Starting in 1992 my son and I started hiking and backpacking in the St. Francois Mountains in southeastern Missouri and taking trips to the National Parks and Monuments in the west. I am not wealthy so we always drove a car on our trips. At that time I owned an economy car fitted with a roof rack and basket. This system would almost comfortably accommodate three people and their gear. I tried to camp as much as possible or stay in inexpensive motels. Having only two weeks in a year for trips, forced me to plan them carefully in order to jamb as much as is possible in the time allotted. As a result of all this trip planning and map reading and driving I discovered that there are thousands of miles of pretty amazing gravel, dirt and two track routes in the west that take you to wilderness or almost wilderness quality areas. As far as I am concerned these kinds of areas are as good as it gets. If I could figure out a way to make a living and get a decent shower in a wilderness I would never leave.
On one of our trips to Utah and Canyonlands National Park I decided to risk driving my car on the Shaeffer Trail. This trail starts from near the Canyonlands visitors’ center and switchbacks down cliff faces to massive rock benches above the Colorado River and then on to Moab. I do not recommend using a standard auto on this route but I did survive the trip. As a result of the thrill of this drive and the risk to my car I committed myself to buying some kind of higher clearance vehicle as soon as possible. I now drive a manual five speed SUV that I purchased used. It is a bit of a gas hog but it is a pretty tough vehicle capable of traveling most backcountry roads. I have had it stuck in sand in Great Sand Dunes National Park, almost stuck in mud forty miles from services on Poison Springs Road in Utah and almost burned the clutch out in Yankee Boy Basin trying to climb to a tarn below Mount Gilpin. I talked to the owner of Stan’s Hamburgers/Chevron in Hanksville, Utah who told me he typically charges one thousand to twelve hundred dollars to tow vehicles out of the backcountry in that area. Hearing this, you know there is some risk in exploring these kinds of roads. However, I think the adventure, the scenery and the escape from some of the artificiality of urban and suburban life make it well worth the risk.
I have always taken a camera on my trips. In the past I used a Minolta SRT101 that I have owned since 1976. This is a solid 35mm camera capable of taking excellent images. I started shooting slides when everybody had a slide projector and took joy in showing their slides to friends and family. Presenting slide shows seems to be history in the United States, but I never stopped shooting slides. I don’t quite know why taking slides has all but disappeared in this country but I understand in Europe it is still very common. I suspect the Europeans are better photographers. There is nothing worse than seeing too many shots of the fam next to this or that sign while on vacation. Good outdoor photography is never easy.
In March 1997 on a trip to Death Valley National Park I rented a medium format Mamiya MF6. I packed it to the top of Telescope Peak and all over the Park. It weighted about the same as the 35mm camera and the detail in the images was amazing. I could not quite fit the purchase of this camera into my always tight budget so I rented it on several more trips. In 1999 my little economy car was totaled in an accident that was not my son’s fault. We received a small settlement and I used this money to buy a Mamiya MF7II and the 80mm lens. I have been using this fine camera since and now also own the 43mm lens. I still take slides and in particular enjoy shooting in and around The Colorado Plateau.
After a very good trip in May of 2001 I decided to publish a 2002 calendar titled “Colorado Plateau – Backcountry Byways”. It was a bit late in the year to start producing a calendar but I did not know any better at the time. Most people thought the photographs in the calendar were taken in the state of Colorado because of the title. I had to explain that The Colorado Plateau was named after The Colorado River and not the state and that the plateau is composed of parts of four states; Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
I sold a few calendars and this wetted my appetite to do another for 2003. I decided to change the title of the 2003 calendar to simply “Exploring The Colorado Plateau”. This site and my calendar are an attempt to provide a little travel information and hopefully motivate people to get out on the road, get off the beaten path and see some of this unforgettable region.
The calendar provides the latitude, longitude and elevation above sea level for each image from the position of the camera. I use a Garmin Etrex Vista to take the GPS readings. I can recommend this unit. It does, however, eat batteries. The calendar also provides information in the captions below each monthly image about the name of the landform or object and the land ownership. For example, “Looking southeast to Notch Peak on the Tule Valley Road section of the Notch Peak Scenic Loop in Utah’s west desert. BLM Lands(Bureau of Land Management)”. The condition of the road and the vehicle in my opinion required to safely access the site are also described. If a hike is involved to reach the view we provide the one-way distance and rate the hike difficulty. It is actually quite a lot of work to generate this information. I use Delorme’s Topo USA to cross check the GPS coordinates.
The images I select in the calendar represent the scenery as it would be viewed by any other person standing in the same location. In other words if you can find the location you should see what the photo portrays. I do not use filters, nor do I rely on artificial lighting or extreme zooms to create interest in the photograph. I believe the western landscape speaks pretty well for itself. I very much appreciate the blueness of the western sky. Western sky and great clouds lend themselves to good daylight photography. The trees, plant life and wildflowers are also unique in the west, the twisted pines, the Joshua trees, the knarled bristlecones, the cactus, the rabbit brush and thousands of other species make great calendar subjects.
The links I have included in this web page are links I routinely use in planning my photography trips. I highly recommend these sites. Not only do they have great content they also contain excellent link pages. If you are new to handheld GPS units the “GPS Receiver Information” site is an absolute must see. This is simply the best GPS site on the internet. Also, if you are new to GPS you may not be aware of the sport of “Geocaching”. Check out the “Geocaching” site. Basically, you use your handheld GPS unit to attempt to track down hidden caches stashed in ruins, caves, mountaintops or wherever. The internet site provides the coordinates and clues submitted by whoever hides the cache. I have started two separate geocache searches but did not find either hidden cache. I have, however, backtracked on a few of my own image coordinates and it is pretty much a lot of fun to re-find the spot where a photo was taken several years ago.
In closing I would like to comment on the plans for this site. First, we plan to finish the thumbnails associated with each of the calendars published to date and provide a promotional brochure of the upcoming year. Second, we want to provide a verbal description of just what the Colorado Plateau is and provide a good map of the region. Ideally, this map would be an image map linked to photographs and trip reports. Third, we want to provide a section of trip reports. I have kept a daily journal for almost twenty years and after a trip I attempt to recreate the adventure, within reason, in my journal. Fourth, my son and I have hundreds of digital images and 35mm slides of the trips we have been privileged to enjoy in the past. I would like to provide a section of photo galleries that organizes a portion of these images. Some of the images and slide scans we place on the site are not bad in there own right and others are simply for information. I cannot, at this time, scan medium format slides, so the photo galleries will not contain medium format images. The images depicting the calendar photographs, however, are scanned from medium format slides on very expensive commercial drum or flatbed scanners. By the way, all the images in any format on this site have been taken by myself or my son and are protected from commercial use by copywrite laws. I actually don't have a problem with personal use of these images. The fact is they are only 72 dpi and will only print and look decent at the size they appear on the screen. If you would like a better and larger copy of any of the images send me an email and I will work something out with you. I assure you that a 300 dpi image printed on a good printer will be exponentially better than anything you can pull from the internet. Fifth, I continually search the internet for sites that contain good trip reports. I plan to limit the number of links to only those that I consider excellent. Many of the sites I now provide as linked pages already have hundreds of links that I simply do not need to duplicate. Finally and ultimately we intend to use the site as a working tool in planning trips for the future by organizing information gained from the trips previous. I expect this process will take at least one year.
Jim Ridge April 11, 2003