With the latest storm moving out yesterday, I thought it might be an opportune time to hike up Sugarloaf Mountain. The idea would be to catch sunrise on the Continental Divide, maybe see the trees plastered with snow, and hopefully even get a nice undercast layer of writhing fog fingers caressing the low mountain valleys.
These photo trips never really pan out like you expect, though. On this morning, for example, there was no undercast and the Continental Divide peak tops were mostly obscured by cloud remnants from the recent storm. At least there were lots of snow-laden trees.
What really attracted me, though, were the huge snow sculptures and drifts at the summit–some of them hip deep. The driving wind, and thus blowing snow, helped give the images some unusual movement effects, even if it was difficult to keep the lens relatively spot-free. (Forget trying to actually change lenses!)
The hike up was through a smooth, fluffy coat of shin-deep powder snow.
First tracks are the best!
On to the images…
The magic moment. Another day quietly begins with orange plasma on the horizon and light pink on the snow at my feet:
Sugarloaf, April Snow, #2. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2017
Then the wind woke up and the early morning went full-on, roaring orange:
Sugarloaf, April Snow, #4. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2017
Sugarloaf, April Snow, #5. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2017
This was my favorite photograph of the day, a portrait of Longs Peak as the first rays of the sun hit the mountain. The wind was blowing directly into my lens, which made for some wonderful blurring and subtle colors in the foreground…but the flakes would quickly start filling up the spaces around the inside the lens shade. I cloned out a number of inconvenient spots from flakes that stuck themselves to the glass:
Sugarloaf, April Snow, #3. Sugarloaf Mountain, Colorado, 2017
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