoint. But there were some very mixed emotions along the way.  So the only way to describe this hike is from two perspectives, the hiker and the photographer. 

As a hiker, this was a great day. The hike started from the boat launch at the old Las Vegas Marina. We started by heading west on the Shoreline trail. Almost immediately we spotted a beautiful coyote. It stayed for a couple of minutes than headed down the trail ahead of us.  The shoreline trail follows along the Las Vegas wash until it meets up with Lake Mead.  There are great rock formations and plenty of waterfowl to occupy your vision along the trail.

At a little less than a mile in, the trail opens up into a large dry wash. At this point we headed away from the water up into White Owl Canyon.  As we traveled into the wash we saw another beautiful coyote standing up on a hill staring back at us. When the wash starts to narrow there is a fork; stay to the left into the canyon.  Once in the canyon, you will start to see evidence of owls.  Although we did not see any owls in the canyon, up in the amazing curves and slots you will see plenty of nesting material and lots of “white wash”. Along the ground you will also notice piles of small bones.  It’s clear that there is a lot of owl activity in this slot canyon.  Even without owls, this is a stunning trail. It continues up the narrow slot canyon through a culvert under Lake Shore road and then opens up some until you arrive at the next culvert going under the River Mountain Loop trail.  Once on the other side of the Loop trail we climbed up out of the now flattening out canyon to meet up with the paved bike trail.  We followed this trail back towards the old marina.

Just before the River Mountain trail send you back out to Lake Shore road, there is a large canyon. If you head down into the right side and look on the right wall, there is a beautiful nesting owl pair. We watched for a short time because the owl on the nest was very aware we were there and we did not want to stress her too much. You can head down into this canyon to get back to the marina but it takes some skill as the drop in is rather steep. We chose to follow the River Mountain trail back to the marina road. This was a beautiful hike with great slot canyons and a surprising amount of wildlife.

As a photographer, I was a little uneasy leaving my gear behind but the small pack that weighs next to nothing was a great trade off.  When we arrived at the trail I was excited to hike a new trail and test out a new lens. Of course, the first thing we see is wildlife. Using an 8mm lens to photograph a coyote is ridiculous. I decided to put the camera down and enjoy the beauty of nature. You would think this would be a liberating experience, but it was not. It was an infuriating event. There was a beautiful coyote standing in perfect light and all I could do was watch. As we continued on the trail there are many beautiful rock formations that lend themselves to wide angle photography. This lens captures a 180 degree field of view, so the strong focal point of the rock formations can really aid the viewer.  The second coyote sighting was a little less stressful (maybe I can get used to being an observer).  With its tight slots, the White Owl Canyon is the perfect area for a fisheye lens.  There are so many twists and turns that you could spend hours in this canyon composing shots.

The only downside is the lighting. It goes from bright sunlight to deep cool shadows. Even with bracketing the shots to expand the dynamic range you still end up with strange colors due to changing white balances. It would be difficult to shoot in this canyon without the aid of post processing.  As a photographer, White Owl Canyon is the highlight of this hike. By the time we saw the nesting owl, I was so pleased with experience of shooting with my fisheye lens that I was truly able to sit back and enjoy the experience of just observing a beautiful creature. That being said, I am planning for the day this experiment ends, to return with a large lens to shoot some amazing owl photos.

As my first hike, this was a bit of a challenge.  I did not anticipate the amount of wildlife we would be seeing. But there is so much amazing scenery that I really did enjoy the experience. Being limited to one lens forces a photographer to stretch his/her creativity. This will be a tough year but I am excited for the next hike. 

The Experiment Begins

  Today begins the experiment that will completely change my view of hiking for the next year.  There is one goal that is standard to all hikers; pack as minimally as possible. As a photographer, this goal goes against all I stand for. When I prepare for a hike, aside from my camera, I also must pack at least a wide angle prime lens, a fast standard prime lens, a telephoto zoom lens (the compact one if I don’t anticipate wildlife and the large, heavy fast lens if there will be critters), a tripod, extra batteries and any other photography gadget I feel the hike might “require”. By this point my backpack is quite full and I haven’t even given myself any water! Today all of that changes. For the next year, I will be going on a hike a week and the only piece of photo equipment that will be weighing me down will be a camera with a fisheye lens attached to it. I have never tried the “Only one lens” experiment and I have never used a fisheye lens. So this blog will definitely be a hiking journal, fully describing the trails and points of interest on my hikes. But it will also chronicle my battle of being a hiking photographer with only a minimal pack and a super wide view of the world.