Toroweap Overlook

I love last minute trips, my wife....not so much.

For the weekend of April 26th I was planning on hiking Mt. Ben Lomond and hope for some milky way photos, but the weather turned bad and that trip was postponed. I got a message from Tom on Friday afternoon to cancel my trip, which I had planned to, and head south to the Grand Canyon @Toroweap overlook with him Saturday morning and returning on Sunday. He was hoping for some storm or lightning shots over the Grand Canyon.

We headed out around 9 am Saturday morning and were met with rain on and off the whole drive down, fortunately I had just put on some new windshield wipers that morning.

We ate lunch in Hurricane, Utah then headed over to Hilldale/Colorado City where we would take a dirt road for 60 miles to the overlook. While in Hilldale we both made the obligatory Facebook check-in stating we were picking up a second wife.

We had both read some reviews on Trip Advisor and the Grand Canyon Parks website stating that the road was terrible and many people got flat tires and that a high clearance vehicle was required. All of which was not entirely true. I think that since we were early in the season the road was freshly graded and wasn't too rough.

High Ground Clearance Required

Once we got to the ranger station the road got a bit more rough and a high clearance vehicle would have made the ride less nerve-racking for me. But my off road experience came in handy while navigating the road in my Subaru Impreza, which has a whopping 6.1" of ground clearance, hardly a high clearance vehicle. We made it to the campground without a scrape or a scuff.

Tom scoping out the scene

5:00 pm. 

We quickly set up camp and headed over to the overlook, about 3/4 mile away from camp, to scout out locations for shooting sunset. There were plenty of fluffy storm clouds around to make some interesting light, so we got some shots.

We couldn't figure out if our phones had changed time zones to figure out when the sun would set. Turns out they hadn't, confirmed by my wristwatch.

Step out onto the ledge

I played around a lot with long exposures, I really love my B+W 10 Stop ND Filter, I think that some of my favorite photos are the long exposures.

Some great textures in the clouds with a little bit of clearing on the horizon, unfortunately the clouds didn't clear quite enough for a stellar sunset.

Puddles

There were these cool puddles from rain just before we arrived

Clouds reflecting

Hardy plant on the rocks

The sky was going crazy for over an hour so we kept bouncing back and forth between pre-determined locations. We shot North, South, East, and West, it was great.

Stairway to Heaven

Shortly after the sun set we headed back to camp and were met with a steady drizzle of rain and a light wind. We were hoping for clear skies to shoot the stars and milky way, and shortly after 10 pm, sure enough the skies cleared. We were both real tired from the long drive and decided to get a few hours of sleep before the milky way rose in the sky. Sadly, when we woke up at 3 am the clouds had moved in again and ruined any chance of some great milky way photos, so we went back to bed until 5.

For sunrise we had some good clouds move in but there was just a bit too many to get great color in the sky, all in all it didn't suck though.

Sunrise at the Wall

Toroweap Overlook