More Virtual Hiking in Arizona

Beginning the Ascent
Watercolour and crayon
© 2022 Charlene Brown

Visitors to the Superstition Mountains don’t generally go looking seriously for the Lost Gold Mine anymore – most of the fatalities I mentioned last week were in the twenty years immediately after Jacob Waltz told one person how to find it – but most of today’s visitors make a token attempt at looking for gold among the nasty cliffs for which the area is famous.  

And they soon find the whole thing even more challenging than it looks.  And it gets hotter sooner in the morning than they expected…

But what eventually defeated my daughter was the California Brittlebush that carpeted the increasingly steep slopes leading up to the cliffs – the yellow brittlebush flowers were having a pollen extravaganza. She retreated as quickly as possible, barely able to see or breathe. A drugstore nearby had just the thing for victims of attacks by the local vegetation, and she had recovered almost completely by the next day.

Another advantage of participating only virtually – I didn’t even hear about this adventure until they were back in Canada.

More Virtual Camping in Arizona

Superstition Mountains
Watercolour and crayon
©2022 Charlene Brown

Unlike Sabino Canyon, the location of my virtual camping and hiking last week (really just a picturesque ravine in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson), this week’s setting is infamously connected to the legend of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine.

According to this legend, Jacob Waltz, who was actually a German immigrant employed at the Vulture Mine, claimed to have found the mother lode of gold in the Superstition Mountains.  He revealed its location to only one person as he lay dying in 1891. And he didn’t reveal it very clearly. Many lives have been lost since then as searchers climbing into every obscure corner in the extremely rugged terrain. There is now a widespread suspicion that Jacob was systematically stealing gold from the Vulture Mine, and came up with the story of the lost mine to explain the bags of gold under his deathbed.

Next I’ll paint my virtual hike up one of the precipitous paths among the crags of these mountains.

 

 

Time for more of my favourite kind of camping

Sabino Canyon
Watercolour and crayon
©2022 Charlene Brown

During the summers of 2020 and 2021, travel between provinces was discouraged, especially for “vulnerable elderly” people like me.  So I haven’t been back to my mountains (the part of the Rockies in Alberta) since 2019.  I was able to do lots of virtual hiking and camping in Alberta because my daughter supplied me with lots of reference pictures.

And this year I can get an early start on my favourite kind of camping (virtual) as she and her husband were camping and taking pictures in Arizona in March.  This was well ahead of the Alberta camping season, with warm (enough) nights, and nice cool mornings for hiking.

Banff from a brand new angle

The View from the Mt. Norquay via ferrata
watercolour and crayon
©2022 Charlene Brown

A couple of weeks ago I said I’d never climbed the Mt. Norquay via ferrata, and probably never would.  I’m more convinced than ever of that now, having had another look at my granddaughter’s pictures of it when I used them for reference in painting this.

The via ferrata (iron path) is a relatively new concept in North America, but actually originated over a hundred years ago in Italy during World War I.  (Must admit, whenever I hear a phrase including the words “a hundred years ago” I think ‘right, mid-nineteenth century’ and quickly lose track of the point being made.)

Banff from all angles IV

Looking South

Watercolour, ink and computer

©2022 Charlene Brown

This unusual view of Banff is a computer-altered version of a painting my daughter used for a poster back in 2009.  Her reason for selecting this particular painting is mentioned in a blog post I wrote at the time

I’m pretty sure it’s the only picture of Goat Mountain I’ve ever painted.

Banff from all angles III

Looking East

Watercolour, crayon and computer painting

©2022 Charlene Brown

This is what Banff and Mt. Rundle look like from Mt. Norquay.  I was going to say from the top of the Mt. Norquay ski area and via ferrata, but then I remembered the photo the painting’s based on was taken near the bottom of the ski area.  I haven’t been to the top of it since about 1963 but, as I recall, the mountain looks quite different from that higher angle.

(I have never been on the via ferrata, which is above the ski area and probably never will.)

 

Banff from all angles II

Looking North

Watercolour, crayon and computer painting

©2022 Charlene Brown

This better known view of Banff from Sulphur Mountain includes the iconic Banff Springs Hotel in the foreground, the town north and to the west of the hotel in the curve of the Bow River, Lake Minnewanka in the upper right and, of course, Mount Cascade, featured in almost every picture of Banff Ave. 

 

Banff from all angles I

Looking West
Watercolour, crayon and computerpainting
©2022 Charlene Brown

This is the first of a series of four little paintings based on larger, more detailed pictures I’d done earlier. This one is based on a monotype I printed in 1995 and wrote a blog post about in2013. 

That monotype was based on a photograph of Banff taken looking west from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff School of Fine Arts when I attended classes there as a teenager) – an unusual angle compared to the more famous views looking north from the top of the Banff Gondola and looking east from the Mt. Norquay ski area.  I’ll write about paintings of Banff from these two angles, plus another unusual angle – looking south toward Goat Mountain – in the next few weeks.