White Pocket Arizona
From the official BLM brochure for White Pocket:
A high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle is required to reach White Pocket. All four-wheel-drive routes, even those suggested by BLM, are used at your own risk. Four-wheel-drive routes marked as "Most Difficult" are substantially rougher or have long stretches of very deep sand.
We travelled to White Pocket in the Arizona Strip in our Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. The Jeep was more than capable to reach the White Pocket trail head but I wouldn’t try it without a capable off-roader.
We camped for two days at the trail head. This was our first time at White Pocket and it was an outstanding photography trip. What an weird and beautiful place!
Note: None of my images use AI generated content.
FOMO : noun. A state of mental or emotional strain caused by the fear of missing out.
Sunset, first day:
It takes several hours to get to White Pocket in the Arizona Strip from Kanab. It’s a long winding trip on 89A to the turn off at House Rock Road. Then it’s a couple hours more of four-wheeling in deep sand to White Pocket.
As a result, we arrived in the early afternoon. With the sun directly overhead conditions were not optimal for photography but the plan was to shoot at sunset anyway.
We concentrated on choosing a spot to set up our tent and settling in for a couple days. Then we hiked around the buttes and ravines of White Pocket, while I scouted photo compositions to shoot at sunset.
Later we hung out at camp, had an early dinner and decompressed from the drive.
As the sun started to set I geared up and hiked back to locations I had scouted out earlier. As I looked around there were photo ops everywhere. Photographically it was like being a kid in a candy store.
Where to start? There’s only so much good light and it disappears fast. Spending time on this meant missing out on that. This butte is lit up one instant, shaded out the next. Meanwhile other compositions appear and disappear in seconds.
Have you ever been angry at a place? I was feeling frustrated, rushed, overwhelmed. So much to shoot, so little time. FOMO indeed.
I managed to make a few images. None of them satisfied me. It’s not that they weren’t good, it’s just that in every case there was always a better one that I missed.
In retrospect I can see that these where good problems to have but in the moment it was frustrating. Relax. Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to shoot in this weird, beautiful, amazing place.
Sunset, First Day.
Sunset, First Day.
Sunset, First Day.
Sunset, First Day.
Sunset, First Day
Flood Frozen in Stone.
Sunrise, Second Day.
If you read my previous post about my first afternoon shooting photos at White Pocket in the Arizona Strip you know that I was feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. There was so much to shoot and see and experience. I didn’t know where to begin. Crazy as it may sound, I felt angry at White Pocket.
We got up at about 4 o’clock the next morning. I packed up my camera gear while Marla made us some hot tea and we got going.
We made the short hike through the deep sand and over the slick rock ridge to White Pocket. As it was quite dark, we got slightly off course, and I was worried we’d be rushed as the sun rose to find a spot to shoot. Eventually we found a spot I recognized from my scouting on the previous day with plenty of time left before sunrise. As I had hoped, it turned out to be a good location. I set up and captured a few good images.
In this pre-dawn image, the moon is rising as the sun is also coming up up over white sandstone hills. The hills have fissures that provide leading lines up to the moon rise.
Sunrise, Second Day.
I thought this pre-dawn image of the white hills, a solitary pine tree and a reflecting pool of water made a great composition.
Sunrise, Second Day.
It was very settling to get a decent image or two under my belt. It took the pressure off and got the day started. I was in that positive flow that I experience when things start to come together.
I moved on to this location I had scouted out the day before. I arrived just in time for the precursor glow of the rising sun to peek over the edge of the distant mountains.
I love shooting at this time of the morning. The warm and contrasty yellow, gold and red of the sunrise defines the thin edge of the horizon. At the same time the remnant of the blue hour subtly illuminates the land in a soft, feathery, cool blue light. This sets up a contrast that adds drama and depth. It has a huge impact on the image.
It also had a huge impact on my state of mind. The light was so beautiful, the surroundings so silent, the air so crisp and bracing that it drew me deeply into the moment. At that instant there was no other place in the entire world that I wanted to be. I took the shot.
All the frustrations of the previous evening were completely washed away. I fell in love with White Pocket.
Sunrise, Second Day.
After we returned from White Pocket I did some research. I found a lecture by a geologist who described how White Pocket formed.
It turns out that the twisted, weird landscape of White Pocket is the result of a catastrophe that took mere minutes to play out.
Tens of millions of years ago, a huge sand dune was supersaturated with water. At some point, it collapsed into a valley below. The rush of the saturated sand was so powerful that it ripped bedrock up from the bottom on the valley and tumbled and spun it up into the giant sand wave.
As the sand tsunami rolled into the valley huge sand volcanoes (sand boils if you prefer) blew up heaping mounds of white sand and water on top of the chaos below.
According to the geologist the whole thing took as little as ten or minutes to play out.
Over the millions of years since, the sand and rock flow dried out, became buried by new sand dunes, compressed, and turned to stone. Then, erosion cut away the covering layers revealing once again the twisted landscape of white pocket for us to experience.
When I look at this photograph, I imagine the virtually instantaneous collapse and flow followed by millions of years of silence. These images I captured that morning with my camera inspire thoughts of sudden catastrophe followed by geological eons of deep time.
Sunrise, Second Day.
Sunrise, Second Day.
Sunrise, Second Day.
Late Morning, Second Day.
Sunset, Second Day.
Sunset, Second Day.
Sunset, Second Day.
Petrified Sand Flow.
Petrified Sand Flow.
California Condor Nesting Site.
On our way out from White Pocket on the morning of the third day we stopped at the California Condor viewing site on House Rock Road. This is one of five re-introduction sites in the world. I remember when I was a kid they removed the last few surviving California Condors from the wild in a last ditch effort to preserve the species with a captive breeding program.
Fortunately they were successful enough to begin reintroduction to the wild in the early 90s.
California Condor Nesting Site.
My photo is pretty bad. We were very far away and didn’t have time to hike in closer. However, I was able to capture this blurry photo of a hand full of Condors as they began to take flight with the rising sun. I felt privileged to see it and record it.
I want to live in a world with California Condors in it. At one time that seemed unlikely to happen. Now it seems possible and I hope the dedicated people involved in reintroducing and protecting these enormous birds succeed. I wish them all the best.