Grand Canyon Rainbow
This is the oldest image that I still show. The story behind it is every bit as good as the resulting image and like most things that last in time, this one has many elements that make the whole better than it's parts. This one has many parts! First the story.
The Whitmore wash is one of the many drainage's into the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River that runs through it. The north rim of the canyon is remote and very far removed from what has now become civilization. From the National Park on the south rim, the national park unit on the north is well over 200 miles by road. Not many people make it to the park on this side, let alone the thousands of miles of wilderness that surrounds it.
Toroweep point and the Tuweep Ranger district are some 65 to 90 miles from a paved road in any direction in a vast area known as the Arizona strip. The signs, what there are of them, say "where the west is still wild!" In the early settlement days it was outlaw territory along with ranch and farmland. The mormon settlers hauled lumber for the temple at St. George from this area. John Wesley Powell studied the natives of this area after his great journey down the Colorado and through the Grand Canyon.
At one point in history the state of Arizona was in danger of losing this entire area to Utah. With the great canyon as a divider, there were not many on the north side to stake claim against the growing population of Utah. The solution was found in having the railroad build a great lodge on the north rim and thus allow Arizona to hold on to it's boundaries. Star Trails at Hance Rapid
Today it's still almost all ranching held by descendents of the pioneers and Bureau of Land Management and one of the remaining great adventure areas to visit and photograph. One could easy spend months or even years exploring the Arizona strip, or shorter visits to many of the different sections are most rewarding. All have special ingredients that make them unique but none more so than the Whitmore Wash area.
While visiting Toroweep point I was intrigued by the listing on the map of the Bar 10 Ranch. Since my desire (as yet unfulfilled) for many years to raft the Grand Canyon had led to only the research stage, I was aware that the Bar 10 was a kind of sub-station for people doing river trips. The ranger at Tuweep filled me in on how I might get there and was kind enough to hook me up with some gasoline. His instructions were to make sure we stopped by the ranch and introduce ourselves since the brothers there were the "caretakers" of the area.
We did just that and brought along some mail and greetings from Tuweep. The last few hours of our approach saw signs of weather and it had started to rain lightly but only for a few minutes. At the time The river through the schist
we thought little of it and the brothers at the Bar 10 only mentioned that the last 3 miles to the rim were volcanic and would take us some time.
They didn't mention that the time was 3 hours! 3 miles in 3 hours left us tired but excited as we stopped at the old trail head that was used by mules to take rafters off the river and then school bus back to the ranch before they started flying helicopters instead. At this point we were only 1.5 miles or so from the river in the lower gorge of the Grand Canyon. The thought was that we could hike to the river before sunset but we were not sure of what we might find on the way or along the river so we made the journey without our camp gear thinking we would come back up and make camp.
As I think the image illustrates, the storm "jumped" across the canyon and the wind hit gale force for a few moments. We did make it to the river and back just before dark but the unsettled weather changed our plans. Thinking that we'd be better off inland we stopped at the Bar 10 to say goodbye only to be told that the three streams we crossed earlier were now rivers! We were going to be their guests for awhile.
It was three days later, a helicopter ride to the river to help load and unload rafters, a couple of great stage shows that the owners put on for the guests and a couple of nights in a covered wagon (they sleep some of the rafters in them) during a severe thunder storm, that we regrettably left. Yep, we did dishes too for our keep!
Matkatimiba Canyon
The rainbow image was made near the trail head. The scene before me just kept getting more dramatic as we hiked the trail. Many setups were done before the 
rainbow appeared. The water from the side canyons had turned the main river back to it's natural color. This is not the case most of the time because of Glen Canyon dam far upstream. The river these days is mostly green in color. The light was changing by the second and each exposure was different in many ways.
This is film and the contrast range was impossible to hold. The use of the Singh-Ray grad neutral density filter is what allowed this image. I had been using a polarizing filter but it killed the rainbow once it appeared. Even with it, the far wall highlights were blown out in some frames and the entire wall in others. With the advent of the digital process in the ensuing years I was able to recover more and more of the shadow area. Today I'm most proud of this print and delight in it's inclusion to my Singh-Ray image gallery.
Elves Chasm
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