Fall 2022 in SW Colorado

Day 2

Started the day at Crystal Lake. Colorful Colorado Collective was there with a workshop going on. It was nice to see that they appeared to have a morning session full of participants. There was also another workshop going on a few feet down the lake. Popular spot. I felt a cold chill in the air. The breeze was up a bit unfortunately making ripples on the water. In addition to there being no early morning reflections to speak of at the moment, the skies began acting up over the S-curves. When I say “acting up,” I mean that in a positive way. We bailed on the lake due to it being breezy and headed for the curves. If you are signed up to my email list, you will have already seen this morning's image.

I really couldn’t complain about the decision to leave the lake and head to the curves. We decided on the sure bet composition vs gambling on the lake and the breeze eventually calming down. After shooting the curves, we headed to Silverton for some interwebs and coffee.

We pulled into the Coffee Bear, things seemed a bit different than I remembered on a previous trip back in 2008. A lot can change in the couple of years since I’d been in town. Hard to tell if anything really changed or if my memory was just wrong. After all, I have slept since then. ;-) Regardless, the burrito and the coffee were both good and I do recommend the place.

After breakfast, we went in search of the mythical GTO with the tree growing through it. Tho, there is some debate of whether it is a GTO or a Lemans. What do you think? I’m leaning Lemans.

After an exhausting search, we found it directly under our noses. Captain Colorado and I must've shot the thing from every angle possible. I wonder how it got here?

Anyhoo, after shooting the assumed Pontiac, we headed towards Crystal Lake of Ophir Pass. We hiked up to it and did a bit of planning for what we thought would be good morning shots.

It would seem that some night sky photography might be nice here. Hmmm…

After scoping out the lake, we hiked back down and quickly found ourselves shooting towards sunset as the sun was beaming its way through the clouds and cutting through between the peaks of the mountains down below.

Neither Captain Colorado nor myself were overly impressed with Crystal Lake. With that, we decided to hike the backside of Columbine Lake in the morning vs doing Crystal again. It looked like it’d be a tough climb. A story for another day…