Wildflowers and rain showers in the Inner Basin

Rain has become a daily occurrence across northern Arizona as the North American Monsoon is now in full swing. The most visual result of this, of course, is the abundance of wildflowers.

We were pleased with the wildflowers that we encountered on a recent mountain bike ride that started from Lockett Meadows and followed both the Inner Basin Trail and the Waterline Road. At the upper end of the Waterline Road is Abineau Canyon and we saw these flowers and many others.

Potentilla hippiana
Potentilla hippiana
Penstomen with a visitor
Penstomen
Fireweed in early bloom
Fireweed in early bloom

On the fast downhill descent on the Waterline Road we stopped to photograph these.

Yellow Columbine
Yellow Columbine
Lupine
Lupine

Storm clouds began to gather and we made haste getting back to the car. Enduring a thunderstorm on a bike at these elevations is undesirable. We made it back to out starting point before the rain started — but not by much.

Lockett Meadow
Lockett Meadow

As we drove out of Lockett Meadows I could not resist a photo of this view. This tank has been photographed by many but usually on clear days with aspen in fall colors. There are fewer images of a light rain shower with clouds over the peaks and tiny splashes in the tank from the rain drops.

Plants and critters seen along Wet Beaver Creek

On a recent hike up Wet Beaver Creek we were lucky to find many agave plants in bloom. This particular plant had an insect browsing upon it.

Agave plant in bloom.
Agave plant in bloom.

Farther upstream we were treated to some dazzling dragon flies.

Dragon fly.
Flame Skimmer dragon fly.

A great day. And we did some swimming, too!

Swimming through the narrows in Wet Beaver Creek.
Swimming through the narrows in Wet Beaver Creek.

 

 

Lightning season has begun

The summer rainy season — known as the North American Monsoon — has begun across Arizona. Over the past week thunderstorm activity has increased substantially. Some locations have already received their average July rainfall in only a few days while other locations have had only a trace of rain. Flagstaff has been one of the wet places and has had a tremendous amount of rain, large hail, and lightning and there have been some good opportunities to catch lightning with a camera.

Cloud-to-ground lightning with the San Francisco Peaks in the distance.
Cloud-to-ground lightning with the San Francisco Peaks in the distance.
Lightning strikes behind the San Francisco Peaks.
Lightning strikes behind the San Francisco Peaks.

The second image is a composite of two separate photographs taken a few minutes apart with slightly different lighting and cloud structure.

 

Mountain Biking at Phil’s World

Earlier this year we had a chance to share a day of mountain biking with a visitor from southwest Colorado. She told us about the great mountain biking trails in Cortez, Colorado, and we knew we would have to visit this place.

As spring rolled around and the snow retreated we found ourselves in Cortez and riding the well-designed “Phil’s World” system of trails. These trails were designed for mountain bikers and flow with the contours of the land. While the terrain is truly hilly, there are few tough hills to climb. An interesting aspect of these trails is the one-way flow of traffic. This allows the trails to remain narrow since all traffic flows in the same direction and groups do not pass by each other — although faster groups will pass slower groups in the same direction.

Rib Cage, Phil's World, Cortez, Colorado.
Rib Cage, Phil’s World, Cortez, Colorado.
Happy smile riding Ribs Cage.
Happy smile while riding Rib Cage.

Since we started our riding day early we were able to ride the trails with few other riders out and about. This gave us a feeling of isolation instead of the normal congestion of many popular trail systems.

Coco Race, Phil's World.
Coco Race, Phil’s World.
Stinky Spring Loop, Phil's World.
Stinky Spring Loop, Phil’s World.

Our favorite section? Rib Cage! Described as “…a highlight of the system for its whoops and spines and a thrilling series of jumps, banked turns and steep drops. It’s an exercise of inertia and physics performed on a bicycle…

Congratulations and Thank-You to all those who helped to conceive, develop, and maintain these trails.

Comet PanSTARRS—VIII

Comet PanSTARRS continues to amaze sky watchers! Even though it has significantly diminished in brightness as it moves away it is still easily photographed. Even more amazing is the incredible “anti-tail” that has developed. Astronomy Photo of the Day (APOD) has a nice image of the anti-tail of Comet PanSTARRS. APOD notes that “…PanSTARRS anti-tail is one of the longest since the appearance of Comet Arend-Roland in 1957.”

 

Comet PanSTARRS: 30 May 2013.
Comet PanSTARRS: 30 May 2013.

This image was taken using a fixed tripod along with a moderate and fast telephoto lens (Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8G). Thirty separate images of 15s duration were stacked using the free Deep Sky Stacker software. This relatively-long exposure with a telephoto lens was only possible because the comet is located so close to Polaris (North Star) resulting in minimal star motion. This shows that high-end astronomy equipment (i.e. equatorial tracking mount, telescope, modified cameras, etc.) is not necessary to take photographs of the comet.