Journey to Mordor
Actually it's the Coxcomb area of Joshua Tree National Park, but with a little bit of Hollywood special effects it could very easily look like something out of one of the Lord of the Rings movies!
My girlfriend and I left my house at 3am on a rainy morning knowing that the clouds would be clearing off after sunrise. It was raining till we got to the other side of the San Jacinto Mountains and on interstate 10 heading towards Palm Springs. San Jacinto and San Gorgonio mountains block a lot of the moisture from reaching the park. While on the 10, I could see stars shining through the clouds and as we turned on to Hwy 62 I couldn't see many clouds at all. As the night gave way to the dawn I started to see clouds still hanging around to the east which was the direction we were headed. Thirty miles east of Twenty Nine Palms to be exact. My intentions were to get some sunrise shots of the Coxcombs with the sun shining through the clouds.
As we hiked in the early morning light through this strange landscape I realized that the sun was rising to the left of the mountains and not behind it and didn't have enough time to hike further south in order to get the sun where I wanted it. Plus this pesky cloud came and settled right on top of the mountain hiding it's peaks for an hour or so.
I did get a couple of nice shots as the cloud started to settle on the mountain. As the cloud sat there obscuring the mountain we relaxed and explored around the area. It's a really rugged, eroded area with lots of small caves and unusual rock formations and by far the least visited area of the park. The only footprints in the sand were mine and Irma's. It's a fragile area and takes years to recover from any damage. Just on the other side of the Coxcomb mountains, General George Patton had one of his desert training camps back during WWII. I haven't been there yet but they say that you can still see tank tracks in the sand.
The cloud finally lifted and I was able to get a nice shot of the entire mountain range that really shows the rugged beauty of this area. I decided to process it as a black and white to show off the light and textures and to give it a little extra drama. As we were hiking out I kept looking back, not wanting to leave. I wanted to keep exploring this seldom visited part of Joshua tree National Park. But it was time to go and I had injured my left foot while I was trying to transverse a ravine. I had grabbed onto the side of a boulder as I was making my way and it crumbled in my hand causing me to lose my balance. I only fell about a foot or so but my left foot landed on a jagged rock that jammed into the arch of my foot. It didn't really hurt till we headed back to the car and by the time we got there I was limping pretty good.
