Earlier in May I spent a week paddling the Salt River, in Arizona. Was a fun time, with good company, good food, great scenery and amazing skies, and a surprise bonus of the northern lights!
I’ve not really paddled much the last few years, mostly been rafting with the family. The car accident in 2021 left me with a sore wrist and flexibility issues with my neck that made me lose confidence in my abilities. Pleased to report that I didn’t feel at all like a kook, and can even solidly roll my kayak, so looking forward to more time on rivers this year. Taking a week vacation without the family, and kayaking, felt strange… But it went well and I enjoyed it.
The Salt River has been on my radar for years, but getting a permit or an invite and that lining up with acceptable water flows had eluded me. Years ago I was set up for a trip, but flows dropped to 350cfs and the group fell apart. This year we had 700-750 cfs, which was fine in a kayak but a bit low for the big heavy rafts we had. If I was going to do it again at that flow it’d be small lightly packed boats only. As we did it I got to practice my skills dragging rafts off being stuck which was entertaining in a way and dusted off some rusty skills, but slowed our pace a lot.
One very cool surprise was seeing the Aurora Borealis!
I have wanted to see this phenomenon for a long time, but then when I did I didn’t even realize what I was looking at!
Last week I spent the week paddling the Salt River in Arizona. With very dark skies I got up several nights to try taking pictures of the stars and the Milky Way. But I really wanted a picture of a saguaro cactus with stars behind it, since the cactus were a unique feature of this River that I haven’t really seen on other rivers I’ve paddled. But although we had seen thousands of these cactus along the river, none seem to be near our campsites until the last night. About 10 minutes walk from camp up a little creek I found a cactus with a view of the sky behind it, and marked the spot with a cairn so I could find it in the dark.
Around 3 am I was struggling to motivate and get out of my sleeping bag, it was a little chilly out. But knowing it was the last night I got up and walked up the creek to my spot. When I got there I was surprised and a little bummed to have a lot more “light pollution ” than I expected, especially considering how dark our other camps had been., and I do remember thinking the color was weird. But it just never occured to me that I’d be seeing the northern lights in Arizona!
I took some 4 minute exposures, and was really surprised and confused by how pink and purple it was. I tried multiple long exposures with different settings.
Not understanding what I was seeing, I converted my favorite shot to black and white, and shared it to Facebook. Because we were on the river I had no idea about the solar storm and how widespread the Aurora borealis were until several people mentioned it and then it all clicked that the pictures I was mildly confused and frustrated by were actually a super lucky and cool capture!
Neat neat.
salt river · May 4 – 20, 2024 📸
