Traveling to cold places in the winter does not usually appeal to me. I get cold fast, lose feeling in my fingertips, and then I let that ruin the experience of being in whatever awe-inspiring place I’d ventured to. I made an exception this year because travel in 2020 felt so uncertain I was hesitant to commit to planning a trip until the very end of the year. By that time, I was so bored of work-from-home life and needed a change of scene badly. So, I planned a long-weekend trip to Utah.
A tangent about why Utah is a great place to go in the winter
Utah is a perfect winter destination (if you can handle temperatures below freezing). The state has mountainous regions with snow-capped peaks in the north. As you make your way south, that morphs into towering red-orange rock formations and deep canyons. I’m a sucker for beautiful landscapes – and I sometimes fear that I won’t get my fill of amazing views in the winter. I associate winter with a sort of two-dimensional grayness. I worry I’ll arrive at my destination and feel disappointed that I’m not surrounded by the greenery that indicates thriving nature. In Utah, the views aren’t hampered by the lack of greenery because the desert shrubs are still out in force, and the geography is so interesting on its own that it doesn’t appear naked at all, even without a speck of green.
You don’t miss anything by going to Utah in the winter as opposed to going in the summer, but you do gain a lot. The parks are far less crowded in winter. We went to Zion National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park, and not once did we have to drive around looking for parking. We were able to drive straight to the (sometimes tiny) trailhead parking lots and park immediately. That’s a huge win! The other beautiful thing about being at these parks in winter, is that the sun rises later and sets earlier. That means if you love watching the sunrise, you can sleep a reasonable amount and wake up for a 7:30am sunrise. Likewise, you can catch the 5:30pm sunset and then go get dinner. Even better, if you stay out until a whopping 8pm, it’s dark enough to get beautiful photos of the night sky.
This is a short post advocating for everyone to visit Arches National Park at Night
I described the trip I took with a travel buddy in depth in a different article. Here, I just wanted to share a series of photos I captured at night.
It was cold and we’d had a long day beginning before sunrise, so all of these photos were taken before 8:30pm. The moon was half-full this night and not due to set until 11:30pm. If we were willing to be patient, I’m sure we would have gotten some truly stunning photos… but we weren’t.
We started the evening by watching the sunset at Delicate Arch. After sunset, we captured a few night shots before hiking the 1.5 miles back to our car. If you go in winter, bring plenty of warm gear. In fact, I would recommend bringing a sleeping bag to wrap around you while you sit and watch the sunset.
After we made it back down from Delicate Arch, we drove just down the road toward the Garden of Eden parking lot. We hopped out to snap a few photos before retreating back to the warmth of the car.
From the Garden of Eden, it’s a short drive down to the parking lot for Double Arch, Turret Arch and the North and South Window Arches. We walked the quarter mile to Double Arch from the parking lot to Double Arch. After standing in awe of the view and capturing the view, we crossed the parking lot to make the short walk up to North Window Arch. By then, the temperature was below freezing and we were ready to head back to Moab and find somewhere to grab dinner.
How to capture night photos in Arches National Park
I’ll note that I’m a relative newbie at night photography. Arches National Park gets so dark so fast after sunset, that anyone can take stunning photos without much experience. There are a few things to note if you want to capture night photos:
- You’ll need a tripod (or something to hold your camera perfectly still for 30 seconds), and a camera capable of a 30-second exposure.
- Make sure your lens is switched to manual focus, otherwise your camera may not sense enough light to focus. If that happens, it will refuse to allow you to take the photo until it has something light enough to focus on. Set your focus to infinity to get the distant stars as sharp as possible.
- Make sure you’re shooting in RAW format to preserve as much image data as possible.
- Start with your aperture set to the lowest f number possible, e.g. f/2.8 or f/4 in order to capture as much light as possible.
- I typically start with iso set to 800 and take a few test shots. Then, I’ll increase iso until I get the desired brightness. With shutter set to 30 seconds, and aperture set as low as possible, you’re reducing the risk that increasing iso will result in noisy photos.
Happy adventuring!