The fourth morning of a twenty-one day raft trip in March and April, through all 270 miles of the greatest of canyons in the Earth found me here, having climbed about 450 vertical feet from our campsite, visible below. Note the six rafts, mostly over 16 feet long. The bushes beyond are tamarisk trees about 20 feet high. Up to three thousand two hundred vertical feet of rock is visible, and the center of the hazy canyon wall in the distance is no less than four miles from where I stood.

I've been working at making Nankoweap live up to its potential since 1981, and after a great many tries I'm pretty sure it's finally to the point where further changes would be fruitless. I have therefore added it to the Recent Additions gallery as of May, 2025. The 4x5 Ektachrome transparency left a lot to be desired with respect to shadow and highlight separation, as well as having been exposed with light well above the 5300K color temperature for which the film was designed. The spectral sensitivity of the film also added more atmosphere than was correct because of its higher sensitivity to violet light. With respect to color and tonal adjustment, this has perhaps been the hardest puzzle of all to work out. There have been four different high end scans, the last and best being the one I made myself on a Tango almost 23 years ago, which I had also set up and optimized myself. The current rendering also has far superior detail and no grain too, so I'm finally satisfied!  After 44 years of trying, it's finished!