Earth, Wind & Snow
Horsetooth Reservoir after the first significant snowfall of 2015
After the first two winter storms of the year did nothing but lower Northern Colorado’s collective faith in local weather forecasters, we finally got our real snowfall of the year over the past few days. After a predominantly grey and shivery Thanksgiving weekend, the clouds finally revealed some blue sky today so I headed out to Horsetooth Reservoir for a few hours to grab some photos before the afternoon slate of NFL games kicked-off.
Horsetooth Reservoir is a local landmark and apart from the obvious water-based recreational opportunities, there are several world-class bouldering spots located along the east shore of the reservoir that make for some interesting winter scenes. I half expected to see some bold (feel free to pick a stronger word if you prefer…) boulderers throwing caution to the sheets of ice coating most surfaces, but despite this location’s proximity to Fort Collins (~10 minutes), I was pleasantly surprised to have the place all to myself. With no boats on the reservoir and two ridgelines separating me from the ongoing holiday shopping hustle and bustle down below, Horsetooth was unusually serene.
A popular bouldering spot at Horsetooth Reservoir; a bit slick today!
Snowy trails and trees along Horsetooth Reservoir
After wandering around for nearly an hour, I began to notice that nearly every branch and blade of grass was encrusted in about a half inch of crystal-clear ice. Not only that, but the ice had invariably accumulated on the east side of the vegetation, suggesting some fairly persistent west winds over the past few days. A far cry from the sunny serenity of Sunday afternoon!
Ice accumulation on dry grass blades
Ice accumulation on shrubs after a recent winter storm
From the San Juans to the San Juans
They are separated by more than 1600 kilometers. One barely rises above sea level while the other boasts six peaks exceeding 14,000 feet in elevation. One is most easily accessed by kayak or porpoise, while in the other it is difficult to escape the incessant drone of Jeeps, dirt bikes, and ATVs that trawl the vast network of old mining roads. One is beset by a deluge of by rain eight months out of the year, whereas the other is inaccessible except by ski, snowshoe, or helicopter for six. To the untrained eye, the San Juan Islands of NW Washington and the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado couldn’t be more different. My current job situation has me living about an hour away from the mountains for 3 months out of the year, and an hour or less away from the islands for the other 9 months. And viewed through the lens of a camera, I have discovered that there are more similarities that you might expect. The first of which will probably be rather obvious:
They both posses stunning scenery:
View from Deception Pass State Park on Fidalgo Island looking southwest across the water towards the Olympic Peninsula.
Rosy Paintbrush in an alpine meadow near Red Mountain #1 (yes, nearby can be found Red Mountain’s #2 and #3. The old miners were a creative bunch.) in the San Juan Mountains.
Both offer opportunities for “extreme” sports:
A paraglider enjoys a serene aerial view of the San Juan Islands and several tankers headed for the oil refineries in Anacortes, WA.
Descending a scree-filled colouir after summiting 14.150′ Mt. Sneffels in the San Juan Mountains. While most of the climb is straightforward and requires only a hefty amount of scrambling, there is one tricky section near the summit during which a fall would likely mean the end of one’s mountain climbing days…or any other days for that matter.
Both were shaped and sculpted by vast quantities of ice:
Glacial striations in slate high above the Uncompahgre Gorge in the San Juan Mountains. The parallel grooves in the rock were carved by rocky debris trapped along the base of a long-gone glacier that was partially responsible for scouring out the gorge.
A Washington State Ferry passes a cliff of glacially scoured rock in the San Juan Islands. Glacial striations identical to those in the previous photo are ubiquitous throughout the San Juan Islands, evidence that the area was buried beneath more than a mile of ice during the peak of the last glaciation, about 15,000 years ago.
And finally, both are home to curious wildlife:
An American Pika investigates a bush at 11,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains.
A Blood Star investigates a California mussel below sea level in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
In case you didn’t know, that’s what starfish look like when they are curious.
Mt. Shuksan in High Resolution
Introducing Mt. Shuksan:
This image strip is just a small part of a 45 shot, 550 megapixel panorama I recently took of Mt. Shuksan from the Mt. Baker Ski Area. Since WordPress doesn’t offer me a way to display a picture of this size at full resolution, I’ve uploaded a (nearly) full resolution version of the image to GigaPan.com and included a link below (just click on the photo). There are lots of cool features that you can see if you play around with the image and zoom in; such as the terminus of the aptly named Hanging Glacier just below the summit peak, lots of cornices along the summit ridge, innumerable avalanche tracks, some really interesting linear and polygonal features in the snow (developing avalanche scarps?) and even some waterfalls and the entrance to an ice cave!
This was the first time I had made a panorama of this size and resolution. Photoshop’s Photomerge feature (which I n0rmally use for panoramas) had trouble handling so many images so I ended up using a free program called Microsoft Image Composite Editor to stitch and blend the images together. While this program doesn’t allow for editing of the final panorama, I was able to easily export the composite image and make minor adjustments to contrast and brightness in Photoshop. The individual frames were shot in RAW mode using a ball-head tripod and a 200mm zoom lens on a Nikon D90. Exposure settings were set manually and kept mostly constant in order to facilitate seamless integration of all 45 images.
Click the image below to explore the GigaPan:
Zach Schierl Photography 