If you have the opportunity to photograph White Pocket at night, then you will be among the lucky few that get that chance. This blog will give you some pointers and hints to ensure that your time here is well spent.
The Good News
White Pocket is located an isolated section of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Northern Arizona. Its remoteness is a major factor in its lack of light pollution which earns a Bortle 1 night sky classification (the darkest ranking). It is ideal for Milky Way photography.
Plus, White Pocket is one of the world’s most unusual and mesmerizing photography locations. The landscape is a wild chaos of colored domes, ridges and weirdly organic shapes that seemingly shouldn’t be possible in solid stone. Night photography here is otherworldly.
The prime area for photography is pretty compact…most of the ‘good stuff’ is packed in an area 1,500′ long by 500′ wide.
Another small bonus is that unlike the nearby Wave, you don’t need a permit to visit. (However, as of late 2024 the BLM is considering a future $10 fee).
The Bad News
White Pocket is in the middle of nowhere. It’s about 240 miles east of Vegas or 300 miles north of Phoenix. But the real problem is that it is located at the end of a rough 18 mile washboarded, dirt and rock ‘road.’ And the final 4 miles is even worse. That section is only accessible via a high clearance 4WD vehicle driven by someone who knows how to navigate in deep sand. Check out this YouTube video to see what to expect.
Other than a small parking area marked by a BLM sign, there are NO amenities. No Visitor Center, No rangers, No water, No food, No bathrooms, No cell service.
If you are an experienced and confident off-road driver with a high-clearance 4WD vehicle, then check out this site for directions. Otherwise, you are going to have to pay someone else to do the driving.
Book a Tour
Fortunately, there are a number of tour companies than can get you out to White Pocket. But if you want to photograph the Milky Way, there are only a handful of them currently offering overnight tours/workshops (check out here , here and here)…and they aren’t cheap.
Most of the overnight tours are obviously scheduled around the New Moon during the Milky Way season (between March and October.)
The Rim Problem
The first challenge you will have is getting into White Pocket once you arrive at the Trailhead.
White Pocket sits in a ‘bowl’ (or ‘pocket’) surrounded by a slickrock ‘rim.’ Much of that rim is somewhat impenetrable but there are a couple of easy ways through it. Unfortunately, those paths though the rim have no markers or signs which can make things difficult in the dark. So you will need to do some scouting during daylight, have a guide or be equipped with GPS that has a pre-downloaded trail.
If you are on an organized night tour, then you should check ahead of time to see if your guide will stay with you the whole night and personally lead you to the best spots. If your guide does, then you are set and he/she will show you the way through the rim.
But some guides do not. The last tour I was on, for example, had a guide that took us out for dusk/blue hour photos and then as it got dark, led us back to the parking area where we took our Milky Way shots (which we could later merge with the blue hour images). After that, the guide said goodnight and sacked out. Since I prefer to take my Milky Way images from the same tripod position as my foreground images, I decided to hike back into White Pocket alone.
Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. I had hiked the area in the daylight and have plenty of night hiking experience (see this article for night hiking tips). Plus I had pre-loaded a GPS track for White Pocket into my phone’s AllTrails GPS app, so I was good to go.
Or so I thought. As it turned out, I will always remember White Pocket as one of the most frustrating Milky Way shoots I’ve ever had.
An AllTrails Failure
For a number of years AllTrails has been an indispensable tool that has allowed me to hike a lot of trails in the dark with few issues. But, AllTrails failed me miserably at White Pocket. The problem is that the trail shown (as of Aug 2024) is just plain wrong. Its path into the ‘bowl’ leads you over sections involving substantial drops that are unsafe, especially at night. What should have been an easy 20 minute walk from the parking area turned into a 90 minute odyssey before I was able to get into the bowl.
AllTrails Fix
So, if you don’t have a guide that is going to personally lead you into the bowl at night, what do you do?
- First, download the White Pocket trail on AllTrails ahead of time (since you will likely not have cell coverage at White Pocket).
- Begin your hike in the parking area.
- Go to the trailhead (look for an obvious opening in the parking lot’s wood fence).
- Follow the wide sandy trail (this is the green path on AllTrails) for about 700 feet to the spot where the sand ends and the slickrock starts.
- Then follow the AllTrails path for another 300′ . At this point the AllTrails main ‘green’ trail continues to the east but the map will also show a dotted line trail that diverges from the main trail heading north.
- Follow that dotted trail. It will take you into the bowl and do so without requiring you to transverse seriously broken ground.
- The App will start beeping and telling you are off trail. Ignore it.
The map below illustrates the best way to get into the bowl if you are using AllTrails.
Best Night Locations
Okay, now that you know how to safely get into White Pocket at night, let’s look at some photo locations. The map below provides a visual overview.
The Tree
“The tree” is possibly the most famous photo icon at White Pocket. This ponderosa pine stands alone on a field of ‘brain rock’ near the crest of a hill. It is inspiring to appreciate how this resilient little tree has managed to survive in such a stark and harsh environment. It also makes quite a striking visual image with the Milky Way rising behind it.
If you are lucky, the depression next to the tree will be filled with rainwater. This will be more likely in late summer thanks to the monsoons. The night air is often calm, which allows you to get great star reflections.
The tree isn’t in the ‘bowl,’ it is on raised area of brainrock near the parking area. As you follow the path from the parking area east toward White Pocket, look to your left (southwest) when the sand trail transitions to sandstone. The tree is pretty close (less than 500′) but scout it out in the daylight ahead of time.
In the spring and early summer, shoot from the western side of the tree. By late summer the Milky Way will have shifted and you will want to position yourself more to the north.
There are are some other little trees nearby that can work for sunrise/sunset shots, but “the tree” is your best bet for a stellar night shot.
The Citadel
The Citadel (sometimes called the Castle) is one of the standout features at White Pocket. It is massive and anchors the south side of the ‘bowl’ and that positioning makes it a perfect foreground for your Milky Way shots.
An added bonus are the fine ripples in the sandstone floor in front of the Citadel which make wonderful leading lines.
For the shot shown here to the left, I had about a half dozen LEDs with me and I needed all of them.
I set up two lights a few inches above the ground at a 90-degree angle to maximize the shadows from those ripples. Another couple LEDs helped out in the mid range. Two 7′ tall light stands set well off to the left managed to illuminate the Citadel in the background (assisted by some post-processing dodging with Photoshop).
My tripod was set to it’s lowest setting…less than 6″ over the sandstone. Therefore I had to focus stack to ensure a crisp image throughout the field of view. The lighting allowed me to use a low ISO (200) with long exposures to capture the foreground.
The Milky Way is a series of ten stacked f/ 3.2 11-second exposures combined in Sequator. ISO was set at 800.
The Swirl
The Swirl (or ‘Popsicle’) is another amazing feature at White Pocket. It faces south, which rules out Milky Way shots, but a star trails image would be ideal.
If you bring a second camera and tripod, this would be a great place to set it up and let it take a couple hours worth of images while you work the rest of the area.
Other Possibilities
When you are scouting before sunset, use your PhotoPills app in the “Night AR” mode to see if the Milky Way will be positioned well at other locations. White Pocket is packed with insane, fluid-looking features that can make great foregrounds.
There is also is an area covered with the small spherical iron spheres known locally as Moqui Balls or Moqui Marbles. It’s about 500′ or so north of the Swirl located at 36.96212, -111.89665.
If you find yourself with free time after hitting the prime locations, I’d bet there is a killer night shot just waiting to be done here.
Last Thoughts
I’ve stayed overnight at White Pocket a couple times. There always seem to be a handful of other folks who campout till dawn. Oddly enough, I’ve never run into anyone while out shooting after 10pm. Which means I’ve been able to set up my lights without interfering with anyone else’s shot. If you do run across another photographer(s), work out an arrangement so everyone can get the shot they planned.
Although this article was solely focused on night photography, you will likely be at White Pocket for sunrise and sunset as well. Of the two, sunset is my favorite. But the golden light and low angle sunlight of both have an amazing effect on the colorful stone and it would be a sin not to take advantage of it since you are already there.
PS: Unlike a lot of folks on the internet, I don’t get kickbacks or commission from any of the products or companies I mention in my articles. I don’t blindly trust someone’s endorsement who is getting paid to sell a product and I don’t expect you do either. You can trust that my opinions, faulty as they may be, are my own.
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