Delicate Arch & Star Trails - Arches National Park, Utah

Nikon D5, 24-70mm f/2.8

This image was the ultimate goal of all the planning and shooting prior to going on this trip. If you didn’t know, Delicate Arch is likely the most well-known natural arch in the world. It’s documented in all sorts of weather conditions including snow, as you see here. I bet there are even a large number of star trail renditions out there-I haven’t seen them, however. As popular and accessible this place is, it’s the not easiest to get to.

You see, it’s at the end of a 500’, 1.5 mile long hike. While those numbers aren’t particularly imposing, the trail is rated as “moderately” difficult. Having been up and down the trail about a dozens times before this trip, I have to agree with the rating. I knew hiking the trail in the middle of a moonless night would be substantially different than hiking it in the middle of the day. The issue is about half the hike is across what’s called slick rock, which is literally what it sounds like, “slick rock”. This is an area where you’re walking across a gigantic rock with few, if any features. This would turn out to be a problem later on.

I knew climbing up to the arch was going to be a big physical exertion meaning sweat management was going to be a problem. Since I perspire more than the average person when working out, I’ve always had to work solutions managing sweat in the winter. The problem being, if you’re wet after a big exercise, that’s a problem. It’s a huge problem if the temperatures are really cold. I knew if I wore my normal winter gear up the trail, I would be soaked by the top. This meant, I needed to make the hike with minimal clothes on while carrying extra clothing in a backpack. For this hike, I climbed wearing a set of long underwear for my legs, a pair of pants, t-shirt, long-underwear top, light jacket, and my running hat. This was perfect in the 10 deg F temps. It’s probably worth noting, the winds were dead calm. My clothing would’ve been quite different if the winds were blowing at all at these temps.

When I got to the top, I put on a pair of insulated pants--over my regular pants--a Patagonia Nano-puff jacket, then finally a wind shell. This was topped off with a very warm hat and a great pair gloves--liners as well. Even with all this on, I still became slightly chilled due to being slightly damp from the climb. Eventually, about an hour later, even the chill went away.

My gear plan worked out great. Getting up to the arch, that didn’t go so well.

Delicate Arch at Sunrise - Arches National Park, Utah

Nikon D5, 24-70mm f/2.8

In the middle of the night with only a headlamp to show the way--i.e. your whole world is only 10 feet away--I got disoriented and totally missed the path on a large section of slick rock. I probably walked up and down that 500 meter section about 10 times trying to find my way. I’d start, get lost, retrace my steps, and start again. After dealing with this for seemingly hours--probably only 30 minutes, I gave up--as in, I turned around and started my way back down the hill. What kept me out there? I’m not sure. Before totally committing to descend down the hill, I simply decided to stop and just stand there considering my options. Obviously, there weren’t many.

While feeling dejected standing there, with the hike a supposed failure, I decided to shoot one scene to at least get one picture out of this effort--sort of like my attempt at documenting this failure. In the end, that picture was nothing to speak of but setting up the camera in the freezing cold completely transformed my mental picture.

I’ve written before how difficult it is to setup night pictures. This time was no different. In the middle of fiddling with my camera, setting things up, I somehow breathed on the lens which immediately froze on the lens. The point here is little errors have very large consequences when shooting in these conditions. In this case, I lost the use of this lens. Frozen condensation can’t be “unfrozen” in the middle of the field in 10 deg temps. The only thing you can do, is stow away the lens in its own case, and hope it eventually warms up enough to evaporate that condensation. Definitely wouldn’t happen in the middle of a night photography shoot.

I was saved only because I brought a spare lens--something I never do on these types of strenuous efforts (too much weight). I planned to use my 14-24mm f/2.8 to get a wide perspective for the star trails, which is also the lens that got frozen over. I brought my 24-70mm f/2.8 only due to an abundance of caution. Turned out to be great decision.

For whatever reason, after making those few “grab shots,” I decided to try my way one more time across the slick rock. . Apparently, I aimed myself slightly differently because it led exactly where I was supposed to go. I only figured this out after hiking up a couple of hundred meters and coming across a few foot tracks on the little snow still on the slick rock. After being effectively lost for over an hour, I finally found my way.

Altogether, the hike that normally takes just less than an hour, took over two and a half. I was definitely well off my schedule when I started shooting.

Delicate Arch at Sunrise - Arches National Park, 4 January 2017

Nikon D5, 24-70mm f/2.8

I figured out my primary lens was unusable only when I got to the top which delayed starting shooting a few minutes to change lenses. As expected, the clothing I put on after the hike kept me warm and toasty despite the 10 deg F temps. The shooting was mostly predictable though it wasn’t long enough. I planned to get almost 2 hours of shooting. In the end, I only got about 45 minutes.

Trail Sign - Arches National Park, Utah

iPhone X

The root problem of this adventure? Not enough trail signs for middle of the night hiking. There weren’t any on that slick rock. If you’ve hiked that route yourself, you probably remember rock cairns to mark the way. There were none. I have no idea where they went. The only man-made signs--natural or not--were a couple at the top of the hill almost to the arch. Definitely not enough.

It might’ve served me well to make the hike the day prior--in broad daylight. I could’ve gotten a better feel for the route if I had the immediate experience. Then again, you literally couldn’t tell where you were across that slick rock. Who knows if recency of experiences would’ve made the difference.

Frozen Bush - Arches National Park, Utah

iPhone X

Knowing how frustrated I was being lost, I’m still surprised I figured it out and actually got good imagery out of the experience. I never felt in trouble out there because I always could make it back to the starting point at the beginning of the slick rock. I also was well equipped with extra clothes to simply sit things out and wait for the sunrise, As it was, the core problem was getting past the essentially featureless expanse.

The other thing to learn is what you see in the day is definitely not what you can see at night when you only have a small headlamp showing the way. It would’ve been nice having some sort of GPS map thing to guide the way. In that cold, I’m not sure that would’ve been a good thing to depend on when electronics fail so quickly in intense cold.

The Windows at Sunset - Arches National Park, Utah

iPhone X

In the end, things worked out very well for this whole trip. Even the adventure at the end was worth the experience. There are so many other details about planning these shots I haven’t shared because I ran out of room in these articles. You should just know planning goes a long ways toward successful photography even when you’re shooting seemingly iconic features like these in this blog.

Cheers

Tom