The View from Above: Panoramas from Colorado’s Peaks
Why do we climb mountains? For the sheer physical challenge. For the adrenaline rush. For the smell of danger that accompanies looking over the edge into 2,000 feet of nothing but thin air. For the mental high that comes from conquering a summit. To temporarily escape from the chaos of humanity stewing below. “Because it is there”. Your answers may vary. I climb mountains for all of these reasons, with different ones taking priority depending on my mood (although I have a limit to how much danger I am willing to smell…). Ultimately though, as a photographer, I climb mountains for the view.
With the highest average elevation of any state, Colorado has no shortage of mountains, and thus no shortage of views. Some of the best come from the summits of Colorado’s famous 14ers, a group of 53 peaks whose crests reach to more that 14,000 feet above sea level. At this altitude, other than birds and oncoming thunderheads, there is nothing left to look UP at. No mightier peaks obstruct your gaze and if you’re lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of a plane flying a few thousand feet below.
However there is not a direct correlation between higher elevation and better views. Far from it. After all, the 14ers have done nothing special to earn their fame, they have simply been the recipient of enough geologic good fortune that their summits exceed the ultimately meaningless and arbitrary 14,000′ mark. As a result, the Mount of the Holy Cross, topping out at 14,009′, is one of Colorado’s most famous mountains, in large part due to those uppermost nine feet. Meanwhile, Grizzly Peak, just 14 feet lower (13,995′), lies nearly forgotten just a few dozen miles away (lost in the shuffle of six—that’s right six—different Grizzly Peak’s in the state) yet provides an equally majestic vantage point.
Below I’ve put together a collection of panoramas shot from different summits around the state in an attempt to present the diversity of Colorado’s mountain peaks. Every summit, no matter how high, has a distinct atmosphere and feel, from suburban hills where you can down onto sprawling subdivisions and strip malls, to remote wilderness peaks where the only sign of mankind might just be the jet contrail 15,000 feet above you. Seeing summit panoramas always encourages me to get outside and fight Earth’s gravity once again. So go find any good chunk of rock that sticks up a bit above its surroundings, walk, hike, bike, climb, or crawl up it, and you are sure to be rewarded. My only specific advice is to find a peak without a road to the top. Views are best enjoyed in solitude and few things as demoralizing than spending hours trudging up a mountain only to find a gift shop, parking lot, or a family of six enjoying a three course meal in the back of their hummer at the top…or worse, a combination of all three.
Mt Sneffels, San Juan Mountains, 14,158′
Mt. McConnel, Poudre Canyon, 8,008′
Twin Peaks, San Juan Mountains, 10,798′
North Baldy Peak, West Elk Mountains, 12,850′
Mt. Shavano, Sawatch Range, 14,236′
Crag Crest, Grand Mesa, 11,189′
Courthouse Mountain, San Juan Mountains, 12,152′
Mt. Elbert, Sawatch Range, 14,440′ (highest point in Rocky Mountains)
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:
A Crater Lake Comparison
College and blogging go together about as well as tofu and….well…about anything. Keeping up with this site, which by definition requires photographs, is even more challenging. Apart from several thousand photographs of Whitman Mission National Historic Site (where I volunteer and write another photography blog), I take very few photos during the semester, given that pictures of classrooms are boring and I don’t often take to lugging a DSLR around to weekend frivolities.
It was a visit to Crater Lake in the summer two years ago that prompted me to start this website in the first place. Somehow though, that attempt went fallow and I never got past creating an account and drafting a first post. That post, with the awe-inspiring title of “Photography Challenges at Crater Lake National Park”, and packed with 576 words of my mind-numbingly painful drivel, still sits in my “Drafts” folder to this day, staring at me with sad eyes much like whatever this is.
Happily, I now have a second Crater Lake visit to share photos from. If you’ve ever wanted to see snowdrifts engulfing multi-story buildings, you should visit Crater Lake NP in the early spring. Driving up Oregon Hwy 62 from Medford, my thought progression went something like this: “Hmm…not very much snow yet”, “Strange, I thought we’d be getting into some snow by now”, “Wow, maybe we’ll actually be able to hike around a little at the lake”, “Holy crap, the snowbanks are taller than the car”, “Whoa, now they are taller than my 6′ 3″ housemate!” I truly have never seen such quantities of snow in my life. Entering the few remaining open buildings required travel through snow tunnels in order to access the doors. The road to the rim of the lake is kept open year-round, and after seeing the massive snowbanks and realizing how much manpower must be required to accomplish this, I had to ask the question “why”? The volunteer ranger on duty didn’t really have a clear cut answer, mumbling only something about “politics” and “tradition.” We were also informed that this winter had been “a dry one” and that the fact that we were even able to see the lake was rather fortuitous, as more than 50% of winter days are so cloudy that the lake surface is not even visible from the rim.
Crazy snow.
Crater Lake Lodge, closed for the season
Wandering around the shuttered Crater Lake Lodge area felt eerily like a scene from The Shining (filmed at the nearby Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood) with the Crater Lake Lodge buried up to the 4th floor by snowdrifts. One advantage to the snow was the lack of the oppressing clouds of mosquitoes that plagued us during the summer visit.
Crater Lake Panorama, March 2012
For comparison purposes, here are some images from that July 2010 visit, starting with a shot taken from almost the exact same vantage point at the first photo in this post (note the position of the peak towering over the lodge). The only difference in that here I’m not standing on top of thirty feet of snow.
Crater Lake Lodge, sans 30' snow drifts
The Moon and Venus setting behind Crater Lake
Crater Lake Panorama, July 2010
I clearly remember being surprised on that visit at how much snow remained present, even in mid-July. Several trails were still closed. After last week, this no longer seems extraordinary. If anything it seems a small miracle that it ever melts at all and that Crater Lake is not covered by some sort of permanent glacier.
Zach Schierl Photography 
