The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Indiana Dunes National Park ranks a respectable 13th of all the 61 national parks by number of visits (averaged over the decade 2008-2017). Most of those visits last a few hours: to be precise, according to NPS statistics, an average of 3h 15 min – the 8th shortest. Those hours are in general spent at the beach. Because those beaches are busy in summer, seeing them deserted and covered with snow and ice was already an experience that went beyond the ordinary, as most people who visit Indiana Dunes miss the incredible shelf ice. However, there is much more to the park than the lakeshore, and this was one of the justifications for re-designating Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Park – national parks have multiple resources.

The Dunes

First, the namesake dunes. They are not as sculptural as those found in the desert, because they are mostly covered by vegetation. I saw grass-covered dunes, shrub-covered dunes, pine-forested dunes, and oak-forested dunes. Although low grass-covered dunes line all the beaches, there are only a few high dunes located near the shore. The 1-mile loop Dune Succession Trail at West Beach is possibly the best short hike in the park, as the trail illustrates the four stages of dune development, and due to the proximity to Lake Michigan, its 250 stair steps lead to an excellent high view of the lake and of active dunes. About two hours after sunrise, the sun was high enough to illuminate the landscape, yet low enough to create interplay between light and shadows. I timed my photograph for the moment when the shadow of the ridge fell entirely within a patch of sand, resulting in an unbroken shape.

The most spectacular dune in the park is Mount Baldy. Its name indicates that it is a bald dune, with sparse vegetation opening up sweeping views over the lake. Rising 126 feet off the beach, it is one of the tallest lakefront dunes anywhere, and it is also the most active in the park, burying black oak trees as it moves 4 feet per year.

Mount Baldy was the park’s main attraction, however, following an incident in 2013 when a boy disappeared into a mysteriously formed hole (he was rescued), it was closed for safety and stabilization. Since 2017, dune visits are limited to ranger-led hikes. The half-mile trail that leads around the dune to the beach has no such restrictions. As the lake side of the dune is north facing, snow from the day before still lingered, contrasting with the dune grass.

There is no need to go beyond the parking lot to see the striking inland side of the dune. In fact it is on the verge of covering that lot. To leave some of the mystery of the scene intact, instead of depicting the whole dune, I focussed on a small area where trunks and shadows created a graphic composition of lines.

Biodiversity

The redesignation proposal emphasized that more than 1,100 native plant species make the park the fourth most diverse plant ecosystem, only behind the much larger Great Smoky Mountains, North Cascades, and Grand Canyon. That diversity is directly linked to the dunes. As the last great continental glacier retreated 12,000 years ago, fluctuations in water level of the newly-created lake resulted in successive series of shorelines and dunes. The space between the dunes was filled with wetlands. The juxtaposition of the dry environments of the dunes and wetlands, has created diverse habitats. Moreover, the glacier that left the dunes, flowing from the north, transported several northern species to the region. It is a park where you can see orchids, carnivorous plants, and cacti in a small area. It can appear difficult to capture that biodiversity in the middle of the winter, but even the bare vegetation forms conveyed some sense of it.

Fresh snow fell during my visit, and although you’d think that it would hide the land’s diversity, I thought that on the contrary, it helped outline the vegetation. For instance, by blanketing the ground in white, it highlighted the remnants of autumn color in the leaves. The featureless blank sky, usually the bane of landscape photography, helped to that effect. I made it part of the composition by echoing its line with an angled line of snow in the foreground.

Trails

There are 14 trail systems with lengths from half a mile to over 6 miles, and they allowed me to sample the diversity of environments in the park beyond the beaches and sand dunes: prairies, globally rare oak savannas, wetlands, forests, and rivers. The bill that redesignated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Park also renamed Miller Woods Trail as Paul H. Douglas Trail. The 3.4-mile round-trip hike is a good introduction to the diversity of the park, as it winds through several of those habitats. The rarest of them is the black oak savanna, in which oak forests meet western tallgrass prairie. Only 0.02% of this globally endangered habitat remains in the Midwest.

The 4.7-mile Cowles Bog Trail is the most rugged and scenic trail in the park, and also its most diverse, combining expansive wetlands, some of the steepest dunes in the park, and Lake Michigan. Starting at the Greenbelt Trailhead south of the Cowles Bog Trailhead provides a more open view of the namesake wetland where Henry Cowles from the nearby University of Chicago conducted his pioneering work that helped establish ecological science in the early 1900s – he literally put “ecology” into the vocabulary. Walking with photographer Kyle Telechan from the Chicago Tribune, I whined with him about how the markers left by scientists marred the atmosphere of the photos. However, looking back at the photographs, I found them to be a useful reminder of the legacy of scientific inquiry that took place in the park, and also that the area is still a rich ground for study today. For that reason, I included one of them in the Indiana Dunes chapter of Treasured Lands.

I wish that the new designation will make beachgoers realize that there is a full national park to explore there, and that it will be the start for a rewarding journey through many of them. While the beach and sand dunes will always be the park’s primary draw for the public, I hope that these images will inspire you to experience more of our latest national park, even in winter!

More images of Indiana Dunes National Park

Part 3 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Congress redesignated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Park, our 61st, on Friday, February 15. I was initially hoping the reach the park before sunset on Monday, but Chicago International Airport and the park are located on opposite sides of Chicago, and I had landed just in time for rush hour.

The Shore in winter

My destination that day, West Beach, is the most developed of the park beaches, with a parking lot for more than 600 vehicles, a bathhouse, and lifeguards in the summer. As I arrived there after dark, the huge parking lot was empty and snow-covered for a very different impression. Upon walking to the beach, I was astonished by the arctic beauty and the strangeness of the lumpy ice formations illuminated by the full moon. I had seen a lot of ice in the mountains, but this was new to me.

I was glad that despite temperatures balmy for the area (in the 20Fs, whereas the “polar vortex” had brought wind chills of -50F a few weeks earlier), I had packed my expedition-grade parka. The frigid wind and solitude contributed to the impression of wildness, despite the smokestacks present on both sides, and the distant Chicago Skyline. if not for the full moon, its brightness would have overwhelmed the picture. At the end of the 19th century, Henry Chandler Cowles, a professor at University of Chicago and ecology pioneer, developed the theory of ecological succession from research conducted in what was to become the national park, bringing scientific attention to the area.

The next morning, I started the day at the opposite end of the park, at Mount Baldy. The half-mile trail hugs a steep section of the dune for a dramatic view high above the beach. Unlike at West Beach, the shelf ice extended continuously into the lake as far as the eye could see.

I returned a few days later to West Beach at dawn. More informed about the nature of shelf ice and the potential danger presented by the formations, which are not as stable and solid as they look, I hesitantly and carefully made my way towards an opening in the ice, using my tripod to probe the ice for thin spots and holes.

Large format film photography today

You can notice in this low-quality scan (a digital picture, actually) the film holder frame indicative of a large format film photograph. However, this was not the first large format photograph I made in the new national park:

Watch as I make the (likely) first large format photograph of Indiana Dunes National *Park* #parkchat pic.twitter.com/tHA9qmH6QZ

— QT Luong (@terragalleria) February 21, 2019

These days, I photograph mostly in digital, however for project continuity, whenever a new national park is established, I will pull out my large format film camera out of the closet, and also pull some film that expired in the 20th century out of a secondary freezer that I bought for the express purpose of storing film – although it is now overflowing with food. Since at that time I was not aware of anybody having done it, the goal to photograph all U.S. national parks in large format was what inspired me to embark on this odyssey, more than a quarter century ago. For that reason, I have striven to keep that streak intact when the 58th, 59th, 60th, and now 61st national parks were established. Given how few photographers nowadays work with large format film, this is a goal I am fairly sure to accomplish provided that I keep going. Nice to have a fail-safe claim! In fact, I am not even aware of anybody else who has photographed more than 53 national parks in large format. However, my real claim is to try to be the first photograph all the U.S. national parks, regardless of camera type. I, and a few other folks who follow this sort of thing, believe that I did just that on Feb 18, so I will assume that to be true until proven otherwise.

A missive from a fellow traveler to the national park

Upon returning, I received a phone call and this email from Bob Harback of Flanagan, Illinois:

I got a great break getting hired early with very high seniority at a car factory about 31 years ago, By taking an average of at least a month every year, my wife Julie and I have been able to spend over 2 years on the road through our nearly 24 years of marriage. We are honored to join QT as one of the first couples to visit all 61 of our national parks on February 23, 2019. (Indiana Dunes National Park) He left there the day before we got there. Our story started nearly 24 years ago when my wife suggested we see some national parks on our 24 day journey out west. Little by little we had gotten to 19 National Parks without even knowing about passport stamps. We had zero stamps when Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan put on their famous documentary. I told my wife, there is so much more out there. So, every chance we got, we visited all the parks again, getting all the stamps this time. We had been fortunate with good health to get to the 60th national park a few months after the Gateway Arch became a National Park in 2018. Our good luck continued on Feb 15th of this year when the Indiana Dunes became a national park. We only live 2 hours from the dunes so on February 23 we got to put our 61st stamp on our master sheet, along with our picture in front of each national park sign along this incredible journey. The rangers there told us we were the first couple to get to all 61 parks. We even sent a postcard stamped that day from Indiana Dunes to Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan in appreciation of their inspiration. We cannot wait for QT’s book to come out August 1st. Along with QT, we have endured tidal wave, avalanche, and earthquake areas, along with African bee, rattlesnake, dust storm and 15 degree slope areas. We were so remote in Alaska above the arctic circle, we even picked up eskimos at a stopover on one of our 14 prop plane trips! One incredible 23 year journey!! We suggest you see as many national parks as you can, there are no disappointments!

Press

I’ve mentioned in the previous post that there was quite a bit of pressure this time, unlike at the other parks where I made an average of five visits. Although media interest in my park visits started more than a decade ago, it reached a new level this time. I ended up doing four media interviews and turning down more requests. This consumed a fair amount of time, but I still managed to visit 6 beaches and hiking 8 trails, some multiple times. The film photography angle is what intrigued WGN-TV in their story Photographer completes mission to capture every national park on film (again), but interestingly the Chicago Tribune focussed on a different angle: Photographer stalls printing of book to get images of Indiana Dunes, America’s newest national park.

Reader poll

Which leads me to a very quick poll for you. Here are three choices for the Indiana Dunes spread which depicts the shore in the new edition of Treasured Lands. Which one do you prefer and why? You can click on images to enlarge.

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More images of Indiana Dunes National Park

Part 2 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

One of the consequences of the government shutdown is that we just got Indiana Dunes National Park, our 61th National Park. Let me explain a bit. In the 115th Congress, the Indiana congressional delegation pushed hard for the change of designation for Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which enjoyed wide local support except for the lone dissenter, environmental law professor John Copeland Nagle (2017, 2019). However, at a summer 2018 hearing, P. Daniel Smith, acting director of the National Park Service, testified that the agency prefers to use the “national park” label for units that contain a variety of resources and encompass large land or water areas (consistent with my discussion), and the bill expired with the 115th Congress at the end of 2018 as all un-resolved bills do. Locals were determined to make it happen, so at the start of the 116th Congress, the bill was promptly re-introduced in both the House and Senate, but normally those things take a while. Having monitored the two bills that were not even out of commitee, I was shocked to see this:

pic.twitter.com/Wvft1Sew9G

— Indiana Dunes (@IndianaDunesNPS) February 15, 2019

How could have they gotten fast-tracked so dramatically? In order to provide funding for the government, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019, which is an “Omnibus Appropriations bill” with a hodgepodge of provisions that, unlike other bills, had to be signed promptly by the President in order to prevent another shutdown. One of those provisions redesignated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Park.

The 1st edition of Treasured Lands sold out of its three printings in two years and two months. Used copies sell for more than the list price of a new copy, while new copies retail for double the list price. I was therefore eager to get the second edition out as soon as possible and had been working for a few months to this effect.

Besides new images and location descriptions such as those above (Cataloochee and Elkmont in the Great Smoky National Park), what distinguished the second edition from the other reprints was that it would be up to date with all the then 60 national parks, but that was before Feb 15. You may think that “stopping the presses” happens only in the movies, but I had to call my printer to almost literally do so, and it was not for some newspaper but a 472-page high production quality book.

So far I have only made the maps. Besides “Indiana Dunes National Park”, note the shaded relief, absent from the NPS map:

(click on map to enlarge)

Here is a detail of my general map of all the National Parks. Note that unlike the corresponding NPS maps and those who re-use it, my map provides the outline of all the parks, rather than a dot for the small parks:

From a quick look at the map, which park is north of the other?

This matters because Treasured Lands orders parks from north to south:

Although on the map, because of the projection it would appear that Cuyahoga Valley National Park is north of Indiana Dunes National Park, in fact the southernmost point of Indiana Dunes National Park (Melton Road, latitude 41.59) is north of the northernmost point of Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Rockside Station, latitude 41.39).

You can also see on this table of contents that I have allocated 8 pages for Indiana Dunes National Park. I have little time to fill up those pages, since I am hoping to have advance copies to sign during an international exhibit this spring (the general release will be later in the summer). My publicist has promised images to the media – for which I will be doing quite a few interviews, including newspaper, radio, and TV. Unlike for my other national park visits, the pressure is high. I have never been to the park, which I expect to be one of the less spectacular of all, it is now winter there with all vegetation bare, and the weather looks iffy during my projected 3-day visit. Quite a challenge.

That last weather forecast was from a day before I flew out to Chicago on Monday. I take it as a good omen that in the few hours after I learned about Indiana Dunes National Park, on Friday two people emailed me for entirely unrelated reasons: a friend from Louis-le-Grand high school now living in Chicago, and a naturalist who used to work at Indiana Dunes. Stay tuned to see how I did!

Part 1 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Unlike all other national parks that are open 24 hours a day, Petrified Forest National Park’s gates close at night, an extraordinary measure necessary to prevent theft of petrified wood – a serious problem. Petrified Forest National Park, despite his sizeable area (146 square miles, 38th largest national park) is also one of a handful of national parks without a campground. However, all this does not mean that the park is solely a day use area.

Petrified Forest National Park includes two wilderness areas open for overnight backpacking. No reservations are taken, but rangers issue permits for free in both the visitor centers at the northern and southern entrances, even for a trip that starts on the same day. Those backcountry permits are not a pass for roaming freely in the park after hours. In particular, permit holders need to park overnight at two specific locations and are not authorized to drive their cars when the park is closed. Instead, the permits are meant only for staying in the wilderness areas. You need to have left your car well before the park’s closing time. When you sign the permit this is only one item amongst the long list of usual leave-no-trace backcountry rules. Because of that, on my first attempt to go backpacking there years ago, I did not pay enough attention to that detail. I found out that the National Park Service enforces the rule seriously. After securing my permit in the morning, I went for a day hike and eventually parked my car at the pullout meant for backpackers, maybe two hours before park closing time. A ranger was already parked at the pullout. As I was taking my time re-packing my gear for the overnight outing, the ranger approached me to notify me she is canceling my permit because I was supposed to have left my car already.

Because of that experience, for my second attempt, I made sure to start early even though I’ve been told that the new regulations are less strict: permits just need to be picked up at least an hour before park closing. You need to indicate which of the six backcountry zones you would be camping in. Five of those are in the North Wilderness, including the Black Forest, which is Zone 2. Since I had previously hiked in the North Wilderness, I chose instead to hike into the South Wilderness.

I headed towards the Puerco Ridge. Being free to roam the backcountry with nobody around is such a treat. After seeing something intriguing in the distance, I could simply hike straight over and check it out. As sunset was approaching, I climbed up a ridge for a higher view of the surrounding badlands and watched the light change over 360 degrees of desert. Since the climb was rather precarious, I made sure to get down before it was too dark.

Why did I want to do an overnight trip in Petrified Forest National Park, when, given the size of the park, it is possible to reach any part of it on a day hike of fewer than 15 miles? I am working towards a goal to photograph each of the national parks at night. As beautiful as the badlands I found were, I had been surprised to see almost no petrified logs in the Puerco Ridge area. I wanted the night photographs to be representative of the park, and therefore to include some. Maybe it would have been a smarter idea to stick to a pre-scouted area such as the Black Forest, and my curiosity for new places had given me a disservice? Fortunately, I knew that the day use area along the Longs Logs Trail has large concentrations of petrified wood, so I was confident that by walking southwest, I would find some. I hiked cross-country for a few hours in that direction in the dark, following the easier travel routes formed by dry washes, and reveling in the solitude and beauty of the night.

Eventually, the bright spot of my flashlight shone into sizeable logs. The bright core of the Milky Way rises towards the south. If I had gone to the North Wilderness, I would have been looking south towards I-40. Because of its proximity light pollution may have been an issue. That was another reason why I tried the South Wilderness instead. I had hoped that the area south of the park would be wild enough. However, the South Wilderness which is close to the southern edge of the park and I was disappointed to find out that the light from inhabited areas was a bit distracting. Another lesson learned! I tried to hide the brightest lights behind a petrified rock so that the glow would kind of highlight it. Photographing towards the north, the Milky Way wasn’t as bright, but there was no distracting light pollution.

Petrified Forest National Park at first doesn’t appear to be prime hiking territory since the park features relatively short trails that lead to areas of concentrated petrified wood. Because of the open terrain in many of them, it can be difficult to exclude other people from your photos. However, if you are willing to venture off trail, there is much more to discover.

The northern region of the park forms its largest wilderness area. Without maintained trails, it offers plenty of solitude. The petrified wood here is younger and darker than the specimens found in the more frequently visited regions of the park, hence the name Black Forest. I began the journey from the Wilderness Access Trail that starts left of the Painted Desert Inn. Since it is visible from the Black Forest, I used it as a useful visual landmark to find my way back. Even a short hike down is rewarding, as you walk through badlands brilliantly colored by iron oxides, away from the crowds.

Once I reached the bottom, the developed trail gave way to a user trail leading to Lithodendron Wash, a large drain through the Black Forest. Although the wash was mostly dry, it was unexpected to find water running through the desert, and I could imagine the wide flow during a flash flood.

While there is much room to explore and make your own discoveries, the destination for most day hikers is the Onyx Bridge, a 30-foot-long log spanning a small wash. Unlike the Agate Bridge which is supported by a concrete reinforcement, the Onyx Bridge’s surrounding are wild, however the knee-high span isn’t all that impressive.

This off-trail hike is about 4 miles round trip with a 300-foot elevation gain on the way back. The Onyx Bridge is about 0.2 miles northwest from the second bend of Lithodendron Wash along a side drainage. If you are interested in finding the bridge, you should download the hand-out with a map and directions. I recommend using GPS, because although I arrived in the vicinity of the bridge by following directions, it was the GPS coordinates provided on the map—N35 06.515 W 109 47.531 (NAD83)—that enabled me to eventually locate it. During my entire hike, I did not meet a single person once I left the established trail.

I was happy to find the bridge, but as is often the case, the journey through wild terrain turned out to be more rewarding than the destination. Being able to wander anywhere you see something that piques your interest is a treat. Unlike desert parks with delicate cryptobiologic soil or mountain parks with fragile alpine tundra vegetation and wildflower-covered subalpine meadows, Petrified Forest’s ground is quite resilient and for that reason, the National Park Service encourages off-trail hiking. As of this writing, the park’s home page is entitled “A Place for Discovery” and Off the Beaten Path Hikes are prominently featured. By the way, another example of the lessened restrictions in the park is that unlike most, they do not prohibit pets anywhere!

If you bought a copy of Treasured Lands, I thank you for your interest in my work and your support. I would be even more grateful if you would participate in the following nine-question survey, which should take only a few minutes. As a small token of my appreciation, all respondents are eligible for a drawing to win free signed copy of the second expanded edition that will be published this summer.

If you do not see the question below, or if you prefer to view all the questions on a single page, please click here.

Comments entered in the survey are visible only to me, but if you’d like them to be public, you can comment on this blog post.

I’ve maintained the photobook meta-list for six years (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) and it’s been gratifying that some in the photography community found it useful. This month, Alec Soth asked me where the 2018 meta-list was. I happily referred him to the list maintained by Viory Schellekens. Last year, I noticed that she had been compiling a 2017 meta-list that was better in any way than mine: more meticulous, informative, and complete. Among other improvements, Viory identifies individuals and lists being counted for each book. Since the result of this effort is meant to be objective, I have decided not to compile the meta-list going forward. And since this effort consumes so much time, I am grateful that Viory has taken it over. My engagement with the meta-list is not entirely finished, though, as this year instead of aggregating lists I author my first favorites list consisting of ten books published in 2018, and two reprints.

Barbara Bosworth: THE HEAVENS, Radius Books. Photographs of the moon, sun, and stars are not only remarkable for the way they were made, with a 8×10 camera – the last photographic instrument I’d think of today for this endeavor in spite of my fondness for large format photography, but even more so for the sense of wonder and mystery enabled by this difficult process. Like The Meadow with the same format, it is a beautiful and intricate book.

Sally Mann: A THOUSAND CROSSINGS, Abrams. The most extensive survey of Sally Mann’s work to date is not a mere retrospective but instead a book with a curatorial point of view focussed on themes central in the artist’s oeuvre, explored through a combination of classic as well as unpublished recent photographs and a lot of scholarly essays. The massive catalog is a bargain compared to other photobooks.

Todd Hido: BRIGHT BLACK WORLD, Nazraeli Press. Iceland and Noray have become a popular photographic destination, however, Hido’s dark and moody photographs are easily identified as his. At the same time, in his first venture beyond America he has also extended his concerns with environmental overtones. At first, the book physically looks similar to his previous oversize Nazraeli publications, if even slightly larger, but it conceals a few design surprises.

Stephen Strom: BEARS EARS: VIEWS FROM A SACRED LAND, George Thompson Publishing. Strom’s stark and radical vision with its emphasis on distance and aridity may be a little counterproductive to the cause of the book, however having photographed the place myself, there is no denying that he managed to find an original way to depict the natural landscape.

Naoya Hatakeyama: EXCAVATING THE FUTURE CITY, Aperture. Hatakeyama life work consists of a multi-faceted examination of the city as a transforming organism, ranging from its source materials to the architecture. This retrospective does an excellent job at pulling all the stands of this endeavor together.

Guido Guidi: PER STRADA, Mack. Exploring familiar territory near his home and along the Via Emilia, Guido Guidi has created images of common places that are extraordinary in their precision.

Max Pinckers: MARGINS OF EXCESS, Self-published. Pinckers has carved an odd niche between the conceptual and the documentary, examining photography’s authenticity and objectivity in the process. His latest project intertwines reality and fiction at a new level as it tells the story of six people who have created their own truth.

Richard Mosse: The Castle, Mack. Mosse turns a military-grade thermographic camera that can image a human body from 30 kilometres away back towards the state, picturing their response to the global refugee crisis. The heat maps assembled from hundreds of video frames are strikingly reproduced on panoramic gatefolds using silver ink on black paper to produce an unusual object.

Deana Lawson: DEANA LAWSON, Aperture. This gorgeous monograph is simply designed and the premise, staged environmental portraits of black people, looks simple enough, but there is a lot going on in those photographs.

Oliver Klink: CULTURES IN TRANSITION, True North Editions. Klink has gone beyond travel photography by repeatedly traveling into remote corners of Asia armed with insider contacts to seek authentic moments, and by crafting exquisite B&W Piezography prints. The edit confers a universal human dimension to a book printed to such uncompromising standards that the plates sometimes exceed those prints.

Michael Schmidt: WAFFENRUHE, Koenig Books (reprint). Schmidt’s 1987 masterpiece shows how Berlin felt at a critical historical juncture using an intensely personal visual vocabulary.

Ralph Gibson: THE BLACK TRILOGY, University of Texas Press (reprint). Gibson’s forged a singular path through his seminal books self-published in the early 1970s, three of them are compiled in this publication. He innovated by pairing photos in order to create parallels that enhance the mysterious narrative emanating from the surrealist and dreamy photographs.

Back to the beginning of the year 1993, I knew almost nothing about the U.S. national parks. However, I knew that Yosemite was home to a 3,000 feet high cliff called El Capitan, the tallest in North America.

Although El Capitan was my reason for moving to California, finding a partner for the climb proved to be challenging because as a newcomer, I hadn’t yet inserted myself into the local climbing community. Besides, the type of climbing involved was also new to me, and nobody would trust an outsider, and especially a European, without “big wall” experience. Just like America has many more wilderness areas than Europe, America’s cliffs are in general wilder too. In places such as Yosemite, climbers need to be more self-reliant, putting in place and removing their own protection, a practice called “trad (traditional) climbing”, as opposed to “sport climbing” prevalent in France, where permanent safety equipment such as bolts are already in place.

The normal sequence is to prove yourself on several shorter big walls and then Half-Dome, before attempting El Capitan, the big one. However, I learned the tricks from a book, was able to recruit my partner Frank from France, and in April 1994, after a one-day warm-up on Washington Column, we tackled the Nose of El Capitan in four days. I discovered there a vertical wilderness a new scale, just like during my Denali climb, I had discovered mountains at a scale new to me.

Yosemite is the birthplace of this big wall climbing. Two characteristics distinguish this form of rock climbing from others. First, the verticality and difficulty of the route requires the use of “aid climbing” for all but most elite climbers. This means that instead of using gear only for protection against the consequences of a fall (as in “free climbing” where you grab only the rock), you use that gear as a means of progression – in other words, you pull and step on gear because the natural holds in the rock are not enough for you. Since you carry so much gear and have to place it too, it entails a slow progression. Second, the route difficulty, combined with its length normally requires more than a single day to complete the climb. This, in turn, means that you need to be hauling everything you need to live on the wall. Supplies, hardware, and shelter can add up to hundreds of pounds. Most notably, you use folding platforms called “portaledges” for sleeping. They are pretty comfortable, but better not roll in your sleep.

In aid climbing, it is not unusual to spend one or even several hours on a single pitch (the vertical extent of a length of rope). Time flies for the lead climber, but not so for the belayer, who is sitting at the same spot all that time. Besides daydreaming, I had plenty of time to watch how shadows changed as the sun moved across the landscape in the course of the day, and how the light changed the appearance of the rocks and meadows below. As much as I loved the exposure and the position big wall climbing got me too, I was beginning to yearn to move more freely into the land.

It is quite difficult to photograph climbing well if you are not a climber yourself. One of the keys is to be at the same level as the climber or above, not below, where non-climbers are usually stationed. But it is also quite difficult to photograph your own climb, as you lack the mobility to find different angles, and often are actually too close to the action. And so, in 1999, my last outing to El Capitan was at the request of a sponsored climber from Italy who needed a record of his ascent of the Reticent route, which then the most difficult big-wall route on El Capitan. I backpacked to the top of El Capitan from the Tioga Pass Road, set up several ropes and rappeled down to complete the task. I was there as a photographer rather than as a climber.

Credit: Robert Nicod

One of the questions I am asked most frequently at my lectures and gallery openings is “What is your favorite National Park ?”. Based on their merits alone, it would be difficult to say, because they are so different. However, for sentimental reasons, I reply “Yosemite” without hesitation. What makes it special to me is that it was the first National Park I had heard of and visited, and the time I have spent there on repeated visits, many of them spent on big walls.

What have we learned from the fate of the national parks during the government shutdown, should you visit them, and how do you prepare yourself for an enjoyable visit that doesn’t have negative impacts on the parks?

The government shutdown

A U.S. government shutdown first affects unpaid federal workers, but beyond them, the most visible effect is on our national parks, which should say something to their importance to us as a nation. The national parks remain semi-functional without staffing, so what to do? During the previous extended shutdown of 2013, the National Park Service (NPS) closed all units to the public. This caused a major public backlash, with images of closed gates flooding social media, and complaints of lost revenue from gateway communities making headlines.

Maybe wanting to avoid those unpopular consequences, a different approach was taken this time, although it is unclear who was responsible for the decision. All NPS units are kept open, but with almost no services provided by the NPS and only a bare minimum of rangers on duty. In general, discontinued services include ranger-led activities, entrance booths, visitor centers, and most (not all) flush restrooms – but not vault toilets, go figure. Here are the most salient points from the excruciatingly detailed NPS shutdown policy:

Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors, but there will be no NPS-provided visitor services, including restrooms, trash collection, facilities and roads maintenance (including plowing), and public information.

As a general rule, if a facility or area is locked or secured during non-business hours (buildings, gated parking lots, etc.) it should be locked or secured for the duration of the shutdown.

However, the situation varies park-by-park as some units, including the Old Post Office Tower in the same building as Trump International Hotel, get help from local governments or citizen organizations to keep more services in operation. Private operations within parks such as lodges may still continue their business. Since NPS websites are not updated during the shutdown, social media and gateway communities may be the best place to learn about the exact situation for a particular park.

The national parks

The decision in 2013 and prior shutdowns to close the parks was made to protect the parks and the visitors. It was predictable that without law enforcement and maintenance, the parks would suffer to some extent. For example, it is estimated by the NPS that visitors leave 2,200 tons of garbage each year in Yosemite, or 6 tons per day. Since garbage collection is not deemed an “essential service”, a large portion of that garbage is bound to overflow the trash cans. Yosemite is bear habitat, and the Yosemite bears are probably the most habituated in the world, which means that many are conditioned to scavenge near humans, making bear/human encounters potentially dangerous. The park has the most strict regulations of any to prevent bears from accessing human food, including the prohibition of overnight storage of food in cars. To that effect, bearproof boxes are provided not only at campgrounds, but also at trailheads, and even the base of El Capitan, since it takes mere mortal climbers several days to scale. With that much garbage floating around, you can imagine how easily those years of bear management efforts could be undone in Yosemite.

The NPS shutdown plan previous quoted mentions:

If visitor access becomes a safety, health or resource protection issue (weather, road conditions, resource damage, garbage build-up to the extent that it endangers human health or wildlife, etc.), the area must be closed. Parks may not bring on additional staff to accommodate visitor access.

After three weeks of shutdown, the extent of the damage was high enough that some parks had to be closed entirely. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks closed on Jan 2, 2019 due unsanitary conditions, overflowing trash, and lack of adequate parking. Joshua Tree National Park closed a week later due to vandalism that included graffiti, cut down Joshua trees, and even illegal new roads, along with the need to clean up garbage.

Given that absent park staff, it is now apparent that the general public cannot visit responsibly, it saddens me to conclude that the best solution is to close the parks. Does anybody disagree?

The visitors

Those impacts to the parks are clear and undeniable, but it would seem that they were not enough to convince the general public that there is a problem. Several otherwise admirable organizations have implied in social media posts that a number of fatalities in the parks have resulted from the shutdown. Here’s one example:

No one seems to actually know who is responsible for the decision to keep the national parks open. And that’s after seven people have reportedly died in them during the shutdown. https://t.co/ZVlMhYdKMM

— Outside Magazine (@outsidemagazine) January 8, 2019

The above doesn’t mention that four of those deaths were suicides and that on average, six people die in the national park system each week, so it’s probably not correct to blame the deaths on the shutdown. With no ranger patrols, there is no denying that the risks to the visitors have increased, but so far the main issue for them has been the degradation of their experience in the parks, partly at the hands of other visitors. It is symptomatic that with that evidence present, it would be necessary to say that someone is dying to get their attention. That the parks are filling up with trash apparently isn’t enough.

Most reporting on the government shutdown has a political slant, from either end of the political spectrum, and it is quite possible that some of the problems have been exaggerated and amplified by social media. For instance, why is this longtime Yosemite resident putting forward a third-hand report? The current administration gets much blame for what is happening in the national parks, and given the way they have treated public lands in general, it is clear that conservation is not their highest priority. However, the politicians are not the ones trashing our parks.

The visitors are ultimately responsible. To me, the biggest disappointment in this shutdown has been to realize that the majority of the general public, if left to themselves, are just not caring enough for the parks to respect them. The national parks are some of our nation’s most treasured places, yet some visitors behave in them in a way they wouldn’t dream of doing at home. The parks belong to the citizens, but some are more focused on their rights to visit them than on their duty to care for them. We still have a long way to go in terms of educating the public. In that spirit, although I will assume that nothing of it is new to you, I will provide a few tips that I hope will be widely shared for the benefit of those who need them and our parks.

Should you visit the parks during the shutdown?

Visitation was high during the shutdown partly because there are no entrance fees since the entrance booths are not staffed. But to squeeze a visit just for that reason is a bad idea. If someone doesn’t have an annual park pass, which makes the enticement of free entrance irrelevant, they are probably not invested enough in the national parks nor experienced enough to plan a visit both enjoyable and harmless to the parks. The effort they’d have to make to prepare themselves for such a visit largely overshadows that entrance fee. A theme park costs $100 per person for one day, while Yosemite is $35 for the entire family and a week.

The national parks have a problem, and those not well prepared will be part of that problem. So for most people, the best is to wait until the parks are totally staffed again before going. Those who still want to go, for instance, because of long term plans, should prepare themselves to be self-sufficient and leave no trace as if visiting a remote wilderness park. This isn’t that hard: if a backpacker can keep themselves safe in the wilderness while keeping the wild lands wild, someone driving a car should have no problem leaving the place no worse than they found it. Guests with existing lodging reservations should be just fine. Unlike others, they can also contact someone in the park to get current information.

Tips for visiting the parks during the shutdown

Plan your visit with maps and other essentials. With visitor centers and entrance booths closed, no park maps are handed out, and no ranger can help you plan your day. Cell phones often don’t work in the parks, so if you are coming without adequate information, you are your own. The better guidebooks include detailed maps, and there are national parks mobile apps that can be used offline (reviewed here). Rangers are not on patrol, so you need to be able to handle emergencies by yourself, and again no phone means no 911 call. Besides fending for yourself, you will also need supplies to clean up after yourself.

Learn how to poop in the woods like a backpacker. Step 1: Find a spot far enough (about 50 steps) from the road, trail and water. Step 2: Dig a hole. Ideally, you would want it to be at least 6 inch deep, and you’d be prepared for that by bringing a small trowel. But even if you forgot to bring one, and I confess that I sometimes do, if you dig a hole in the ground with your shoes and then cover your mess, it will still be a big improvement over leaving it uncovered. Step 3: Carry out your toilet paper. You can easily store it in a ziplock bag. Alternatively, you could burn it (if the fire hazard is minimal), or bury it in the hole, but only if it is deep enough, as animals tend to dig them out. As disgusting as human waste sounds, bears poop in the woods too. But they don’t use toilet paper, which is even more offensive. Maybe all of that is too much of a burden or too risky – a hiker once veered out of the Appalachian Trail to go to the bathroom and was never seen alive again. Fortunately, there is an even cleaner and more versatile, but more expensive, alternative, which is to bring a human waste disposal bag. They are mandatory for backpackers in several areas of the NPS system. When you get your permit for climbing the Grand Teton, the Jenny Lake ranger station even provides you with a few. On the other hand, pee is no problem. In fact, as soil contains micro-organisms that break up organic matter, it is better for the environment to pee in soil than in a restroom. Just make sure you go far enough!

Pack it out. If you know beforehand that there is limited garbage collection in the park, just pack your garbage out, and dispose of it outside the park. This should be easy since the volume of garbage is less than the volume of food brought in, but it always helps to bring some extra trash bags. And generally, even in periods of normal operation, it is always helpful to pack out your trash as a way to give back to your park. The worst you can do is leaving garbage outside an overflowing bin. Not only it gets dispersed by weather and wildlife, but it also encourages other visitors to do the same. When someone who would not have thought about leaving their plastic bag of garbage outside a bin sees that others have done so, they could reasonably conclude that it is normal practice. On the other hand carrying away other people’s garbage would set a good example, wouldn’t it?

Follow regulations. Some regulations are indicated with clearly posted signs, but others may not, and you won’t find them in handouts since nobody is there at the entrance stations to provide them. Therefore, the first step is to learn about them as part of your planning, possibly on the park’s website. Regulations are there to protect the parks, and with no rangers watching, it is more important than ever to abide by them because other visitors will follow you. This is true not only for littering as outlined above, but also of all sorts of actions like bringing dogs, illegal camping, off-road driving, or venturing into closed areas. Show that you care for the parks, so that others will as well!

In a forest of thousand trees, no two trees are alike. In a year of eight thousand hours, no two of them alike. Even on a dark and cold day, the sun may still shine on you. I hope you enjoy many moments of shining light in the upcoming year.

On a December day more than twenty years ago, after a night spent in a sleeping bag on the side of a road, when I arrived at the main gate of Great Smoky Mountains National Park outside of Gatlinburg, a snow storm had closed most of the roads including the Little River Road and Newfound Gap Road. I could wander only along a few miles, far from any of the areas for which the park is well-known. The forest at first looked non-descript, yet that day resulted in several enduring photographs, two of which found their way into Treasured Lands, including the opening endpaper. There is always something to be found if you look carefully enough. When I noticed how the light was falling on those trees, I positioned myself to photograph them in backlight against a background in the shade, and framed them with a longer lens to crop out the bright ground. Light can transform the most mundane subject!

I wish everyone a year 2019 full of happiness, health, creativity, and success. My sincere thanks for your continuing readership and interest in my photography.