GroovyGeek
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Thanks to Gregg B for bringing this location to our collective attention, see his thread on this board from a few weeks ago. When I saw that on July 4th the forecast called for one of the early AZ monsoons clipping the SE corner of CA I though I better head there. I arrived around 4pm, the temperature in Imperial City was 105F, the dunes themselves must have easily pushed 120F, there was not a living soul in sight. Despite the heat I decided to scout a few hundred yards around the parking lot, so I put on the legionnaire cap, loaded up 3L of water, slapped on tons of sunscreen and, determined to take it very easy, set out on the dunes.
About 15 minutes later I was getting the sense of the place, but then I turned around and saw #1 below. The point of view was not exactly inspiring, so despite knowing better I decided to improve on the effort. The cloud was moving pretty quickly, so in all my wisdom I decided to outrun it and started scrambling down the dunes and then up the opposite slope, occasionally stopping for a frame or two. You know what happened next. I never got the great POV I was looking for, but halfway up the opposite slope my legs gave out, I was panting and overheating uncontrollably, with black circles in front on my eyes and a feeling that I am going to collapse any second.
I had plenty of water and at this point was dumping a substantial fraction of my reserves over my head and neck, but it was evaporating nearly instantaneously and providing little relief. Needless to say, I knew I was in serious trouble. I knew that I had no hope of making it over the crest of the dunes where there may have been some hope for shade, and at this point I had drifted more than a mile away from the car and with the sun mercilessly pounding down there was little hope of making it back to the car either. Taking stock of my situation I calmed down and remembered about a few small bushes that just a few minutes earlier I was trying to avoid getting into the frame. I managed to get back to one of them, and crawl under it, at which point the relief was near instantaneous and my situation began to normalize. Around half an hour later my body temperature had dropped substantially, my breathing was under control. At some point I was feeling well enough to consider that the danger had now passed, and I was in the comical situation of cowering under a bush, so I decided to take a snap or two to document the occasion #2.
Another half an hour later the sun had gone relatively low over the horizon, so I started making my way back to the car. And that is when the magic started happening. The cloud that started it all, which was moving pretty fast when I was chasing it, had more or less come to a halt and parked itself at an opportune location. I used some tire tracks from an ATV prankster as foreground for #3.
Over the next half an hour that cloud was drifting slowly and offered a number of opportunities for the memorable compositions I was seeking earlier. I particularly like #4. The color never fully turned at sunset, but despite that #5 did not turn out too bad.
All in all it was a fun day. Yes, at some point I lost control of the situation and had the bush not been around the outcome might have been different, but I never felt truly threatened. I am guessing that I could have just lied on the sand without the bush and still recovered, albeit much more slowly, as I had plentiful water and head protection. But you never know.
The Imperial Dunes are a great wide-angle location, and the fact that I caught them on a stormy day made them even more special. The only other person I saw the entire time was a redneck sand biker with a confederate flag on his bike who showed up around 6pm, who told me that they get clouds like that around 2x/year. I guess I was lucky. My intention was always to go there during a high wind warning to catch sand blowing on the dunes, but the clouds made it so much sweeter.
Apologies for the long descriptions, I find the story entertaining, though my wife and my mother think otherwise :-)
#1 - Monsoon over dunes
#2 - Hiding under a bush
#3 - Crop circles
#4 - Vortex
#5 - light arch
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