What this image fails to show is the crazy wind storm that was going on while I was taking this picture. I had arrived the day before and explored a number of areas in nice calm 80 degree weather. When I got back to the campsite all was well and even when I fell asleep conditions were calm. However, I woke up to a violent windstorm. It was so strong that it pulled the tent’s stakes out of the ground and I was left in the tent trying to hold down the floor. During this I was being pelted by sand particles that were blown under the rain fly and sneaked past the porous inner wall. I crawled out of the tent, holding it down all the while and pounded the stakes back in between wind gusts. Needless to say, I spent most of the rest of the night being covered by sand and got little sleep.
When 5 am rolled around I was still awake and debated with myself as to whether or not I should bother getting up for sunrise. The fact that any further sleep was unlikely, I rolled out of bed and drove my little toyota yaris through the windstorm to the trailhead. I suited up with my sunglasses on in the dark and my headlamp to try to keep the sand out of my eyes. Instead of taking the normal trail, I went through a narrow canyon to try to avoid the majority of the wind. This was semi-successful and then I found myself on the wave formation with wind blowing me this way and that while a pre-sunrise glow provided bands of pink across the horizon.
The most difficult part was holding the camera and tripod down and getting off 3-4 images before the wind blew my tripod over. I got off a number of shots and different compositions, but I think that this was the height of the sunrise color.
Thanks for looking!
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