Milkyway arch over Reflection Canyon

            Reflection Canyon has been on my to-go list for years. I first learned this place from other photographers' images and was instantly hooked. However, because this is a desert hike and requires off-trail navigation skills, I had to put it off in the former years. After about 15 backpacking trips finished and gears dialed down, this year I finally feel confident to give it a go.

The adventure began right after we left Escalante, which is the closest town to the trailhead. It was a 3+ hours drive on washboard and really bumpy road with no services and very few people. Then we had to carry all the camping & camera gears plus food plus 2 days of water because there is no water resupply anywhere on the entire 17 miles round trip of trail. I carried 7.5L of water and ended up drinking 7 liters of them. It was quite different hiking in the exposed desert terrain and constantly had to take out my phone to check GPS compared to what I am used to hiking in the PNW where mostly you just hike switchbacks. Finally after making it to the destination, we decided to set up our tent on the cliff overlooking the canyon, and then realized that it was really hard to anchor our tents on the hard rock surface. We had to walk around to gather as many as rocks as we could find, and there was no shade at all to escape the mid day Utah sun. The only thing that helped to reduce a bit of suffering was that there was zero cloud on the sky, and that would be a great news for the astrophotography we planned to do that night.

As it turned out, it was a calm and cloudless night. I wake up at 2am and got to the planned location to shoot this planned shot. I had be 100% cautious because I was standing right next to a cliff in the pitch darkness.

This is what I got from that night. It was a 11 shots pano. The sky part was taken using a star tracker. This is a place I won't return back because I've got what I want, and it was a great experience.

Taken in: United States / Utah / Rainbow City (show map)

Taken on: April 9, 2021

Tags:

reflection canyon

utah

milkway

milkway arch

pano

star tracker

astrophotography

night

landscape photography

fujifilm

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Camera: Fujifilm X-T3, f/1.0, 25 sec, 21mm (=32mm), ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Fujifilm X-T3
Lens:	21.0 mm
Aperture:	f/1.0
Exposure Time:	25
Focal Length:	21mm (35mm equivalent: 32mm)
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 9.4 (Windows)
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