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Lake Powell: A Photographic Essay Of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

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For many people, the name Lake Powell conjures up images of a blue lake among red rock--of boating over a sprawling, azure sheen of unbroken water, beneath high, vermilion sandstone walls. It calls to mind shorelines lined with tamarisks and cottonwoods, bays mottled with preening mergansers and watchful egrets, water caves full of reflected light, and sunsets mirrored by a shining, landlocked ocean.
For others, the name alone is enough to make them start shaking in anger and sadness. For those, Lake Powell is not a lake at all. It's a misbegotten reservoir. It's a crime. It's all that lies between them and the legendary, long lost Glen Canyon-a stretch of the Colorado River so inviting, so overwhelming, and so full of secrets, it's often been called the Grand Canyon's lovelier sibling.
Unlike Cataract Canyon upstream, and the Grand Canyon downstream, Glen Canyon was a tranquil place with currents friendly enough for even the most boyish of Boy Scouts and the oldest of old ladies. Edward Abbey considered it the heart of the canyon lands. The residents of White Canyon, Utah--a town since submerged by Lake Powell--considered it home. The Bureau of Reclamation just considered it a good place to build a dam.
That dam, Glen Canyon Dam, was built in the early-1960s, to create a reservoir in which to store the water of the Colorado River for the states that needed it, to use the river's water to turn turbines and generate lucrative electricity, to control the Colorado River's seasonal flooding, to bring visiting boaters and their money in from all around the world, and to stop water-borne silt and sediment from clogging Lake Mead, an even larger reservoir downstream. The 710-foot-tall Glen Canyon Dam blocked the path of the Colorado River, the trapped river backed up behind the dam, and everywhere the water could go, it did. It covered multiple rivers, created bays, filled Glen Canyon and side canyons and coves, drowned beavers and snakes and trees, and turned buttes and spires into islands. It changed an almost two hundred-mile-long stretch of the Colorado River into Lake Powell, into a deep, manmade lake with about 1,960 miles of ragged, convoluted shoreline-a shoreline longer than America's West Coast.
And then, then there was Gary Ladd.
Gary Ladd knew Glen Canyon, and initially hated Lake Powell for inundating it. But then over time, he realized Lake Powell had a very real beauty, a beauty all its own, regardless of its origins, and he started to take pictures of it.
And his pictures were gorgeous.
And here they are.
Right here in this book.
Buy this book, and dive into the colors and textures that Gary Ladd manages to capture on film: the blues and the reds, the sugar cookie textures of sandstone, and the shocks of color-filled flowers that burst like life itself up from acres of barren rock.
Buy it, set it on your coffee table, and watch the discussions begin.

Somehow I didn't buy one of the picture books available locally when I visited this fabulous area so I've been trying to find a memento for several years. This is a very nice find, full of excellent, but somewhat modest, photos.

Many controversies surround the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell related to environmental concerns and I share some of these. Nevertheless Gary Ladds book is a brilliant photoessay which proves that out of bad policy decisions great beauty may serendipitously arise. I have travelled and photographed these regions for more than 20 years and these pictures are so beautiful and vivid, providing at times panoramic and at times intimate views of this beautiful canyon country, that my breath is taken away.

I came across this marvelous wonder of a book while visiting a friend's house; they had it as a coffee table. What excited me about it was the huge title LAKE POWELL. I sat down, took it and commenced to browse through it....WHAT A DELIGHT! Now here's the clincher, folks. I am an avid movie buff;I am also a staunch sci-fi fan, and enjoy books involving astronomy and beautifully-painted imaginary landscapes of faraway worlds in some other galaxy. I am ALSO a "Planet of the Apes"(1968) FAN and this is the angle from where my profound interest of this book comes in. This sci-fi classic film was partially shot HERE!! From the very beginning where Charlton Heston & Co. "crashland" (right SMACK on Lake Powell itself) on this "unknown world" until suddenly arriving at a nirvana-like location complete with enticing waterfalls and soothing fauna--it just overwhelms my curiosity. I said to myself: I AM DEFINITELY PURCHASING THIS WORK!! Gotta' have it :-)!!! The photography is awesome and really arouses your imagination, providing Lake Powell with a curiously other-worldly ambiance and dimension, most likely the reason why director Frank Shaeffner & producer Arthur P Jacobs chose this area to shoot their movie. It sure footed the bill wholesale (they must have been both satisfied and impressed with it because a year later they shot the equally-excellent sequel " Beneath the Palnet of the Apes" at the SAME locations). KUDOS!! Once I receive this masterpiece, I will place it on my library alongside all my POTA books. It certainly deserves the honor! lol Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to visit this amazing and breath-taking site. Heaven knows one day my wife and I will certainly visit. P.S. Here is a piece of trivia--word has it that one of the three full-scale plywood (ANSA U.S.S. Icarus) spacecraft used to shoot the "sinking scene" at the beginning of the movie was NEVER RECOVERED and still rests at the bottom of Lake Powell! WOW!