Chasing Light: San Juan sojourn

Mt. Sneffels
A classic Colorado view — Mt. Sneffels, in the San Juans, from the Dallas Divide

 
A couple of weeks ago, my 16-year-old son and I trekked to the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado to interview Chris Landry, director of the Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies in Silverton as part of the crowdfunded Rocky Mountain climate ranger journalism project. After spending most of the day with Landry talking about dust-on-snow and other long-term mountain climate research projects, we headed over some of the high San Juan passes on the return trip to Summit County, never missing an opportunity to stop and snap a few shots, and to check out several disc golf courses along the way.

I wasn’t aiming to shoot fine art landscape prints on this trip. The picture-taking was more along the lines of photojournalism, meant to illustrate a series of stories on how global warming is affecting the Rocky Mountains. That means no tripod and no waiting around for the perfect light. But as picturesque as the San Juans are, even those roadside snapshots came out reasonably well.