Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I’ve learned that my memories of the first time I see or experience something always are the most vivid and I tend to judge all subsequent experiences by that “first time”.  Fall of 2016 in Colorado was that way for me. Everything was new - stupidly leaving Denver for my drive to the Kenosha Pass summit wearing shorts and a light North Face jacket then arriving to 20° temps, the seemingly endless groves of yellow-leaved aspens, the snow-capped peaks of the Front Range, Nymph Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park covered in still-green lily pads with blazing pink skies above a Hallett Peak lit up bright red, the organic smell of pines and newly fallen leaves.   After that September, I spent the next four autumns chasing the same peak experience with an intensity that verged on craziness, never quite able to replicate that first time feeling.  Until this year.

As has become my habit, I scheduled a vacation the last week of September with the sole purpose of driving around Colorado to photograph the fall leaves.  I didn’t have any firm plans other than 2 mid-week nights in an Airbnb in Mount Crested Butte.  The rest of the time I was going to see where the days took me.  I spent the first weekend at my cabin in Jefferson, in South Park right at the base of Kenosha Pass.  The skies were clear but there was plenty of color and I was able to explore some of the public land close to the cabin.  The scenery of South Park is incredibly beautiful - a basin ringed by high mountains - but I’ve struggled to find good compositions there and I didn’t capture much that I was happy with photo-wise.  Driving back to Glenwood on Sunday, I decided to take Eagle-Thomasville Road and then head home via Basalt.  It had been a couple years since I had taken that route and wasn’t sure what to expect.  The damage from the Sylvan Fire was evident, but I knew that the fire hadn’t made its way down to the south part of the road, the spot that I remembered being the most photogenic.  That location was in its photographic prime with the aspens close to peak and very few people.  Lime Creek Canyon, several small creeks, and the mountains of the Holy Cross Wilderness provided several composition options.  I stayed here for sunset and even came back the following afternoon to do more exploring of the canyon. I’ll definitely return to this spot next year.

Back home in Glenwood, my choice for Monday’s sunrise was obvious:  Mount Sopris.  Ever since seeing Tad Bowman’s image of Sopris in the fall, I had been obsessed with photographing the mountain and had only had limited success.  That all changed this Monday.  I woke up early and drove to the Prince Creek Road photo spot that I had scoped out many photo sessions ago.  It was light enough out that I could see that the sky was mostly clear, but that there were a few clouds behind the twin summits of the mountain.  While I wasn’t expecting much, I held out some hope that the clouds would drift over and that’s exactly what happened.  By sunrise, the sky above Mount Sopris was filled with a palette of clouds that turned the most relaxing shades of pastel pink and purple. In the foreground, Gambel oaks shone bright red and aspens wore every color from green through yellow and even orange.  As the scene unfolded, I was torn between just sitting back and watching the sunrise play out and rushing around to capture as many images of the fleeting scene as I could.  I bet you can guess which I picked.  After a few minutes, the sun rose high enough to cast a soft light onto the very top of the mountain before being muted by clouds on the horizon.

I woke up to clouds on Tuesday morning and headed out make my way down to Crested Butte via Kebler Pass.  When taking the pass from west to east, one of the first landmarks you encounter is Marcellina Mountain.  It is a prominent peak with a distinctive look that should make it very photogenic, but to that point a good composition had eluded me.  The skies to the east and south were looking more and more dark and turbulent yet there was quite a lot of light in the foreground.  Those conditions meant I was able to take several shots of  Marcellina that I was happy with - yellow aspens with bright white trunks climbing the hills in front of the mountain, fine rock detail on its face, and clouds capping off the scene.  From Marcellina Mountain, I continued east on Kebler Pass stopping what seemed like every hundred feet or so for varying compositions of Mount Gunnison, West Beckwith Mountain, and East Beckwith Mountains to the south.   It never rained where I was, but I could see a lot of it in the distance.  After moving on from the Beckwiths, I made my way to the middle part of Kebler Pass Road - the area around Ruby Dyke and Horse Ranch Park.  As I rounded a corner, I saw what looked like snow on the top of Ruby Peak and Mount Owen to the north.  Another photographer told me it actually was hail, but I didn’t care - it looked like snow and I felt like I was in a postcard with the yellow aspens all around and white capped peaks in the background.  I stayed at the Cliff Creek Trail overlook photographing the Dyke for a bit before resuming my way east, over the summit, and into town.  From there, I headed north up into the Slate River Valley to photograph the river and beaver ponds with Purple and Cinnamon Mountains in the distance.  My next and last photo stop was up Washington Gulch to shoot one of my favorite peaks in the area, Gothic Mountain.  The color on Gothic was so brilliant that it almost looked fake.  In retrospect, I need to do more work on my compositions there.  The mountain itself is impressive, but a bit monolithic from this particular angle, and I should have done more to create some interest in the foreground of my shots.  That rounded out my day of shooting and I grabbed a pizza from Mikey’s before checking-in to my Airbnb.

As painful as it was, I got myself out of bed around 5:00 am the next day and drove back to Kebler - this time to an overlook of East Beckwith Mountain just past the pass summit.  The clouds were really low and there was a bit of drizzle.  It quickly became apparent that the clouds were not going to lift and I wouldn’t be able to see Beckwith so I focused on more intimate compositions and captured the fog dancing in and out of the trees.  After shooting here a bit, I drove back to my Airbnb to shower and have some breakfast.  When I got out of the shower, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing - it was snowing - not just on the top of the peaks but in town! I scratched breakfast, got dressed, and rushed back out.  Like Marcellina Mountain, Crested Butte (the mountain) also is very distinctive, but I had largely ignored it for photography because there are ski runs on the north face and houses running up the west face.  The snow and some low fog suddenly made the mountain the most photogenic thing ever and I pulled over at a couple of roadside spots to capture the scene.  From there, I made my way back to the East Beckwith overlook.  By the time I got there, the clouds had started clearing, but there were enough around the top of the peak, as well as areas of fog floating around near the trees, that the whole scene was perfect.  There were several other people at the photo spot, but it wasn’t crowded by any means, and everyone was very social and in a buoyant mood because of the spectacular weather.  After leaving this spot, I drove back up the Slate River Valley for more beaver pond shots, this time with snowy peaks in the background.  That occupied the majority of the afternoon, but I carved out a little time to drive up Gothic Road as far as the campground and shoot the East River and mountains to the east from a number of pullouts.

The Thursday morning forecast was for clouds and I was in desperate need of sleep, so going to bed Wednesday, I decided not to get up and drive to a photo spot for sunrise the next morning.  As luck would have it, I woke up right at sunrise time and couldn’t resist opening the blinds to see what I was missing.  Sure enough, the entire sky was lit up pink.  I was then kicking myself for not going out since I had a number of sunrise compositions in mind, including the east face of Marcellina from the Dark Canyon Trail.  As you can tell, I’m still not over the missed opportunity since I’m writing about it now, but I had to take comfort in the fact that I had captured over 1000 images and got to experience the fall that I had been chasing since 2016.

The sky had completely clouded over and I left Crested Butte to return to Glenwood not expecting to really make any stops along the way.  When I reached the McClure Pass summit, dark clouds were building up the Crystal River Valley toward Marble and I could see it was raining/snowing far in the distance.  I decided to pull over and take out my camera again.  I had shot from this spot many times before and something always seemed a little off-balance to me with more of the mountains weighted to the right side of the image, but I used the aspen-covered hillsides closer to the foreground to provide some balance.  The weather was coming toward me and the clouds were getting more and more interesting.   There even were a few bolts of lightning, which would have been amazing to capture (lightning trigger added to Amazon wishlist).  Despite not getting the lightning, I was really pleased with the results.  One of those images is above.  Fall in Colorado:  the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.