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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Camping in the Moonlight. - "a meteor streak across the sky"

Moonlight illuminates a rock formation where I once played with ropes.
I heard a vehicle coming up the road and managed to set up a 25 second exposure.
One of the few open gates in this part of the national forest.
The Los Angeles Aqueduct at midnight. While driving to this location I saw a meteor streak across the sky and break into pieces.
My camp at 1:00 AM.
My camp at 8:00 AM.
Starting the drive for home. Tremendous rain storms erased this road during the winter of 2004-05.
A side canyon beckons to be explored.
A couple of months after the winter rains of 2004-05 I hiked this route to view the damage and found washouts gouging the canyon walls 15 feet deep where the road once existed.
Another rock formation where I once played with rope. Looking at this photo I get a chill remembering how very, very close I came to making a serious climbing mistake.
In the distance, in the valley behind the green trees and on the ridge to the right, are the remains of the St. Francis.
 Completed in 1926, the St. Francis Dam was 195 feet high.
The dam collapsed on March 12th, 1928 and is ranked as the second greatest disaster in California history.
Photo Credit: Ron Pinkerton
I attended a memorial service on the West Wing Dike on the 86th anniversary. Photographer Ron Pinkerton wrote an epic poem about the disaster and read it to the participants during the memorial.
Photo Credit: Ron Pinkerton 
The dam collapsed at 11:57:30 PM and nearly 50 people gathered on the West Wing Dike at that time to remember the catastrophe. The two photos above were made with long exposures under a nearly full moon.
The flood of water was 100 feet higher than this building. Powerhouse Number Two was rebuilt after the original structure was destroyed.