Sunday, October 29, 2006

Island park Photo Trip

It has been long enough since my last photographing extursion. Theo and I were planning on making a day trip to the City of Rocks to photograph, but circumstances convinced us to stay closer to home. Plus, a day to photograph in the city is simply not enough time. We still covered quite a bit of ground on our day trip of photographing. We caught the morning light at Monkey Falls (near Newdale, ID). It was a bit brisk there, glad I had several layers of warm cloths. I also thought it would be fun to hit Mesa Falls. I have to find a way to get to the north side of the river to photograph the upper and lower falls...there has got to be a way.


Theo checking his phone reception at Mesa Falls...cool! I caught a little rainbow!

During the noon light we walked around Island Park Scout Camp (where I spent every summer growing up). I was amazed at the transformation the COPE course has made. Not one of the orignal poles of the High course are still there... OK, so stumps of them are there, but that is it. I was very impressed! The lake was really cool too. There was a thin (1/8") sheet of Ice on part of the lake, and when we walked on the docks, you could hear the watter ripple crackle under the ice. The scout camp looks really good! There has been a lot of good things done there in the last few years.

OK so I'm not too far off the ground, and it is a HUGE pole...AND there is not any COPE staff or spotters, waaah!

Just north of the camp there is a chimney and concrete slab that is the remnence of a cabin that burnt down...The owner was/is Ken Sampson, he taught ath IF High School. Anyway, I always thought it was a really cool place, and yet I have never photographed there. I just wanted to show Theo, but I pulled out the view camera and made a few exposures from the top of my car. I hope the negs turn out nice. Theo also shot a little with my 10D. His shots were really cool.

We also went to see the distruction caused by the 1959 Hebgen Lake Earthquake. There are remnence of houses at the West end of Hebgen that fell into that Lake, and a few miles farther West there is a lake that was created by the Earthquake...aptly named Quake Lake. Theo was toatly amazed by Quake Lake. There are dead pine trees still sticking out from the surface of the lake. Stark white against the dark blue water, we had to make as many images as the setting sun would allow.

It was a great chance to get out and photograph. Thanks Theo! Now I just need to go through the Digital images and get around to processing the film. I don't envy Theo...I think he has twice as many sheets of film to run.

OK, so there are a few more images, but for some reason they won't upload...I'll post them soon though.

4 comments:

Andy said...

dude, you can get to the north side of the falls...it'll take some hiking though. There is a forest service road that takes you within roughly 3/4 to a mile of the falls (I think it's road at the top of the pass going up the caldera, seems like it's called anderson mill road or something like that). It winds around pretty close to the falls. I've never actually tried the hike but i've driven the dirt road, and according to the few maps I've looked at, it seems pretty doable...especially with some rap gear and maybe some ascenders (a couple prusicks will work quite well).

Oh, and, playin around on the cope course with no spotters? shame shame...I'm callin Kim Hansen.

Tyler said...

Hey, the high course was up ane calling me too...If I didn't have a hurt shoulder (and no gear) I would have been up on that too. Does this road take you close to the upper falls or Lower? I want to get to both...eventually.

Andy said...

it takes you to the upper falls, but following the river, it shouldn't be too bad of a hike to the lower falls...plus there is a trail down the the east side of the falls...can't really remember where the trail head is though.

p.s. how's theo doin? tell that bum to get a blog goin

Tyler said...

He's good...I think he's anti-blog. or just too lazy.