Hopi Point Sunrise

After five days in a row of shooting every sunrise and every sunset, I was feeling a bit run down as I got ready for bed in my hotel room at the Maswik Lodge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Sunset that night at Hopi Point had been spectacular. Surely sunrise tomorrow was highly unlikely to be just as good. It seemed ridiculous to think it could be even better. Sleeping in sounded very tempting, particularly because tomorrow night I planned to get up at 11 p.m. to try to hike in the dark to the Wave to shoot the last total lunar eclipse visible in North America for three years. And then I thought, “This is the Grand Canyon. You can’t sleep through sunrise at the Grand Canyon.”

The Hermit’s Rest road is closed to private vehicles after February 28 and the shuttle bus wouldn’t start running until 8 a.m., an hour after sunrise, so I knew I would need to walk the 2.7 miles from my hotel to Hopi Point, my chosen sunrise destination. I got up at 4:30 a.m., started walking at 5 a.m., and reached Hopi Point an hour before sunrise. The clouds to the east were already starting to glow, but the clouds to the north, over the canyon, were still so dark my eyes could not detect color. My camera, however, most certainly could. I couldn’t believe my luck as the red, orange, and magenta tones became visible and grew more and more intense. The color peaked about eight minutes before sunrise, then faded. By the time the sun actually crested the horizon, the clouds were gray, but I had already captured an image I felt certain would be worthy of offering for sale as a print.