I drove out to Glass Buttes (75 miles east of Bend, OR, on US 20), for a one-nighter camped on the summit, with my main goal to shoot photos for 360° panoramas. There's a great view from the summit (6300') in all directions -- you can see from Steens Mt in the east to the Three Sisters on the crest of the Cascades to the west (if it's not too hazy, that is...)
Radio towers and transmitter buildings mare the short-range aesthetics (visual and sound), but there wouldn't be a road to the summit without the radio stuff, so I'm not complaining.
The "glass" in the name means obsidian, and you can't look at the ground without seeing some. I think it's a popular spot for "knappers"...as well as all collectors of obsidian.
The short story: It was hazy, so not ideal for photos, and it looked like I'd missed the wildflower peak by a couple of weeks...but it was still a great way to spend 30 hours of my weekend, and I took hundreds of photos (mostly bracketing) and made several QTVR 360° panoramas. Links to those below. I had fun being outside shooting photos then being in my camper assembling them in the laptop and I'm happy with how it turned out.
The ~10-mile drive off the pavement -- from US 20 to the summit -- took me about an hour. It's rutted and pot-holed and I don't think it's maintained. The only other people out there were several families camped in a group way down at the bottom.
After dinner, as sunset neared, I did several rounds of photos for panoramas, varying focal length, camera orientation (portrait or landscape), location on the top...and as the sun dropped and the light changed.
It became very windy on this prominent spot at 6300 feet in late afternoon and continued into late evening, but it wasn't cold at all.
At midnight I went back out and shot a full-moon moonlight panorama. It was difficult since I set up my tripod on the true-summit pinnacle, in the high wind, in the moonlit dark, trying to not fall off and break my neck or kick the tripod and throw off its alignment -- or maybe even knock it down and break my camera. So I only did one round of photos and that was all I was into.
I set my alarm for 5am to beat the 5:45am sunrise...but I turned the alarm off when it sounded, went back to sleep, and missed the actual sunrise by about 10 minutes -- close enough.
I shot a couple of rounds, similar variations to what I did at sunset, then I went back to bed and slept for a couple more hours. Then breakfast and a 2-hour drive home.Below are the links to the panoramic photos (on my website, Desert Space). They're QTVR (.mov) files, and you need to have QuickTime player/viewer installed to look at them. If you don't have it already it's a free download from Apple.
Sunset Pano
Post-sunset Pano
Midnight-Moonlight Pano
Sunrise Pano
