This is a 12-shot stitched panoramic image of the Wave in North Coyote Buttes, near the Arizona state line with Utah. I captured the image during a photo workshop last August, during the summer monsoon. It’s extremely difficult to obtain a permit for this location, as the Bureau of Land Management allows only 60 people per day to access the landscape via a lottery system. Many thousands of people apply each month, so the odds of winning the lottery are less than 5 percent.
All of the guides at my company, Action Photo Tours, apply each month, and among all of us, we’re usually lucky enough to win one lottery each year. Last year, I won the lottery, so we organized a photo tour around this location. We went in early in the day, hoping the monsoon storms would provide us with some nice cloud drama.
We weren’t disappointed. At about 1 p.m., the skies let loose with a massive storm of rain, hail and lightning. All the other groups in the area were scrambling out as quickly as they could, but it’s a 4-mile hike back to the trailhead, so I knew we wouldn’t outrun the storm. We took cover in a large alcove and waited it out, which took about two hours.
By then, everyone was pretty anxious to get out of there and back to the vehicles. However, I insisted we first revisit the Wave, because I knew it would be filled with water from the downpour we’d just experienced. Fortunately, we had the place to ourselves until sunset.
I’ve always wanted to see the Wave filled with water. It was amazingly beautiful and so magical.