This is a follow-up to the post that appeared here on Friday, “The Tour Operator’s Fly or Don’t Fly Decision.” In that post, I explained why I wasn’t going to take a party of three passengers on a 3+ hour scenic flight in northern Arizona in Thursday’s high winds.

It was a very good decision. We flew on Friday instead. What a difference a day makes! The skies were completely clear and winds seldom topped 10 MPH anywhere on our route.

We had a smooth flight up the Verde River before climbing over the Mogollon Rim west of Payson to Meteor Crater. We passed a herd of buffalo just southwest of the crater and I was able to do a low-level circle around them for the benefit of my passengers.

Here’s a quick video of the Meteor Crater overflight, taken from a camera mounted inside my helicopter’s bubble. Narration was added afterward.

It was a bit bumpy from there to the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River, which were flowing but not exactly “grand” that day. (We need more snow melt to really get them going.)

This video shows the no-so-grand Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River. Look closely and you’ll see a truck parked along the right rim of the canyon; gives you an idea of scale.

Then south of Flagstaff Airport to Oak Creek Canyon and into Sedona. My passengers had lunch at the airport restaurant while I arranged for fuel and chatted with the folks at the terminal. On the way back, we did a quick flyby of Montezuma’s Castle, climbed up the mountains southwest of Camp Verde, and followed the Agua Fria River to Lake Pleasant. I showed them the ruins atop Indian Mesa and one of my passengers spotted some wild burros, so I swung around to give them all a good look. From there, we returned to our starting point at Scottsdale Airport.

I logged 3.4 hours of flight time in the nicest of conditions. My passengers — and I! — really enjoyed the flight. And it was nice to put a little cash in Flying M Air’s coffers.

On Saturday, the wind kicked up again, although not as bad as it was on Thursday. Then storms moved in. It rained almost all day in the Phoenix area (and Wickenburg) and snowed up north. There were low clouds all day Sunday and even now, as I write this around dawn on Monday, I can see low clouds out my window. (Oddly, I got a call from a Phoenix area concierge asking if I could do a nighttime tour of Phoenix last night; what kind of scenic tour did they expect when you can’t see more than a mile or two in mist? Sheesh.)

Of course, all this rain is very unusual for Arizona. We’ve had more rain in the first two months of this year than we did all 12 months of last year.

In general, I consider myself (and my passengers) lucky to have slipped into that narrow window of opportunity for such a long flight. It worked out great for all of us.

Yesterday, like all other days I’m scheduled to fly, I faced a pilot’s usual weather-related fly/don’t fly decision. While the weather in Arizona is usually so good that flying is possible just about every day of the year, yesterday’s weather forecast was different. It required me to make a real decision.

As this marked-up WAC shows, the most direct route I’d take for this flight has us spending extended periods of time at high elevation over mountains.

I was scheduled to do a custom tour of Meteor Crater and the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River in northern Arizona with a lunch stop on the return trip in Sedona. The total flight time would be about three hours, with much of it conducted over mountainous or high altitude (or both) terrain.

The Weather

I’d been watching the weather forecasts for Winslow (east of the Crater), Flagstaff (between the Grand Falls and Sedona), and Sedona for a few days. Earlier in the week, there had been a 10% chance of snow in the Flagstaff area. That wasn’t worrying me much. What did worry me was the wind forecast: 20 mph plus gusts. That would make for an uncomfortable and possibly very unpleasant flight.

On the morning of the flight, the weather forecast had taken a turn for the worse. According to NOAA what I was looking at for the places we’d fly over:

Phoenix: Sunny, with a high near 64. Breezy, with a south southwest wind between 7 and 17 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.

Sedona: A 10 percent chance of showers after 11am. Partly cloudy, with a high near 58. South wind 6 to 9 mph increasing to between 18 and 21 mph. Winds could gust as high as 33 mph.

Flagstaff: A 30 percent chance of snow showers after 11am. Partly cloudy, with a high near 43. Breezy, with a southwest wind 8 to 11 mph increasing to between 20 and 23 mph. Winds could gust as high as 37 mph. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Winslow: Sunny, with a high near 58. Breezy, with a south wind 8 to 11 mph increasing to between 25 and 28 mph. Winds could gust as high as 44 mph.

To be fair, we weren’t actually flying to Winslow. But we’d be about 20 miles to the west, on the same big, flat, windswept plateau.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, there was also a Hazardous Weather Outlook for entire area:

A VIGOROUS PACIFIC LOW WILL BRUSH NORTHERN ARIZONA BRINGING SOUTHWEST WINDS OF 15 TO 25 MPH WITH LOCAL GUST TO NEAR 40 MPH AND COOLER TEMPERATURES. IN ADDITION…PARTLY TO MOSTLY CLOUDY SKIES WILL SPREAD ACROSS THE AREA WITH SCATTERED SHOWERS DEVELOPING FROM ABOUT FLAGSTAFF NORTHWARD TO THE ARIZONA…UTAH BORDER. THE SNOW LEVEL WILL RANGE FROM 4000 TO 5000 FEET BY THIS AFTERNOON

Flagstaff is at 7000 feet.

I know from 2,300 hours experience flying helicopters all over the southwest that when the winds get above 20 mph and you’re flying over mountainous terrain, you’re in for a rough ride. A 15 mph gust spread in the mountains can make you feel as if you’re riding a bull at a rodeo.

And a 10% to 30% chance of rain or show showers didn’t make the situation any better. I’ve been in snow showers in the Sedona area that cut visibility to less than a mile in localized areas. Not very scenic.

The Decision

There are three ways I could make the decision:

• Do I have to go? The simple truth is that if I had to make the flight — for example, if it were a matter of life and death — I could. I’ve flown in high winds before and although it caused white knuckles and a lot of in-flight stress, it was doable. But this was not a “must go” situation.
• If paying passengers weren’t involved, would I go? The answer to this one was no, I wouldn’t. If this were a personal pleasure flight, I simply wouldn’t make the trip that day. I don’t take much pleasure in a rodeo ride 500-1000 feet off the ground.
• Would passengers enjoy the trip? I’d guess the answer would be no. I fact, I’d expect the passengers to actually experience fear at least once during the flight. Turbulence are scary, especially when you seldom experience them — or have never experienced them in a small aircraft.

So the decision was actually quite simple: I would call the client and advise that we not make the trip that day. I could offer a tour of Phoenix (relatively flat, a shorter flight, much lighter winds) or the same trip the next day when the weather was expected to be much better.

I’m Selling an Experience

This is what separates me from the tour operator I worked for at the Grand Canyon back in 2004. In the spring, we routinely flew in winds up to 50 miles per hour, with fights that were so bumpy that even I, as the pilot, was starting to get sick. (Puking passengers was a daily occurrence.) Keeping in mind that we did “scenic” flights, near the end of the season, we occasionally flew in conditions with minimal visibility due to thunderstorm activity and smoke from forest fires (planned and unplanned). After one flight, when the visibility was so bad that I had trouble finding my way back to the airport, I asked the Chief Pilot why we were flying. After all, the passengers couldn’t see any more than I could. His response was, “If they’re willing to pay, we’re willing to fly.”

I don’t have this same attitude. My passengers are paying me for a pleasant, scenic tour. While I can’t control the weather, I can control when we fly. If I suspect that the weather will make the trip significantly unpleasant — or possibly scare the bejesus out of them — how can I, in good conscience, sell them the flight?

I’m not saying that I won’t fly in less than perfect conditions, but if the conditions are downright horrible for flight, why should I subject my passengers — or myself — to those conditions?

I called the passenger and explained the situation. He consulted his wife. They agreed to do the flight the next day. He seemed happy that I’d called and given him the choice.

I’m sure we’ll all have a great time.

The other day, I got another call from XYZ Company. That’s not their real name, of course, but it’ll do for this article.

XYZ has been calling me occasionally for the past four years. It’s a tour packaging company based in the eastern United States. But it doesn’t sell itself as a packager. Instead, its ads lead clients to think that it’s a huge tour company with offices all over the country.

How does it do this? By advertising the services of small companies like mine, Flying M Air, as its own.

Now I don’t want to say that they are deliberately misleading the public. I’m sure the ads have fine print somewhere that makes it clear that they are not providing the services. After all, I’m sure they don’t want any liability if something should go wrong. And I’m pretty sure that if a client asked straight out who would be providing the services, they’d admit that they used subcontractors. But I’m equally sure that the client would have a difficult time finding out exactly who was providing the services until they had paid for them.

What They Do

Here’s how it works. XYZ calls me to ask whether I can perform a specific tour or other helicopter charter service. When I say that I can, they ask about my rates. I give them an hourly rate. They then go into some detail on exactly what they’re looking for and ask whether I can do it.

Mine sites can be tight to land in. I’d be hard-pressed to fit my helicopter in here.

In some (few) cases, the job is simple: a helicopter flight from point A to point B in my area. But in many cases, the job is more complex. A recent job query, for example, would require me to fly to a location about 100 miles from my base and spend three days there. While there, I’d take two passengers over some nearby mines they apparently own, landing if requested so they can get out and do mining-related stuff on the ground. Then, if they need help, I’d go back and fetch two companions and bring them to the site. I’d then wait around for them to be ready to move on and shuffle them to the next site.

As you might imagine, this isn’t as simple as quoting an hourly rate. I have to get compensated for the trip from my base to the client location and back and the cost of spending the night away from home. I also need to get a minimum number of hours of flight time each day to make it worth keeping my helicopter unavailable for other work.

I get calls like this from people quite often. Not exactly this scenario, of course, but other work that’s equally weird and/or time-consuming. In so many cases, the callers clearly have no idea about the cost of using a helicopter for their task. They figure they’ll need about three hops from point to point and that surely can’t take more than an hour or two. They don’t see the ferry time (three hours, in this case), the overnight fees (at least $250 per night), or the need for daily minimums. They think I’m going to provide them with three days of service, putting my aircraft at their whim, for the cost of two hours of flight time. As you can imagine, I don’t do much of this work.

In this particular case, it took two phone calls (so far) to discuss the job and an argument about how long it would take me to fly from my base to the client’s. I’ve underestimated ferry flight time enough times to know that it’s better to overestimate and be able to charge the client less than he expects. The project is still in limbo, but I don’t expect it to happen. In most cases, a call from XYZ means nothing more than time wasted on the phone.

Dealing with a Middleman

There are two differences between dealing directly with a client looking for a quote and dealing with the telephone jockeys at a middleman company like XYZ:

• The client knows exactly what he wants. He tells me, I ask questions, he answers them. Within a few minutes on one phone call we zero in on a complete description of the job and a pretty solid estimate of costs. This results in sticker shock for the caller, an agreement that we can’t work together, or a tentative reservation. The telephone jockeys for companies like XYZ, on the other hand, have very little idea of what the client wants or needs or the kinds of services a helicopter operator can provide. After all, the last call they took was for a boat ride around Manhattan or a train ride to Denali or a bus tour to the Grand Canyon. They get just the basic client needs, search their database for possible providers in an area, and call a company like mine. They don’t know anything about my aircraft or its capabilities. Not only do they not know answers to my questions — how much flight time per day? do they own the land I have to land on? how much does each passenger weigh? are they carrying equipment? is there any flying time at night? are the mines anywhere near the restricted areas in that part of the state? — but they don’t know what questions to ask me on behalf of the client. They are middlemen. As a result, most queries take more than one phone call.
• Companies like XYZ need to make a profit. Rather than be satisfied with a commission that I’m willing to pay, they jack up my rates and charge that to the client. How much do they add? In the one instance I was able to discover the rate they charged a client, it was 30%. So my clients are paying a 30% premium for my services when they book with a company that has no clue about the kind of services I offer. As a result, companies like XYZ often price me out of the market. I don’t get the work because I cost too much. But those aren’t my prices. They’re they premium prices charged by XYZ. What pisses me off the most is that my margins are so thin that XYZ would likely make more money on a job than I would — and I’m the one doing the work.

In the past four years, I’ve been contacted about a dozen times by XYZ. Occasionally, I get a telephone jockey who seems to know what he’s doing. But in most cases, the guy calling is pretty clueless and I have to list the questions I need answered to provide a quote. I almost got work with XYZ twice.

They Promise Services I Can’t Deliver

Meteor Crater is amazing from the air, but don’t expect me to land inside it.

Once, a UK-based television company wanted to get some aerial footage of Meteor Crater in northern Arizona. What a lot of people don’t know is that Meteor Crater is privately owned. The whole damn thing is on someone’s property. They’ve put in a very nice museum and walkways to overlook the crater. It’s a cool place to visit and I highly recommend it, especially if you have kids interested in space.

The best views, however, are from the air. Television people know this. They wanted to hire me to take them around the crater and get footage. At least that’s what XYZ told me.

It took three or four phone calls to get the information the client and I needed to make sure we were on the same page. We agreed on rates and times and even a date.

Then I got a call from the UK company. They wanted to talk to me about landing in the Crater. Whoa. I can’t do that. I’ve talked to the Meteor Crater folks and they won’t even let me land at their helipad, let alone inside their tourist attraction. I can’t get the amount of insurance they need (which is an unreasonable amount, but we won’t go there). Turns out that XYZ had told them I could land anywhere. Reality bites us in the ass.

They’re Too Anxious to Sell, Not Interested in Providing Service

One flight I almost did for XYZ would have been above the cliffs in this photo.

Another time, a Phoenix-based company needed to do an aerial survey west of Page, AZ. I know that area very well; in fact, I’d been flying over the same spot less than a week before the call came and was excited about the possibility of flying up there again so soon.

The XYZ guy had a decent handle on the job and we were able to make arrangements with only three phone calls. Of course, one of the last phone calls concerned the date — XYZ had been so concerned about my ability to get the job done and the rate I’d charge that they neglected to tell me the date of the job. I was already booked for a flight that day. The client scrambled and offered a different date that worked for me. We booked the flight.

XYZ requires the client to pay, in full, at booking. The client did this, paying for a total of 5 or 6 hours of flight time. At XYZ’s rate for my services — 30% more than I charge. I didn’t see a penny of this money, but was assured that I’d be paid before the flight.

The client called me. They were having trouble getting landing permission from BLM, which they’d need for me to land. They were good people and did not expect me to land without permission. The flight would be delayed, possibly beyond their window of opportunity.

I didn’t hear anything more. A day before the flight I called the client to see what was going on. She was baffled. “Didn’t they call you? We had to cancel.”

They hadn’t called me.

“We couldn’t get our money back,” she added.

This bugged me. Someone had paid for my services and wasn’t getting what they paid for. I told her I’d try to get her a refund. I called XYZ and spoke to the guy we’d been dealing with. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that their payment and refund policy was none of my concern. I hadn’t provided any services, they weren’t going to pay me. (I would have turned the money over to the client.) If the client rescheduled — and they had a year to do so — they might call me back.

Competing with Myself

One of the things that annoys me about XYZ is its ability to be at the top of search results for any Google search where my company might appear. They do this with AdWords — paying Google to put them at the top of search results. It costs a fortune — I know because I used to use AdWords. I threw a bunch of money at Google for about six months and got absolutely no business from it.

XYZ, however, has 30% net on any booking and can throw that at Google or anyone else it needs to. So it comes to the top of the search results. People click that “sponsored ad” and two things happen:

• The folks at Google hear a little ca-ching!
• The person who clicked the ad sets himself up to deal with someone who knows little about the service he needs, pay a 30% premium on any tour he books, and lose the ability to get a refund if the project gets cancelled.

And when the price is too high for the market, I lose the business I might have gotten if they clicked the link to my site instead.

Parasites of the Tour Industry?

Parasite is a strong term and likely not as accurate as it could be. Companies like XYZ might believe they’ve got more of a symbiotic relationship with service providers like me. They might think that their advertising and ability to take calls in their call centers gets me more business.

But it doesn’t. It’s been four years since that first call and I have yet to get any work from them. Instead, they’re inaccurately representing my company and its rates to potential clients. I’m losing business because of them.

You might ask, then why not tell them to take a hike and stop calling?

Obviously, I can’t do that. After all, there is an off chance that they might actually get me some business. And in this market, it’s better to let a parasite suck some of your blood away than be blacklisted by a company that could throw you the few crumbs you need to stay alive.

Deal Direct, Not with the Middleman

The more important question is, why would people seeking tour or charter services be lured in to booking with a parasite company like XYZ?

I suspect there are multiple reasons, but the top one would be laziness convenience.

Consider the way you search for goods and services. You fire up your Web browser and enter a search for the service you need. A first page of search results appears. You see XYZ company right near the top. They’re also one of the “sponsored links.” You figure they must be big and have great service. You click the link. You make contact. Sure, they tell you, they can do that. Just give us a little more info so we can get you a quote.

Pretty easy for you, huh? One search, one click, one e-mail form or phone call. You don’t have to talk to more than one person. (Well, maybe you have to talk to him a few times while he gets all the information he needs.) You’re getting real service from a big company with locations across the country, right?

Wrong. You’re getting a telephone jockey who barely knows what you’re talking about. He’s picking up the phone and making some calls for you. He’s finding the deal that he thinks might meet your needs. He’s getting ready to lock you in on a no-cancel, no refund deal.

And he’s charging you a 30% premium for the work you could have done yourself, had you just looked past the first three search results.

You want to help small companies while helping yourself? Deal directly with the service provider and tell those parsites to take a hike. You’ll get the same — or better — service for a lot less money.

This past weekend, Mike and I took the camper down to Tucson, parked it at Gilbert Ray Campground (highly recommended) on the west side of the city, and joined the members of Arizona West Shutterbugs for a photo outing at the San Xavier del Bac Mission just off I-19 south of Tucson.

I’ll likely blog about the rest of the trip another time; for now I wanted to share some information about the photo shoot, as well as a few photos.

We were scheduled to meet the group at 7:30 AM at the mission. We’d spent the night nearby, so we were less than a half hour away when we started down there. We arrived at about 7:10; less than 15 minutes before sunrise.

The place was almost deserted. A few members of our group had arrived and were parked off to one side. We parked in the back of the parking lot so as not to block anyone else’s long shot of the mission.

It’s not my purpose to tell you about the mission. You can learn about it on the San Xavier del Bac Mission Web site or Wikipedia. So please don’t criticize me for being short on facts here. I’m typing this in a camper and have to literally dial-up (via my cell phone and Bluetooth) to go online and check facts.

It was cloudy to the east when we arrived, so sunrise was pretty much a non-event. Although I did take some photos of the front of the building in first sun (or what we had of it), I detoured to a small shrine-like building on the west side of the main church building. My friend, photographer Ann Torrence, had suggested this. I took a number of photos of the multitude of statues in candlelight before light started creeping in through the door behind me. The one here was shot with one of the 10mm lenses we rented from BorrowLenses.com.

Only a few minutes later, a pickup truck backed up to the front of the church gates. There was a blue coffin in the back. A man set up a coffin dolly and several others carried the coffin over to it. People started assembling in front of the church. Any photographer present stopped taking photos in respect for the family and friends of the deceased. A priest in traditional Catholic priest garb came out. He spoke with the family, then stood in the doorway of the church and began the service. The sound of his voice echoed in the building behind him and for a while, I thought it was a trick of the acoustics. I later discovered that he was wearing a wireless microphone. So much for construction design miracles.

The service lasted about an hour. During that time, the rest of the photographers arrived and we swarmed all around the outside of the church, snapping photos just about everywhere. There were about a dozen of us. Most of us had tripods and digital SLRs, but there were a few folks shooting without tripods or with less sophisticated camera equipment. I’d come fully prepared with a tripod, my Nikon D80, and four lenses: 10.5mm fisheye, 10-24mm, 16-85mm, and 70-300mm. I mostly used the 10-24mm rented lens and my usual 16-85mm lens.

When the funeral ended, we paused as the blue coffin was loaded into the back of a Cadillac Escalade hearse — which I didn’t even know existed. As the mourners departed, the photographers swarmed into the church.

The mission is beautiful in a weird old Spanish/Native American way. It’s amazingly colorful and ornate, with dozens of statues of saints and angels. Spotlights are strategically placed to bring certain statues to life. Don’t get me wrong: you’ll need a tripod (recommended) or flash (not recommended) to get good photos in there — it’s mostly pretty dark. But with the right exposure, you can get some stunning images.

The main altar area, which is shown here, is a crazy ornate masterpiece of southwestern art. Having grown up Catholic, I can’t imagine sitting through a mass amid such decorations. Yet the church is active and has mass daily. (No photography allowed during church services.)

There are also candles all over the place. The sale of candles is probably the church’s biggest fund-raiser. They’re not expensive — only $3 each — and they’re quite beautiful when lined up in racks near statues. I bought one in memory of my grandmother. I’m not religious, but she was. She would have liked the place, so I bought a candle and put in in front of Saint Anthony (or “S. Antonio,” as the label at the bottom of the statue said). My grandmother used to have a Saint Anthony statue in the guest room — my mother has it now — so Saint Anthony statues remind me of her.

By the time we were finished inside, the sun was out and the sky was nearly clear. I shot this photo of the front of the mission, after waiting about 10 minutes for various tourists to meander in and out of my composition. This was shot at f/16 with a polarizer to enhance the color of the sky. There’s definitely some distortion in this shot, but I rather like it. It’ll probably end up in my photo blog.

I also got a little creative, working with various elements inside and outside the main building. These two photos are examples. The first is of the backs of the church pews. They’re simple carved wood with this unusual scalloped edge. It was sad to see that more than a few people had carved words into the backs of them.

This shot is a closeup of a scroll design in the stucco finish of a wall outside. I like textures and try to experiment with them in my photography. Although not very interesting, this is a good example.

These are only a few of the 100 or so photos (not including bracketed exposures) I shot at the mission. I’d like to go back and try for a sunrise shoot again.

If you plan to go, here’s some advice:

• Bring a tripod. You’ll need one if you plan to shoot indoors.
• Leave your flash at home. All it will do is make ugly shadows behind the statues.
• Don’t plan on photographing any kind of church service inside the mission. It felt good when the priest came into the church a half hour after the funeral was over and thanked us for respecting the privacy of the mourners and waiting until they were gone before shooting. And there are signs outside that warn against any kind of photography during mass.
• Go early. The earlier you go, the fewer people will be there to wander through your shots. And with a good sunrise, the front of the mission building would likely glow in that early morning light.
• Go everywhere you can. There are lots of public areas. Explore them.
• Leave behind a donation — or buy a candle in memory of a loved one. Entrance to the mission is free, but it’s certainly worth your support.

Yesterday, the two lenses I rented from BorrowLenses.com arrived. This morning, Mike, @AnnTorrence, and I headed out for an early morning photo shoot to get a feel for them.

It might seem odd, but I rented two almost identical lenses: the Nikon 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G AF-S DX ED (shown here) and the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM for Nikon. Lately, I’ve been enjoying the challenge of wide angle photography and want the ability to get up close and personal with my subject matter while still fitting much of it in the frame. I like the oddness introduced by a wide angle lens — the way a wide angle photo makes you look closer to see what’s not quite right. I’ve had a lot of fun over the past two years with my 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye Nikkor Lens, but that introduces too much distortion. The photos I take with that lens look downright weird. I want a lens without that much distortion that still has the ability to frame big landscape backdrops to my foreground subjects.

This could be just a stage I’m going through, but I feel a need to explore it fully to see where it takes me as a photographer.

I want to buy the Nikon 10-24mm lens. I wanted to buy it before I rented it. It has the kind of range I’m looking for to complement the 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor lens I keep on my camera most of the time. But it’s a costly lens and it wasn’t readily available from my first choice supplier. With an upcoming photo shoot, I figured renting it was a good alternative. And since my husband would also be shooting with his Nikon, it made sense to rent the Sigma so we could compare that lower-cost alternative.

The photo shoot is in Tucson, at the San Xavier Mission. About 15 members of the Arizona West Shutterbugs “Meetup” Group will be gathering there on Saturday to shoot the mission and then head into Tucson for a museum with an Ansel Adams exhibit. I’m looking forward to trying the lenses at the mission, although I am a bit concerned that my up-front-and-personal approach might put me in front of the other shooter’s lenses. I hope not. If the group shoot turns out to be a bust but the location has potential, I’ll likely return on a weekday when there will be fewer people around.

This morning, we headed out before dawn to nearby Rancho de los Caballeros, a local guest ranch. At night, their horses — all 93 of them — are kept in a big fenced in area at the south end of the property. At about 7:30 AM, the wranglers herd them all into a smaller enclosure closer to the ranch’s main buildings. They return the horses to their nighttime enclosure at around 5 PM. This movement is referred to as the “running of the horses” (even though they don’t actually run the entire mile or so). I thought it would be interesting for Ann and she did seem to enjoy it, although I don’t think any of us got any good photos. (I’ll try again another morning, perhaps from a different vantage point.)

The east side of Vulture Peak, shot at 10mm with the Nikon 10-24mm lens.

Afterwards, I took us all by Jeep down a few of the more rugged Jeep roads on the east side of Vulture Peak. The light was still good, at least for a while. We all made lots of photos from the two or three places I stopped and we got out. Then the light got too harsh and we headed back to my house.

Mike and I each tried each of the 10-24mm lenses. Mike thinks the Nikon may be better, although we really don’t have a good test yet. He’s in love with the lens and it’s very likely that we’ll buy one. But not yet. We still have 6 days with these rentals and we plan to shoot a lot of photos.

Since Mike and I each visited our families earlier this year and had no other plans for Christmas Day, we decided to take our cameras and my Jeep out into the desert north of Wickenburg to explore a few roads we’d never been on. The day was crystal clear with deep blue skies and only a scattering of high cirrus clouds. We left midday, right after lunch. We’d explore, from the ground, places I’d flown over countless times by helicopter.

[A side note here: it's really unfortunate that Wickenburg's economy can't support a younger, more vibrant population. The town is absolutely surrounded by opportunities for outdoor activities -- hiking, Jeeping, mountain biking, exploring ruins, digging for gold, etc. The writers at wickenburg-az.com have covered many possibilities. Although some of the retirees that dominate Wickenburg's winter population do occasionally climb into ATVs and get out to explore, the vast majority have no interest. As a result, the desert around Wickenburg remains a vast untapped resource for recreation.]

I do want to mention that all of the photos in this blog post are straight out of the camera — no Photoshopping at all. I just threw this post together on my laptop. So if colors look weird — especially that extra blue sky! — it’s natural — at least as far as my Nikon D80 thinks.

Getting Started

Our journey started on Rincon Road, right off of Highway 89/30. It’s a right hand turn not far from the second roundabout if you’re coming from the south. The road takes you past some pasture and a roping facility, then crosses the Hassayampa River, which is usually dry there. The pavement ends and starts and ends multiple times. You’ll cross the river twice. After the second crossing, you’ll find yourself at the site of an old manganese mine. There’s a big parking area there and it’s often filled with trucks pulling trailers for ATVs or horses. Yesterday, there were two camps set up, looking out over the riverbed.

We made a sharp left to continue along Rincon Road. It climbs out of the river area into the low mountains northwest of town. At an obvious intersection, we made a right to continue on Rincon. This short piece of road is extremely rough but offers outstanding views back toward Wickenburg, as well as lots of typical Sonoran desert vegetation. And rocks — did I mention the rocks?

As we continued along this piece of road, we passed a pickup truck with a cap on top. A man was standing, shirtless, at the back. He appeared to be washing his hands. A peek inside the truck cap revealed a mattress on a platform with various supplies under it. It was clear that this was the man’s “camper.” Not everyone needs a 35-foot fifth wheel for living in the desert.

After another quick photo stop, we joined Scenic Loop and headed north along its maintained dirt surface. This was familiar territory for us, so we didn’t remain on it long. Instead, when the road descended into a wash and turned to the east, we turned left into the wash and followed the sandy road northwest. According to our maps, this was scenic loop and the road we knew as Scenic Loop was actually called Stanton Hall Road. As if road names make a difference out there — none of the roads are marked and few people using the roads know their names.

We took our time along the drive, making a few stops along the way. At one point, we turned right off the main road and climbed up a side road covered with loose gravel. The road was steep and I think this is the only place where 4WD may have been required on the trip. Although we both expected the road to end, it continued past the top of the hill toward the east. We decided to turn back and stay on our original path.

The Photo Spots

I won’t bore you with the turn by turn details beyond this point — partly because I can’t remember every single turn we made as we wound down one dirt road after another, through washes, up steep grades, and around obstacles. I was glad we were in a Jeep and not something with a wider wheelbase. For most of the time, it was slow going. We didn’t stop many times for photos, on the first half of the trip because there wasn’t much of interest to photograph.

There were some exceptions, of course. One was Sand Mill, site of windmill, cattle tanks, and corral. I have a thing about windmills and did my usual study of this one. Unfortunately, it was broken, although I do think it could be repaired. What I found more interesting was the welded iron water tank behind it and the fencing around the corral — which was in unusually good shape. There had been two cows standing in the area when we drove up, but they ran off when we stopped. Cows out in the open range are funny like that. No matter how hard you try to not spook them, they get spooked anyway.

Anyway, here are three portrait view shots I took in the area. (Unlike a lot of amateur photographers, I’m not afraid to turn my cameral sideways.) These are a little more “artsy” than scenic. It was fun to play with the textures and patterns.

Later on, near a place called Brick Tank, I managed to get this shot of two cows. They stood there for about two minutes just staring at us as I rolled the Jeep into position and framed this shot. Then, just as I pushed down on the shutter, the smaller one (on the left) turned her head and ran off. The other followed, of course.

We also passed a herd of about eight mule deer along the way. I stopped while Mike tried to get some photos. They weren’t quite close enough for our lenses — we hadn’t brought along my 70-300mm zoom. Here’s my only shot, which I admit isn’t very good. I cropped it here.

As we reached Stanton, we found the road blocked by a fence and a “No Trespassing” sign. This wasn’t good news; if we had to go back to find another route, it could have easily taken another hour to get to the same spot. Fortunately, two-track roads led around the fence, dumping us right outside the ghost town of Stanton on Stanton Road.

Stanton is owned by the Lost Dutchmen Mining Association (LDMA). It’s always had a caretaker on duty, so the few buildings that remain of the original town — stage stop, hotel, and opera house — still stand. The LDMA offers campsites for its members. On Christmas Day, the place was crammed with RVs of all kinds, from the crappiest conversion van you could imagine to a 35-foot Cameo that looked very new. These folks spend their time panning for gold, which is kind of cool. I say “kind of” because it’s a ton of work and not the easiest way to make money. But every once in a while, someone finds a gold nugget big enough to keep everyone else looking. And it’s nice to be able to spend so much time outdoors with folks who share the same interest.

The Mountainous Portion of the Trip

Stanton Road meets up with Mina Road right there and that’s where we headed to start the second part of the trip — the part I wanted to do. I’d seen a Jeep road up in the Weaver Mountains that I wanted to check out. It wasn’t far from Stanton on the back road that went from Stanton to Yarnell: Mina Road.

Our landmark was a switchback to the left in the road. The road we wanted would go straight instead of making that left turn. But sure enough, it was blocked off with a fence and a “No Trespassing” sign. We made a U-turn and went back a short distance to another road that looked as if it might parallel the one we wanted. According to my GPS and the topo maps we’d brought along, the road we were on ended. But those maps are from the 1980s, before folks with ATVs and gold fever started exploring the area. We explored the road and its side roads until we found the place it met up with the road we wanted, beyond that private property.

We drove across Antelope Creek, which still running as a small stream with a mix of spring water and runoff from snow and rain at higher elevations the previous week. I threw the Jeep into 4WD and powered up a steep, narrow Jeep trail with lots of loose rock. When I leveled out and could see the road beyond, I realized that I just wasn’t prepared to go any farther. The road was very narrow, very steep, and covered with very loose rock. I was tired from almost 2 hours of driving on back roads. I’d had enough rough road exploring.

We got out for a while to take photographs in the area. There was a lot of slate-like rock, standing straight up. Much of the rock was covered with orange and yellow lichen. It made an interesting contrast to the green and brown of the desert, the blue of the sky, and the deep shadows cast by late afternoon sun. The light hadn’t gotten “good” yet, but it wasn’t bad — probably because of its low winter angle.

We also walked down to Antelope Creek. It was great to see so much water flowing in the desert. I knew that downstream, the flow dried up before it even reached Stanton. I tried to get some photos that showed reflections in pools of relatively smooth water. The water, in some places, was about two feet deep. Although Jack the Dog drank some of it without side effect, I wouldn’t think of drinking it without treating it first; just too much open range and wildlife in the area. (That’s why its best to bring your own water, even if you know you might find some along the way.)

The Way Back

We returned to Mina Road and headed back toward Wickenburg. But rather than take the fast way — Stanton Road to Route 89 — we turned left on Stanton Road and headed back on more dirt roads.

But first, we stopped at one of the few buildings that remain at Octave, another ghost town. The afternoon sun had drifted down quite low when we arrived and I think I got some of my best photos of the day. I have a thing about photographing abandoned buildings, and even though this was a small one, it kept me busy for a good 20 minutes. This is one of my favorite shots.

We also stopped alongside the road where the boulder-and-saguaro-strewn side of Rich Hill was illuminated by the low-lying sun. As you look at this photo, remember that each cactus stands at least 15 feet tall. Really gives you an idea of how big the boulders are, no? The horizontal version of this photo will be my desktop pattern.

We turned south toward Wickenburg a while later. Again, I can’t remember where we turned; you’ll need to check my GPS track log to see. The following 90 minutes was spent exploring various ways to get through the desert and back to pavement near Scenic Loop or Rincon Road. We made a lot of “wrong” turns. In looking at our track and knowing the desert from previous non-GPS-assisted trips, I know we didn’t take the best path. But it was a new path, and that’s all that really mattered.

We joined back up with Scenic Loop near Sand Mill and retraced our steps. By then, the light was very low and the mountains were glowing copper colored. We made one more side trip in search of a good spot to take some final photos and found ourselves quite close to the Hassayampa River on a short cliff. Although Mike took some shots, I didn’t like anything I saw through the lens.

We backtracked all the way back to 89/93, drove through town, and headed home. It was a great way to spend Christmas Day.

Trace Our Treads

If you’re interested in following our route, I offer my Garmin GPX track log file for you to load into your GPS. Once you load the track log into your GPS, you can go to the center of town in Wickenburg to pick up the track and follow it. For best results, you’ll want a GPS that you can load topographic maps on; you’ll see that many (but not all) of the dirt roads we followed appear on the Garmin MapSource maps — or standard USGS topographical maps. You’ll also see where we made wrong turns and hit dead ends. You might want to review the track log before following it blindly; here it is on EveryTrail.com.

You’ll also need a vehicle with high clearance and a relatively narrow wheelbase. Leave the Hummer or big pickup truck home. You’ll do better with a Jeep or quad or some other ATV. Although we threw the Jeep into 4WD a few times, I don’t think we actually needed it more than once or twice. In this area, I always recommend using 4WD when driving in deep sand (especially along the Hassayampa River, which is notorious for quicksand).

And I know I don’t have to tell you to bring water, emergency gear, etc., right? Our route travelled to some pretty remote areas of the desert. If we had a breakdown, it would have been a long walk to help.

Arizona is known primarily for one thing: its brutally hot summers. To be fair, it’s only 110°F + for a few months and only in the lower elevations of the state. The rest of the state has much milder weather — at least in the summer. In the winter, places like Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon can get the same kinds of winter storms that caused me to flee the New York metro area years ago.

Our house in Wickenburg is at a slightly higher elevation than Phoenix: 2200 feet vs. 1000 feet in the Valley. Because of this, we get just about the same weather as Phoenix, although we tend to run 5°F cooler year-round. (This is one of the reasons I escape to northern Arizona or Washington State every summer.)

The autumn, winter, and spring weather, in general, is a monotony of perfectly clear sunny days. In the height of winter, nighttime temperatures might dip to below freezing, but it general climbs back up to the 60s or even 70s once the sun rises high into the cloudless sky. Rain is a welcome treat. Storms are a rarity.

We had a storm yesterday, however. A low came in from the Pacific coast, dragging along tons of moisture as it moved in from the southwest. We had low clouds all day long — it was one of the 10 or so days each year when it’s impossible to fly VFR. The rain came and went — a good, soaking rain that the desert really needs. The radar showed various shades of green throughout our area, with pink and blue (icy mix and snow) in higher elevations just 10 miles north.

It got dark and the rain continued into the night. Then the wind started. The weather forecast warned of a Wind Advisory with winds gusting as high as 58 mph throughout the area. It even suggested that vehicles stay off of I-10, which runs from the Los Angeles area through Phoenix and then south to Tucson before turning east again toward New Mexico.

I was alone at home last night with Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird. Jack wanted no part of the outdoors yesterday and it was tough just getting him out there long enough to do his business. We closed up the house around 7 PM, shutting off the lights downstairs so Alex could sleep. I watched a movie on our DVR while the wind started to whip up around the house. By the time I climbed into bed to read, the storm was in full swing.

It was the sound of the wind that prompted me to write this. I want to remember, in the future, how it sounded, so I figured I’d write it down in my journal — after all, that’s what this blog really is.

The wind had an otherworldly sound. It was the low frequency moan of a male voice, almost ghostly, rising and falling in pitch as as the wind’s intensity rose and fell. Rain pelted the flat roof and big windows. All this noise was accompanied by the rattling of the french doors that lead from our bedroom to upstairs patio and the pulsating of the window panes. More than once, I got up to check the doors to make sure they wouldn’t suddenly blow open.

Sometimes I heard a deep rumbling sound off in the distance. I’ve read time and time again that tornadoes sound like freight trains. I wondered whether there was any danger of that. Nothing in the forecast; I told myself not to worry.

Occasionally, the house shook on its foundation. It made me wonder what the wind speed really was. I dialed up the AWOS for Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25) and listened to the automatically generated recording. Winds from 220 at 26 gusting to 39. I thought about how hurricane force winds would sound and feel against the house. I resolved yet again not to move into an area likely to get hurricanes or tornadoes.

I grew tired of reading and turned out the light. But I lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds around me, comforted by the steady drone of the heat pump keeping the upstairs warm until its set-back time at 11 PM. Just as I was thinking about how unusual it was that we hadn’t lost power, the power failed. The heat-pump went quiet and the ambient light from my neighbor’s yard went dark. Now the only thing to hear and feel was the wind and the vibrations on the house.

I fell asleep a while later and slept remarkably well until 4 or 5 am. I woke suddenly and looked out the bedroom door toward the big window facing southeast. A bright splash of moonlight illuminated the shelves and floor there. The storm had cleared out. The waning moon, approaching its last quarter, was shining like a beacon over the desert.

Outside, the wind still howled. I fell back to sleep.

I flew from Grand Canyon Airport to Page Municipal Airport (at Lake Powell) again yesterday.

Each time I make this trip, I follow pretty much the same route, hugging the southeast corner of the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) until I get to the Little Colorado River Gorge and then heading pretty much due north. I wind up just outside the SFRA near Marble Canyon so I can show off Navajo Bridge and Lees Ferry before a quick flight past Horseshoe Bend, the Glen Canyon Dam, and Wahweap Marina. If the wind is in my favor, I can touch down at Page within an hour of departure from Grand Canyon. The same distance by car would take about 2-1/2 to 3 hours.

The terrain for most of this flight — from the Little Colorado River Gorge north, in fact — is high desert — technically the famous “Painted Desert” — and relatively barren. There are, however, some interesting features if you look hard for them. Since I’m always trying to point out interesting things for my passengers to see, I look very hard.

Ruins are relatively common. Round rock foundations are the remains of ancient hogans. (This area is on the Navajo reservation.) There are also the remains of animal enclosures, usually build with the same rock. There are complete hogans, some of which may still be occupied for at least part of the year, and ranches with hogans, sheds, outhouses, animal enclosures, and other buildings. All of these things are scattered across an immense landscape that takes more than 30 minutes to cross at 120 miles per hour.

There are also animals.

One of the questions I’m asked quite often by passengers is whether I see wildlife from the helicopter. I do, but not so often as to make it a common occurrence. It depends on where I’m flying, what time of day it is, and how hard I’m looking for wildlife.

Take antelope, for example. There are a few “prairies” north of I-40 and west of Mt. Kendricks in northern Arizona where, if I look hard enough, I can usually spot a herd of antelope. I know where to look and I remember to look. They’re hard to spot because their color matches the terrain so well. It usually takes movement to spot them. When I see them and point them out, my passengers never see them at first. I have to slow down, turn around, and drop a few hundred feet as we approach the herd. That gets them running a bit so my passengers can see them. As soon as they’re spotted — and photographed, if the passengers remember to whip out a camera — I move away. It’s not my goal to terrify the antelope population of northern arizona by buzzing them with a helicopter.

(When I flew at the Grand Canyon, I always saw at least one elk a day in the forest on one of my first or last flights for the day. My passengers never saw them and, since swooping around to show them wasn’t possible, I simply stopped pointing them out. It would be my own private treat.)

There are wild horses in numerous places throughout Arizona. I wrote a bit about them here. They’re also on the route I take from the Grand Canyon to Page. Today, my passengers and I spotted at least four herds of them — the most ever. They’re a lot easier to spot than antelope because of their size and color. But they’re also a lot easier to confuse with cattle. I look for long legs and long, thick tails.

There are domesticated sheep in various places throughout northern Arizona. We flew over a good-sized herd tended by four dogs today. They were a lot farther south than I expected — I usually see them farther north. This could be a different herd, of course. There were about 50 animals in that herd and the dogs did a pretty good job of keeping them together, even when my helicopter spooked them. (Yes, I had to do a circle for my passengers to see them; they were pretty small.)

In the past, I’ve also seen javelinas (pronounced have-a-leenas) from the air. They’re usually in herds of a dozen or more animals and I’ve only spotted them when I was alone, flying a lot lower than I do with passengers on board.

Of course, I don’t have photos of any of this. I’m flying and my hands are usually busy. My passengers never seem to remember to send me their shots. But one of these days, I’ll have some photos to share.

The public entrance to Kolb Studio, which clings to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

If there’s any such thing as “luck” I think it has to do with being at the right place at the right time. People who are truly lucky can recognize such an alignment and take advantage of it.

Like I did yesterday.

I was in the Kolb Studio at Grand Canyon Village. The Kolb Brothers were the original photographers of the Grand Canyon. They shot more images of tourism at the South Rim — there are 60,000 negatives in the archives — than anyone else. They also made a movie of their boat trip down the Colorado River through the Canyon and it played daily at their studio for over 45 years, making it the longest running movie in the world. That’s what the Ranger told us, anyway.

Today, the Kolb Studio is known primarily as a bookstore and art gallery. The old movie screening room which is on the second level down, has been converted into a gallery. Last time I was at the Canyon, the gallery was closed for some reason. This time, when I stood at the top of the steps to look down into it, I saw that they were packing up artwork to ship it back to the artists.

But as I stood on that upper landing, a young, thin, female ranger walked by, followed, like a mother duck, by a long string of tourists. There must have been about 15 of them. They were walking purposely down the stairs, past the barrier that had been erected to keep people out. I asked one of the last people, “Is this a tour?”

“Yes. Go to the desk to see if you can join us.”

I knew that if I went to the desk, even if they said yes, I’d be too late. So I just followed them.

Mind you, I had no idea what the tour was about. I had time to kill and it was clear that these people were going someplace I’d never been before. I wanted to go with them.

The sitting room in the living quarters at Kolb Studio. Beyond this is a “sunroom” with windows looking over the canyon.

I’d hit the jackpot. It turned out to be a tour of the Kolb Studios living quarters — the home of the Kolb Brothers.

Emory and Elsworth Kolb were given a piece of land at the edge of the canyon by Ralph Cameron who owned Bright Angel Trail and a bunch of other land on the rim. This was back in the early 1900s and Bright Angel Trail was a toll road. The Kolbs were given the land with the stipulation that they were to collect the tolls when Cameron wasn’t around. The Kolb brothers built their studio — first a tent, then a wooden frame building — on the edge of the cliff. A window on the building looked out over the start of the trail. The Kolbs would snap photos of the groups of mule riders going down. Then one of them would run all the way down to Indian Gardens, which is 4-1/2 trail miles and 3,000 feet down, where there was water. He’d develop the glass plates, make prints, and run all the way back up to the studio. When the riders returned, the photos were ready for purchase.

Inside the actual photo studio. The window on right right is the one they took photos of mule riders through.

There’s a lot more history to the Kolb brothers, but I’m not about to retell it here. Check out the PBS documentary about them or look them up in Wikipedia to learn more.

The more interesting thing is the house. It was built with its top floor level with the canyon rim. Subsequent floors were added below that. So the house literally clings to the side of the cliff. And it looks as if it were built over time by people who cared more about functionality than architecture.

The dining room at the Kolb Studio living quarters. Those windows look right out over the Grand Canyon.

But inside — wow. A perfect example of early 1900 homebuilding. The house I grew up in was built in 1901, so I know the style. Plaster walls, wood floors, molding. And all the windows looked right into the Grand Canyon.

The ranger led us though about a dozen rooms, including the sun porch, sitting room, kitchen, bedrooms, dining room, and, of course, studio and darkroom. (The darkroom was added after water became available at the Rim.) We were invited to take photos — even through the window the Kolb Brothers had used all those years ago. It was fascinating and a real treat for me.

The kitchen at Kolb Studio.

Let’s face it: I come to the Grand Canyon at least two dozen times a year. I’ve seen all the usual things. I’ve taken photos from the rim trail and every single rest stop or parking area on the rim. I’ve visited all the shops and eaten in all the restaurants and stayed in all of the hotels. I’m at the point where I’m almost bored when I come here. Almost.

When I finished the tour, the first thing I did was call Mike to tell him. I think he was jealous. Heck, I’d be if he’d gone without me!

Yesterday afternoon, I hiked up Doe Mountain, a mesa west of Sedona, AZ. The mesa has sheer rock walls on all sides except the northwest — that’s where you’ll find a 8/10 mile trail that climbs nearly 400 feet to the mesa top. The top is almost completely flat with stubby trees, bushes, yucca, and various types of cactus and desert grasses. It’s an amazing place at any time of day; simply walk to the side of the mesa with the view you want, sit down on a rock, and suck it all in.

I went up there around 3:30 PM; sunset was around 5:30 PM. It took nearly an hour for me to do the hike. I can hike on flat terrain or downhill all day long, but make me climb and you’ll be waiting for me. I was by myself, so I didn’t hold anyone back. When I got to the top, I was hot and thirsty.

I wandered around as the light continued to soften and redden. I found an excellent spot for photos on the north side of the mesa and shot the two you see here. These are unedited.

I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with foreground/background combinations. This shot of grasses, rocks, and trees with the red rocks in the distance behind them really called out to me. The foreground elements are on the mesa top. About 10 feet beyond them is a sheer cliff with a drop of 300-400 feet. The green trees you see beyond that are full-sized pinon and juniper pines. The red rock cliffs are several miles away. This one’s a “keeper” that I’ll likely put in my Photo Gallery. (That’s also why it’s so small here; I don’t share larger images unless their watermarked.) The only reason it’s not there now is that I haven’t had time to examine it closely and remove any optical imperfections due to dirt on the sensors. (It’s a never-ending battle against dust here in Arizona.)

This second shot is a self-portrait. I broke my third wired shutter release and there’s no way I could have used the self-time for this. So I used the camera remote. Of course, the sensor for the remote is on the camera’s right side (when looking at the front) and I was sitting at the left. Hence the stretched out arm and rather cranky look on my face. It’s a dopey picture and I look like an idiot. I guess that’s why I like it.

Oh, and I was about 5 feet from the edge of the cliff in this shot.

More from this trip in future posts. I’ll have better WiFi in Page.

I start my final Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure 6-day helicopter excursion for 2009 today. And after a week of extremely blustery weather — by Arizona’s standards, anyway — it looks like we have a week with calm wind conditions.

I can’t express how happy I am about that. While I’m not afraid to fly when the wind is howling — even up to 20 or 30 knots — it’s so much more pleasant to fly without all that wind. You can really feel the joy of flying when there isn’t some natural force (other than gravity) messing with your flight path.

Wind makes for mountain turbulence, which is caused by the flow of air over uneven terrain. Think of a stream with rocks in it. How does the water move over and around those rocks? Now imagine the water being air and the rocks being hills and mountains. Helicopters are flying only 500 to 1000 feet off the surface, so we’re in all that bumpy air. The more wind and hills and mountains, the more bumps. It’s usually not bad enough to be unflyable, but it’s certainly a lot more pleasant to fly when you’re not being bumped around all the time.

When I flew at the Grand Canyon, it was windy every day from April into June. Oddly, the bumpiest air usually occurred during flight segments over the National Forest. We were 300 feet over the ground, not far from the ponderosa pine treetops. The ground was gently rolling plateau that ended abruptly at the edge of the Canyon. It was the rolling hills that set up the bumpiest air. Over the canyon, with several thousand feet of open air below you, the wind wasn’t nearly as bumpy — despite all those buttes and “temples.”

Anyway, I’m looking forward to a smooth flight, where each moment in the air feels like gliding through space. Let’s hope it holds out for the whole week.

I was at Monument Valley again today. I come here several times a year by helicopter with passengers on my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I was here last month and will be back again next month. I’m always here on a Wednesday.

I land on one of the helipads at the landing strip at Goulding’s Lodge. Before my blades have stopped spinning, a shuttle van from the lodge drives up to meet us. The driver loads up my passengers and our luggage while I tie down the blades and lock up. Then he drives us all up to the lodge — a distance of about 1/2 mile — we check in, and we go to our rooms.

The next day, my passengers take a 3-1/2 hour ground tour of Monument Valley. I unwind, blog, and relax. Then I bring the luggage down to the helicopter (by van), preflight, and get ready to go. When they return from their tour at 1 PM, we head out to our next stop: Flagstaff.

The point of all this is that I don’t usually get to go into Monument Valley. Instead, I spend the entire 20 hours of our stay at the lodge or helicopter.

Now, I’ve been in Monument Valley many times. I’ve driven in twice and taken the tour at least three times. I highly recommend it. It’s the only way to really experience Monument Valley — and to take some really great photos. I just don’t have time to do a tour during our excursion. And since I don’t have a vehicle here — other than the parked helicopter — I can’t drive myself in for a brief trip.

Today, however, I asked one of the folks at the lodge desk to drive me in. All I wanted was a few shots from the overlook — which happens to be the best place in the park to shoot The Mittens with the late afternoon sun on them. She dropped me off with my camera and tripod. I then proceeded to spend the next hour shooting 85 images, many of which were destined to be part of panoramas. When she picked me up 90 minutes later, I was happier than a pig in you-know-what. I knew I’d gotten some really great photos.

And here’s the first panorama:

You’re looking at 12 vertical images, stitched together with Panorama Maker 5 — which, by the way, I’m now pretty much sold on and will be buying when I get home and can play on a beefier machine. It handled this stitch job very well, probably because I shut down all other applications while it worked.

I had my 16mm to 85mm lens set to 50mm for these shots and they were taken 15° apart. You’re looking at a 180° view here.

The image had some exposure issues that I patched up sloppily in Photoshop. I’ll do a better job when I get serious about making these panoramas.

But I wanted to share this here. Although it’s not perfect, I think it’s a good step in the right direction. And I’m so proud of it that I put my name on it.

I also got some great shots of The Mittens by themselves. I’ll likely put those in my Photo Gallery one day soon.

One of the things I like about the Grand Canyon is the interesting little places that the tourists generally don’t know about. Visiting these places can get you out of the glut of tourists and fool you into thinking that the Grand Canyon is your own backyard.

Grand View FIre Tower

Grand View Fire Tower is one of these places — especially when the main tourist season is over. This rickety old fire tower stands tall just outside the park boundary on Coconino National Forest Land. You can get to it from within the park by following signs for the Arizona Trail. You can get to it from outside the park by following a series of numbered forest roads.

The tower area has been spruced up considerably since I last visited it back in 2004. I was flying helicopter tours for one of the Canyon’s operators back then and I’d gone straight from work to the tower, hoping to watch the thunderstorms move around the area. It was fire season back then and the tower was “manned” by a female observer. I visited with her atop the tower. Afterwards, I drove into the park and got completely soaked to the skin — in my pilot uniform — while visiting Grand View Point.

The entire area was deserted when I arrived. I immediately noticed the big Arizona Trail sign that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there when I last visited. The Arizona Trail cuts north/south through the center of Arizona. I don’t know if it’s complete. But at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, it’s clearly marked and evidently available for hiking, horseback riding, and, in the winter, cross-country skiing. I’ve never hiked any part of it.

I also noticed a guy wire stretching from near the tower’s top to the cabin set aside for the observer’s use. I don’t recall that from my previous visit, either

There’s a sign at the bottom of the tower warning visitors that the tower is maintained solely for the use of fire observers. Although others can climb the tower, the park service takes absolutely no responsibility for any injuries. The sign also limits the number of people on the tower at any one time to four. That number had been written over another number that was likely higher.

I climbed. It was a windy day and the higher I climbed, the windier it got. I was about halfway up when I could feel the tower swaying. Unnerving when you consider that the tower had probably been built back in the 1930s as part of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) program.

The sound of a helicopter caught my attention. I caught sight of one of Maverick’s EC130s making its way from the west toward the tower. The Green 1 tour route passes within a mile of the tower to the south. As I finished my climb, four helicopters flew by. They would be the last four on that route for the day. It was about 4:15 PM and this time of year, all helicopters have to be out of the canyon by 5 PM.

The view was better than I remember it. The tower stands tall around a forest of mostly ponderosa pines with some oak trees starting to show autumn color. Most of what you see from up there is trees. You can see other peaks in the area, of course — the San Francisco Peaks, Mt. Kendricks, etc to the southeast near Flagstaff stand out. I looked for and easily found Red Butte, where the next closest fire tower is. If smoke is spotted, the two observers will communicate by radio to triangulate the exact location of the fire.

To the northeast, where the Grand View Ridge drops off, I could see the rim of the Grand Canyon and some of the buttes inside it. I took a series of three photos for a panorama that actually came out quite good. As you can see, it was a cloudy day and the light was a lot softer than I like it.

I climbed down from the tower a short while later. It was almost spooky being there all by myself. I’d just left Grand View point where I’d been stuck in traffic in the parking lot. Here, less than five miles away, there was no one.

I spent some time taking weird photos of the tower’s structure with my 16-70mm and 10.5mm fisheye lens. Fun stuff. Then I climbed back into my truck and headed back into the park to join the rest of the tourists.

Today, four days before I was supposed to accompany two pilots as they flew my helicopter from Seattle to Phoenix, I received an e-mail message from one of the pilots. He claimed that his companion couldn’t get time off from work for the trip. Since he couldn’t afford to make the flight on his own, he was going to have to cancel. I should contact one of my “backups” to make the trip with me.

There are no backups. There were two other pilots interested in making the flight, but I told them that the seats were already taken. That was two months ago, when these clowns said they’d do the flight. Did these guys think I had a room full of pilots waiting for them to back out? Or that most people can drop everything to arrange a spur-of-the-moment, two-day trip between Seattle and Phoenix? Or that I can get someone else on my insurance that quickly?

Yes, I’d planned this flight two months ago. I was in Washington State with the helicopter for cherry drying season and I knew I needed to get the helicopter back. I put the word out to the five people I had on a list who’d said they were interested in doing ferry flights with me. Two dropped out right away because of date conflicts. I chose one of the guys who was left because I’d flown with him before. Back then, he’d asked if he could do the return trip and I told him I’d keep him in mind. He was a known. The other two were unknowns. I went with the known. He was bringing along his student pilot to share the costs. Seemed like a good plan.

The trip had several date changes. At first, it was August. Then I gave him a choice between late August or Labor Day week in September. He chose September. We were supposed to go on Wednesday, but my helicopter is waiting for a part, so I had to push it back to Friday.

I was assured there would be no problem right up until I got the e-mail message this morning.

The bastard was too cowardly to call. (That rumor about me being able to beat people to a pulp over a phone line is simply not true.)

Clearly, he knew he wasn’t going for at least a week. If he planned to go, he would have bought his return plane ticket. I bought my ticket up there as soon as I had a solid date — nearly two weeks ago. He probably never bought his. Never made an investment in the flight. Nothing to lose by canceling.

Shitheel.

The trip will cost me over $3,000. I expected to receive almost that much from the pilots renting my aircraft for the flight. It would have been an almost break-even ferry flight. They would have built R44 time for about half the cost of renting one through the usual channels. I would have had my helicopter moved 1,000 miles for next to nothing.

But now I’m scrambling for paying passengers or other pilots willing to take their place.

In the end, Mike will likely go up to Seattle with me and we’ll share flying duties for the return flight. It’ll be a very costly two days together.

What amazes me about this is how completely irresponsible and inconsiderate some people can be. Not only are these clowns costing me at least $3,000, but they caused me to let down two other pilots who likely would have done the entire flight with me.

I wonder how reliable these guys will be when employed as pilots. Will they fail to show up at work for their week on at the Canyon? Sleep late when they need to pick up passengers in the Gulf? Cut corners on the routes when running tours in Hawaii? Let accident victims die because they don’t feel like firing up the medevac helicopter so medics can scrape them off the pavement?

Do I sound angry? I am.

Jeez, I would never do this kind of thing to someone.

But, as my friend Jim reminded me this afternoon, I’ve been riding with Lady Luck for quite a while now. Gotta take the bad with the good. So I’ll cough up the money and try not to think about it.

As for the little bastard that cost me all this money, I just hope he’s stupid enough to put me or one of my friends down on his resumé as a reference.

Interested in making the flight? Check out the Craig’s List listing if you don’t mind me doing the flying.

Just compared the forecast here, in Quincy, WA:

to the weather back home, in Phoenix, AZ:

Clearly, I won’t be drying cherries anytime soon. In fact, if I could be used to cool cherries (which I can’t), I’d be in high demand.

The one thing I do miss being up here and not back in Arizona is the monsoon storms. Not only do they bring cooling rain, but the violent storms are amazing to watch. The steamy humidity that comes before and after, however, is something I don’t miss at all.