Jansen Gunderson Landscape Photography

On May 9th the Park Service completed snow removal operations on the road from Flagg Ranch at the South Entrance to Yellowstone National Park. A friend and fellow photographer, Brian McGeogh and I drove up for a weekend of photography and experienced two days of extraordinary light. The Summer crowds had not yet arrived so the park remained peaceful and was not at all congested. At most of the locations where we were shooting we were the only people there. Below is a photograph I made at Mammoth Hot Springs, at the Northern entrance to Yellowstone. More photographs at Wyoming Landscape Photography.

Anna and I got out of ice and snow choked Jackson Hole for a few days to do some climbing in Zion National Park in Utah. It was great to get back down to the desert and soak in some warmth for a long weekend. I forgot how much I miss climbing in Zion; something I did quite often while in college at Southern Utah University. We got a tip on a route from one of my old college roommates called Cowboy Ridge. It is an alpine-style ridge climb that ascends the southwest ridge up to Mount Kinesava. It was excellent exposed climbing through quite a lot of choss (broken and loose rock) so it wasn’t much different than climbing in the Tetons. I shot a panorama with Anna’s Canon point-and-shoot from the top of Mount Kinesava. The larger red butte formation is the West Temple, the highest point in Zion National Park.