A Rare Sight

Heading east into the high desert

Usually our excursions start early morning, but this weekend we left the house after sunset.

There is a chance to see the northern lights and we were headed to a better viewing point.

Our viewing spot for the evening

The place we had in mind was a side road just south of Fort Rock.

If this works we could have an ancient rock formation in the foreground of a natural phenomena.

Aurora Borealis layering color on the horizon

Only hitch is there’s an active wildfire on the eastside of the Fremont Highway above Horse Ranch Canyon, only 10 minutes from Fort Rock.

We will not be deterred.

We are surrounded by waves of color and stars

Coffee in the thermos, paper bags stuffed with popcorn and the camera batteries all charged up.

The photo expedition ends and we head home in Saturday evening traffic

Was well worth the effort  .  .  .  though it should be noted that your phone is the best viewer for aurora watching.

A Search for Moon Photos

Cloud bank moving our way

This week we chased weather and a moon rise. After a rather snowy start to the new year, Mother Nature made an adjustment and gave us sunny days. Time to head out on an atmosphere focused photo mission.

There had been a new moon, considered a super moon, in the sky January 2nd. Unfortunately, that moon had been obscured by clouds. The full moon was set for the 17th of January and those days were supposed to be under clear skies.

A frosty evening in the high desert

A cool fact about winter’s shorter days is the sun can be setting as the moon rises. As the sun slips across the horizon a warm glow offers ‘cinematic’ lighting on any geographic features the moon is rising over. The feature we’re interested in is Fort Rock, a volcanic extrusion jutting up into a high desert landscape.

The mission actually turned into a couple of evening drives. Fort Rock is a half hours drive onto the high desert, but in that short distance there can be significant weather shifts.

Looks like we have some weather ahead

Where the Fremont Highway drops down the southeastern edge of Paulina Peak, a bank of low clouds covered portions of the desert. Inside that fog the temperature dropped ten degrees.

The result was a coating of frost over trees, sage brush and even the fence line. This highlighting remained even after the clouds moved on. Along the edge of the cloud, sunlight penetrated enough to offer up some excellent photographic moments.

We’ve been to the area armed with camera gear enough to have marked out specific  locations. This makes it easier to time these expeditions. The down side is that when conditions aren’t what had been expected, a shift in agenda is necessary. Actually, that is often the case.

First day we see the moon rise over Ft. Rock Oregon with clouds as back drop.

On the first day we missed a perfect alignment of moon to the Fort Rock escarpment, close … but not perfect. Atmospheric conditions that day made for an interesting backdrop.

Second day we’re literally in the weather.

On the second day the cloud bank had shifted west obscuring Fort Rock as well as the moon. However, the frost coating and cloudy veil presented us with  a very different look. Didn’t get the type of photo we’d been hunting, but managed some interesting images.

 

Chasing Rain Clouds

A high desert spring day offered an assortment of cloudscapes, wildlife sightings, and a view of Fort Rock. The drive out Highway 31 towards Summer Lake is a tour through a variety of habitats, pine forest to lava beds and back.

This week’s escape from the house was a loop east on 31, out into the high desert and then back toward Bend and through a Ponderosa and lodge pole forest just south of Pine Mt. Observatory.

Partly cloudy forecast means something a bit different on the high desert steppes around Fort Rock. Here you can see the small storm cells moving over ridges. You’re greeted with bursts of sun amid the light rainfall.

The pocked face on the southside of Fort Rock didn’t offer up much raptor viewing. Song birds and ravens were in abundance, as was the occasional herd of migrating mule deer and antelope.

Not until we got near Highway 20 and were headed back to Bend did we encounter humans. As we headed home, trucks and their OHV loaded trailers headed to the network of paths crisscrossing the area.  By the time their engine noise filled the forest we were long gone.

Not Always a Highway

Sometimes when you start out for the day there is a destination in mind. Other times you don’t know where you’re going, and once in a while it changes mid journey.

Last week we had just that kind of day. It started with a trip to get sunrise images at Fort Rock, maybe grab photos of raptors, and hike up around the rim. It was a frosty morning, a bit too cold for a long walk, although we did pick up some great shots.

Generally speaking, we don’t like to return on the same route we came. With more of the morning to take advantage of, we pulled the maps and plotted a loop home that looked interesting. It took us over ground we’ve not yet explored … via forest service roads.

Bouncing around on small forest service roads is an adventure. Often not much more than a couple of ruts in the high desert duff, winding through the sage and pine that nearly always presents you with spectacular views. 

Central Oregon forests and high desert lands are typically crisscrossed by a web of dirt roads. Probably because it’s pretty easy to cut a road in this country.

Even when there’s not a road mapped, a simple two track exists on the ground. This means you really need to keep a close eye to the USFS road markers, those flat metal posts at most junctions with numbers on them. 

Standard kit in our car are BLM and USFS district maps to aid the GPS.  The forest service roads are numbered at junctions, unless some stoop has used it for target practice.  Main routes (arterials) get assigned two digit designations. Secondary or collector roads are a four digit number, and local, short access roads, have three digits.

Arterials can be paved, are often graded and usually travelable. But when you start down the four digit routes it gets a bit more dicey. Few of these dirt tracks are maintained with any regularity. Here you need to navigate with some caution as you can run into rough patches, downed trees and worse.

We unexpectedly came upon a controlled burn in the Cabin Lake area. Drive through it? Nope. We took a sharp right on a 2-track lane, turning east, away from the choking smoke.

To the east of Fort Rock is a lava flow formation called the Devils Garden (scheduled for a separate day’s exploration).  We start with USFS 18, skirting the western edge of that rocky structure, then turn on to 2431 and bump along the seam where forest meets high desert.

Our travels took a few different types of ‘4 digit’ roads that slalomed through second growth Ponderosa pine, offering frequent vistas out onto the Christmas Valley hay fields. 

Eventually we wound up on the southern rim of Hole-in-the-Ground, a unique, if unimaginatively named geological feature.

We ended the day’s expedition on a state route headed East to La Pine and used the highway speeds to shake a bit of the dust from the Subaru.