Frozen Fog

Last Saturday I drove from Laramie to Silverthorne, CO to visit my nephew and his family who had come out from Florida to do some skiing. I went the back way, over the Snowies through North Park to Walden then to Kremmling. From there I followed the Blue River valley to Silverthorne. It's about a 3 hour or so trip depending on the weather, of course.

We have had much more snow this year than any year since we have lived out here
(2001). This became very apparent as I got up the grade to the top of the mountains. The cabins along the road had two or three feet of snow on their roofs. Very picturesque. I want to stop and take a couple of shots, but there was no place to pull over. I continued into North Park and into monochromatic splendor. Everything was frosted white from the effects of frozen fog. The thick rime frost was on every surface, weeds, wires, bushes and trees. The sun had broken through, but the frost had not started to melt. Every bend in the road, the crest of every hill brought a new picture just begging me to take it. But there was all that snow, it lay deep across the fields clear up to the road where the plows had left high berms right up to the edge of the road. No place to pull off and I couldn't stop in the middle of the road. All this beauty and now way to capture it to share.

When I got to Muddy Pass which is where you turn north to go to Steamboat and south to go to Kremmling, there was finally a turn lane where I could safely stop. Here's what I saw.



I missed many wonderful shots because there just was no safe way to stop. Those shots are in my head. But here is one more. There were pull outs that had been plowed by a lake.

Still, while looking at these pictures, I know the limitations of photography and what I have pictures of is not what I saw.