Back to Sugarloaf

It has been awhile since my last visit to my favorite local area sunrise perch, Sugarloaf Mountain…but the unstable weather conditions were calling.

In Boulder, the previous day there were lots of low clouds with a small cold front moving through, with this particular morning (27 April) forecast as clearing. The possibility of some nice cloud layers below the Sugarloaf summit was there–and so it was. And so was I (despite the 4a.m. wakeup!)

A handful of images…

The pre-sunrise light up here always seems very blue, a color that also communicates the cold temps of this particular morning. That’s Denver off to the right in the distance and probably Louisville on the left. Boulder is buried under cloud. From left to right you can also see the profiles of the First Flatiron, Green Mountain, and Bear Peak. The lights from a couple of mountain homes can also be seen between Green and Bear, and in the very near foreground:

Pre-Dawn Above Boulder, #1. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2016

Moving from a telephoto shot (above), I switched to the 24-70 and tried to work with the sculpted summit stump. The elephant-shaped cloud helped fill in all that negative space in the sky. It snowed about an inch up here last night:

Pre-Dawn Above Boulder, #2. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2016

Back to the 70-200 telephoto for a closer view of the cloud layers and the mountain profiles. I liked the line of cloudlets marching across the sky and, in the foreground, the silhouettes of the trees, some burned in the last fire a few years ago:

Pre-Dawn Above Boulder, #6. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2016

For sunrise, I changed perspectives radically, going for a 14mm view of the giant, scorched, tree I call “Old Grandpappy”, along with his forest fire-veteran companions.

Old Grandpappy. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2016

On the descent, Sugarloaf’s shadow led the way with a three-quarter Moon looking on. The clouds were layered, with low, fast-moving cumulus blowing by in the cold wind and a massive lenticular starting to form at high altitude, and some light cirrus up even higher:

Sugarloaf Shadow. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2016