Stone Tsunami

My wife and I went into the same canyon on the same day and came out having been to two different places. She took the standard tour and found it packed — interesting, but shoulder to shoulder the whole way through, with the crowd taking most of the air out of it. I was on the photography tour, which runs in the gaps between the standard ones, so the canyon empties out and it’s your group and nothing else. About a dozen of us.

We’d done Rattlesnake earlier the same day on the same bundled tour, and the two canyons are not in the same business. Rattlesnake is low-key and tight and intimate, and the best thing in it is a sandstone arch. Antelope is a cathedral in comparison. The walls run much higher, the spaces open out, and there is no direction you can point a camera in there without getting something.

I’d chosen the tour slot deliberately for the best chance of light coming straight down through the openings, which is what puts the sunburst in this frame. This is in the section they call The Hallway.

We came back after dark that same day for Cosmic Rift.