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After a little research, I discovered that it was called Ragged Top, and sits almost due south of Picacho Peak and west of the town of Marana. QT Luong is a full-time photographer and author with a broad range of work on natural and cultural landscapes, noted for being the first to photograph each of the 62 US National Parks - in large format, the subject of Treasured Lands, winner of 13 national and international book awards. With this calendar restriction, I really think the only viable time of year to climb the mountain is November–December, since the summer is suicide. pageTracker._initData();
The area holds abundant rock art sites and other archaeological objects of scientific interest. This lens makes the D800 as small as it is going to get, and I have always been very happy with its image quality. Several endangered and threatened species live here, including the Nichols turk?s head cactus and the lesser long-nosed bat. Plan ahead. I explored those three miles in the afternoon, marking half a dozen promising locations with my GPS to return to with better light. It turned out that one of them was a favorite of Jack. And while I had since visited the Ragged Top area a handful of times, I had never strayed far from the dirt road a few miles north of the mountain itself. With the flowers in slightly dimmer and softer light, the mountain shone more brightly. All Rights Reserved. Ragged Top Mountain in the Silver Bells, Ironwood Forest National Monument On the 129,000-acre Ironwood Forest National Monument, elevations vary from about 1,800' to about 4,200'. Looking up at the gully and wondering if it “goes”. Once we reached the mountain proper, the going was often rough and involved a lot of route-finding: For most of the time that we were ascending, I had my Nikon D800 with a Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron SL II lens strapped to the D-rings on my F-stop Gear Guru backpack (an older version of this). The main artery in Ironwood Forest National Monument is an unpaved loop around the main mountains. I don’t think that I have ever relied on this technique so heavily, but I am very pleased with the results. var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3820952-1");
Blog | Twitter! That road is Sasco Road, and I hadn’t thought of it before because it lies mostly outside the monument. Before moonrise, I captured the stary sky and used a camping lantern to illuminate the saguaro cacti. Many love desert. In more modern times, the area was a source of minerals and continues to support active mining operations today. The bajada (broad alluvial slope) at the north base of Ragged Top is one of the most densely vegetated upland desert areas in Arizona, and I to illustrate that, I tried to find a viewpoint to balance the need for a clear view of the mountain with a rich foreground of vegetation. Silverbell Road, the south branch, is pretty rough and winds mostly outside of the monument’s boundaries, with the views towards the monument at times marred by a mining operation on the south side of Silver Bell Peak. Snakebites (or broken ankles) could be very bad. A number of years ago, while driving east on I-10 towards Tucson, Arizona, I noticed a very interesting mountain off to the south and had no idea what it was or how to get there, but I thought it would make a nice photography subject. However, right at sunset, a bit of light came in through an opening in the clouds to illuminate the mountain crest for a few minutes so I was glad I didn’t give up. Its volcanic soil hosts more than 400 species, more than two-thirds of the total number of species growing in the monument. Parks › Arizona › Ironwood Forest › Points of Interest › Forest/Natural Area. Keep in mind that this route gets very few visitors, so you might be waiting a week for someone else to happen by. The desert bighorn sheep dwelling in the region are the last viable population indigenous to the Tucson basin. To include a vast area of the night sky I used a super-angle lens (16mm). Marana, Arizona 85653 Ironwood Forest National Monument website Friends of Ironwood Forest National Monument website Ironwood Forest National Monument map Bar Charts by Season by Month All Months Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Spring Summer Fall Winter eBird Hotspot Pima County Ironwood Forest NM–Ragged Top Coordinates: 32.4515033, -111.4804494 […] Distance is not really a factor when you can switch lenses. With that, I will close with my last panorama of the day that shows both sides of the cleft we were descending. © 2008 - 2013 APN Media, LLC. Apparently Ragged Top is a popular place, relatively speaking. WordPress and plainscape theme. Treasured Lands wins Three Photography Awards, Paddling the White Cliffs of the Upper Missouri River, Crossing the Missouri River by ferry in the middle of nowhere, Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument’s accessible spot, Two photographs: dull light v. dramatic light on the grasslands, A Backpacking trip into the Arrigetch Peaks, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Turquoise Lake to Twin Lakes Backpacking Trip, The nuts and bolts of making a photo book: reviewing the Treasured Lands printing, Treasured Lands honored in 2020 International Book Awards, Inside my General Purpose Camera bag: What I carry, Why, and How, Guide to Giant Sequoia National Monument: Northern Unit, SEO thoughts from a top-ranked photographer, Road tripping off pavement with the Prius Prime. Interestingly enough there are not a lot of trails out there or anything really interesting, however, I kept running into this Ironwood Forest National Monument place. They would be removed during the night, leaving me puzzled for a moment at dawn, as I stumbled out half-asleep from my car. Humans have inhabited the area for more than 5,000 years. If you look up how to hike Ragged Top, you will find that there is no trail, just a general route with a lot of scrambling (meaning you need to use your hands a bit) and bushwhacking. The North Gully is the deep cleft just to the right of the highest point. About a mile from the T-junction with Sasco Road, you’ll find the Silverbell Group Site, which is the most developed camping area in the monument. Needless to say, don’t hike this one alone unless you are a desert tortoise. Even in midday, there are changes in light worth paying attention to. Working with telephotos (around 130mm), the challenge was to balance the cactus in the foreground with the mountains in the background using just the right amount of overlap. It was easy enough to frame it tightly with a short telephoto lens (115mm) in stronger light. After the road makes a curve towards the north, you get your first views of Ragged Top, straight to the east. Powered by I also kept running into this Ragged Top Mountain. In this post, I discuss photographing the crown jewell of the monument from various viewpoints using contrasting pairs of images, all photographed within a hundred yards from the road. Saguaro Skeleton Leaning on Ironwood Tree, Approach to Ragged Top, Ironwood Forest National Monument, Arizona, December 2017. Note that the rightmost peak in the distance is Picacho Peak, which is in itself a very notable and worthwhile hike, albeit infinitely more popular. From near that point, a secondary, one-lane road heads up the slope towards the mountain, with a few pullouts suitable for camping near the end. I find 40mm to be a very handy focal length and this technique definitely increases its versatility, allowing it cover a wider field of view. A seminal book for me was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, 1968. This is a beautiful Sonoran desert landscape showcasing lots of ironweed trees, one of the longest living trees in the Arizona ecosystems. Ironwood Forest National Monument Ragged Top Mountain. The south gulley (which we ascended) and the north gulley (which we descended) meet at a narrow saddle a little below the actual summit. For the steep part of the descent, I put the camera in the backpack between photos. However, it was close enough that I could frame it with a super-wide angle lens (20mm) without it appearing too small, and this allowed me to get close to brittlebush flowers to make them a prominent foreground. (: Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Photo Adventure—Ragged Top in Ironwood Forest National Monument, Arizona. Eventually we picked our way over the saddle to the left (i.e., east), hooked around to the right, climbed up a steep narrow cleft from the back (i.e., south) side of the mountain and then descended down another steep gulley to the north back to the flats we had started on. Nikon D800 with Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron SL II at f/9.5, 1/250 sec, ISO 200. Several endangered and threatened species live here, including the Nichols turk?s head cactus and the lesser long-nosed bat. When using even light to photograph with a wide-angle lens (30mm) to also include the wildflowers on the desert floor, the mountain looked distant. pageTracker._trackPageview(); QT Luong's updates and thoughts on photography, travel and nature, Posted on April 30, 2020, 9:28 am, by QT Luong, under, photos of Ironwood Forest National Monument, A Tree in Ironwood Forest National Monument. Which isn’t saying much, since all the facilities I saw were a row of portable toilets. Is the Sonoran the most diverse of the North American Deserts? You have done very well here, despite Cardinal education. The Sawtooth Mountain Range, the SilverBell Mountains, and the Waterman Mountains. Ironwood Forest National Monument, Arizona, 2016 . Now, by the looks of this peak, and knowing that there is no constructed trail on it, you would never guess that it is hikeable.
Going from a moderate wide-angle lens (35mm) to a normal lens (60mm) helped emphasize the height of the mountain better. : "http://www. About midway between the two previous locations, near a cattle guard, Silverbell Road comes to its closest point to Ragged Top, which from there is at a south-south-west orientation and looks more like a rock wall. More than 200 sites from the prehistoric Hohokam period (600 A.D. to 1440 A.D.) have been recorded in the area. On the other hand, independently from its remarkable biological diversity, you cannot miss the prominent 3,907-foot Ragged Top, with its jagged shape rising high above the surrounding flats and slopes. I can still see the video in my head, of the last helicopter. The more interesting part is the north branch, easily passable with a regular car, which offers varied roadside views of Ragged Top. The later required stepping back, and it was not easy to find a spot with no tall shrubs obscure the plants in the foreground. The mood had changed dramatically, and I had adjusted the composition accordingly. You will want some.
Ragged Top Mountain is the biological and geological crown jewel of the national monument. A few clouds would have helped the photographs, I think, but the views were spectacular on the way up and the cliffs were quite impressive: Note that the tiny saguaro at the bottom of the picture above is probably 30–40 feet tall. Comments & voting; Other parents; Lat/Lon: 32.44900°N / 111.489°W Image Type(s): … Ragged Top. To access it from I-10, you must ford the Santa Cruz River, which may require a high-clearance vehicle, but you could access with a regular vehicle from Silverbell Road, especially since the part of the road with the best views of Ragged Top are the last (westmost) three miles.
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