February has been quite cold and snowy for us and for many of my readers, so I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my snow photos, both older and newest, for this post.
I've always loved this rock formation right next to Highway 24 as you round a bend. I've been trying for years to get a decent photo of it because it comes up quickly and there's no real safe place to park and walk to the formation. This is by far my favorite photo of it because the snow outlines the rocks so nicely, and the clouds cleared up just enough for some excellent contrast with the sky. I captured this very recently on a day right after Woodland Park and most of Teller County got an overnight snowfall.
Similarly, this view of the South Platte River not far from Lake George is another of my favorites. During the summer, it's not uncommon to see a dozen or so fishermen along the shore or knee-deep in the water; and in the springtime, tiny purple wild irises fill the meadows on each side. Three sections of the South Platte in Colorado totaling 37 miles are named Gold Medal Waters by Trout Unlimited, part of nearly 325 miles of waters that are so designated in the state. While winter isn't the most popular time for fishing, when we went driving during a winter holiday last year, we saw a couple dozen fishermen along another stretch of this river.
This recent day was great for my photography because we saw considerable snow hanging onto the evergreens most of the day. I captured this image as we started driving up Wilkerson Pass west of Florissant. As we topped over the pass, it was clear that the snow hadn't fallen nearly as heavily on the west side, and by the time we neared Buena Vista and the Collegiate Peaks, there was virtually no snow below 10,000 feet. However, the snowcap on the peaks was nice to see and outlined the avalanche chutes on Mt. Columbia beautifully. All of the Collegiate Peaks (from south to
north: Mt. Princeton, Mt. Yale, Mt. Columbia, Mt. Harvard, Mt. Oxford) are 14,000 feet and higher. Coincidentally, there's a peak (Mt. Belford) in the range that has the same name as a
"university" that turned out to be fraudulent and was the subject of a huge multi-million dollar fine for producing fake degrees. I'm pretty certain the peak's name predates the "university" by more than a century.
Some of my older snow photos include this one of the 1920's stone seismograph station at the Lassen Volcanic Center in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, with the mountain itself just visible in the background. The seismographs inside register the frequent, but tiny, earth movements picked up from instruments placed around this volcano that last erupted from 1914 - 1917. It was pretty fascinating to watch the needle recording the movements as we watched through the windows. We never had the opportunity to visit the center again (it was closed the day we were there), so I don't have a lot of information about it, except what I was able to find online. We were the first people to stop by on that particular day, so the tracks are from us and our dog.
Randomly, other photos I've taken on snowy days include this image of one of the two dozen(!) Humpty Dumpty sculptures around Colorado Springs (as of mid-2024). It's titled
"Egghead" and is my favorite since it's the bookworm of the basketful. Others have names like "Robin's Egg," "Eggsplorer," Eggzellent," and "Eggstraterrestrial." I haven't tracked all of them down yet, although there's supposed to be a map of their locations.
On a particular occasion last year, Teller County received between two and three feet of snow overnight, and even more in some areas. We drove out to Cripple Creek to see what it looked like, and found that many homes in the rural areas were still socked in. Some folks had made a start on plowing their driveways, but it was a bit intimidating to find that fences had been entirely covered in places. We cruised around Cripple Creek and watched the plowing operations for a while -- the crew was using a
front-loader and pushing snow off streets to a place where dump trucks could be loaded to haul the surplus away. As can be seen in this photo from a turnout above the town, even though the snow had mostly stopped, the clouds were still quite threatening the next afternoon.
We did enjoy seeing that someone had whimsically adorned the slightly larger-than-life sculptures of the donkey and her foal that mark the entrance to the District Museum with colorful scarves. This sculpture highlights the importance of the donkeys that were used
to haul ore and supplies in the mine tunnels during the district's gold mining heyday. Today, a herd of around a dozen is released to roam the town each summer through mid-October as ambassadors of the history of this rich mining area.
Several winters ago, while we visited eastern Montana, we found an abandoned ranch house on one of our jaunts. This one backed up against a hill that probably helped serve as a windbreak. The railroad track passed through the cut seen just above and to the right of the old house. Visualize it as it could have been nearly 100 years ago, a small but comfortable log cabin
with children playing on the hillside, a dog or two in the yard, a vintage car or, more likely, truck parked in front, and anytime the train went by, the children would have found a vantage point to wave at the engineers and caboose men.
Occasionally, wildlife will become part of a snowy scene. Typically, we'll see mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) or pronghorns (Antilocapra americana) when it snows, but have had a few sightings of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) and Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) as well, depending on our location. These mule deer were observed during a trip to Roxborough State Park near Denver a few years ago. There was an entire herd present, and I obtained numerous photos of their behavior during the time we watched them. I chose this one because the bright sunlight on the doe's hair contrasted with the shaded slope in the background. We weren't the only observers, so these two were a bit worried by people moving around nearby.
Of course, my snow 'daze' wouldn't be complete without a scene from Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. To be honest, I prefer photographing here when it's snowing because it
outlines the texture of the rock formations so well; that texture can be lost under other circumstances. On the day of this photo, the snow got gradually heavier as the day went on, and this flurry softened and obscured much of the landscape.
I'll be posting a few of these to my website for sale, and updating other images shortly. If you see something you like, please e-mail me and ask. I've been contacted a few times recently with requests to make my images available as NFTs (which, if I understand correctly, basically means I would be paid once for the high-resolution digital image, then it would then be put on a worldwide market and available to anyone, but I'd no longer be compensated for the downloads; however, if my understanding is not right, I'd really appreciate someone explaining it in layman's terms!). For now, I'm not making any of my imagery available as NFTs. Whether you'd like to update your living room with a statement piece or gallery wall, add something to dress up a bedroom, or brighten your office for spring, now is a great time to support an independent artist with your order. I'm still offering free shipping until the end of March 2025. I look forward to hearing from you!
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