A Desert Storm

Back to the desert, although I'm still buzzing with excitement about the bear den!!! Just so you know, I have to go to the den to check the trail cameras' memory cards, and I'll do that only about once per month to avoid upsetting the bear. So, there won't be an update on the den for a little while.

In late November, there's a spot along the Colorado River in the red rock desert where I love to get sunset photos. When the sun is low in the sky, I love to get Shyla glowing against the gorgeous red towers behind her. Here's one of the photos from our visit to that spot last year in November.

This year, the day we went looked really promising. Just before we left our campsite to go to the towers, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. It seemed to be a perfect day for it.

However, as we took the short drive to the spot, a wicked weather front moved in, engulfing the entire landscape in low and thick clouds. This was the brightest photo that I took of Shyla when there was still a shimmer of light on the western horizon.

At the same time, the Runner noticed a climber on top of one of the towers. By the time I captured a photo, he'd descended a little bit. He's in orange pants to the right of the photo. He was very high.

We didn't see him again because the clouds took the visibility down to almost zero right after that. However, we also didn't hear of any reports of lost climbers so he probably got down okay. I hope so.

We were literally in the clouds. It was mystical but it wasn't what I'd expected or hoped for!

We could still see a butte with a snowy slope behind it early in the cloud invasion.

The Runner and R had been hiking while Shyla and I did our "photography thing". They beat a hasty retreat as the weather moved in. They look tiny below those towers.

I squeezed in a couple more photos before they arrived at our spot so that we could all return to the LabMobile. I was mesmerized by the sudden transformation in the world.

Indeed, the towers soon disappeared completely from view. This was the last peek of them.

As the four of us hiked the quarter mile to our LabMobile, the snow started to fly.

It was one of those evenings that we felt so lucky to have our warm LabMobile. We cranked up the heater and wrapped ourselves in sleeping bags. We were toasty as a snowstorm raged outside our LabMobile.

We awakened to a world that looked utterly different from the day before. The red rock desert was snow covered! I'll save that for the next post.