Mohave Point, Grand Canyon National Park
The big snow storm before Christmas spread from SLC all the way to middle Arizona, so we accelerated our departure by 24 hours. Two punctured tires, a stop at Cabela’s for hand-warmers, a motel door in Cameron AZ that couldn’t be opened except by brute force, and we made it to the Grand Canyon for sunrise.
I hadn’t been to the south rim since I was 13 years old – this was not the kind of properly scouted photo-op I like for my best work. R and I drove along the rim that morning, checking out all the overlooks, and I was disappointed to see a little haze already building up in the canyon. A ranger told us that the canyon itself sometimes had a inversion pattern, and what we were seeing wasn’t pollution, just fog.
I watched some clouds floating up out of the canyon as we left the visitor center at Mather Point. Riding shotgun, I called for a stop at Mohave Point, where rising warm air lifted fleeting clouds from below the rim. The updraft also brought flocks of ravens. R stopped counting individuals after 202. We’ve never before seen ravens by the dozen–as many as 50 would stream by in the air currents. We watched them land just below the rim, picking for something (fallen pinons?) on the margins of shady, snow-covered ledges. The next day, the clouds were gone, the canyon got pretty hazy and the ravens cruised along in ones and twos again.
We were lucky, and guessed right on the weather. I would will drive through another snowstorm to see the ravens and the mist rising to meet the canyon’s rim.
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Beautiful image…. We’ll have to schedule a little road trip to the remote portions of the North rim around the Toroweep area…