The weather forecast for Thursday evening held out promise for a fine sunset over Central Washington. Cedar and I packed up the photography gear and plenty of water and headed out to Potholes Coulee, home to the Not So Very Ancient Lakes. The East-West orientation of the coulee and its striking geological formations makes it an excellent location for enjoying sunrises and sunsets.
We left Wenatchee at 6:30 PM and arrived at the trailhead at 7:15, about an hour and a half before sunset, plenty of time to hike to the lakes. Since the temperature was in the low 90's I took the opportunity to try out a new "swamp cooler" that we got for Cedar. The cooler gets soaked with water, attaches to the chest area of her RuffWear harness, and provides evaporative cooling during hikes on hot days.
We set a leisurely pace up the coulee, keeping an eye on the partial cloud cover to the west and hoping that it wouldn't evaporate before sunset. We reached the lakes in about a half hour and headed up the trail that leads to the top of the basalt cliffs and eventually to the Quincy Lakes Recreation Area. Part way up, we left the trail and scrambled up to a rock outcrop that overlooks the coulee and the lakes. We often come to this outcrop to enjoy sunrise coffee and ponder the Columbia River Basalt Flows and the Ice Age Floods, the geologic "Confluence of Catastrophe" that produced the coulee and the lakes. I like to call the outcrop Bretz Rock in honor of J Harlan Bretz, the geologist who pieced together the story of the floods. I imagine him on his first visit to the coulee, one hundred years ago this summer, sitting on this outcrop, smoking his pipe, and wondering "what the ... happened here?" His efforts over the next twenty years to answer that question make one of the great stories in the history of science.
No time for coffee tonight, it was now clear that the clouds would persist and a memorable sunset might be immanent. I set up the tripod and took some shots of late afternoon sun on the trees around one of the lakes below us. Soon the sun sank behind the hills west of the Columbia and shortly afterwards the clouds began their evening show. Tonight they would display the full palette of fire colors from pale yellow through golden bronze to boiling crimson. I kept busy, trying to keep up with the changing, high contrast light conditions, remembering the photographer's maxim; "expose for the highlights, pray for the shadows". Meanwhile Cedar lay on the cooling basalt, oblivious to the flaming sky above our heads, complaining pitifully that I had not brought any treats.
When the show was over we did not linger, as we often might, to watch the stars emerge from the fading twilight, perhaps to catch an early Perseid or two. Tonight our choice would be to make our way back to our car while the light lasted and leave my headlamp in the pack.
Details: The road is in good shape, as usual, passable for any vehicles. There is an outhouse at the trailhead. A Discover Pass is required for parking. There was one car in the lot when we arrived, gone when we returned. No bugs. Some flowers are still in bloom, a lot of yellow rock buckwheat on the coulee bottom, a few Penstemons along the trail above the lakes. We saw one gopher snake, heard a few geese on the lakes, but no coyotes this trip.
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