Engineer Pass
Lake City, CO
Engineer Pass is a 12,800-foot alpine pass connecting Lake City to Ouray and Silverton via a historic mining road. The summit offers 360-degree views of the San Juan Mountains including Uncompahgre Peak and Wetterhorn Peak. Ruins of the Frank Hough Mine and other historic mining structures are scattered along the route.
Photography Guide
- Best Time
- morning
- Crowds
- Quiet
- Shot Types
- widelandscapedetail
- Best Seasons
- summer
Author's Comments
Twelve thousand eight hundred feet does something to the air. It thins and clarifies and the color of the sky goes a deeper blue than it has any right to, and the San Juans open around you in every direction at once. Engineer Pass is not a place you arrive at casually. The road demands a real four wheel drive and a tolerance for narrow shelves above long drops, and the traverse from Lake City to Ouray is a full day even when nothing goes wrong. But the summit. The summit is one of those places where I find myself just standing for a while before I bother lifting the camera. Uncompahgre to one side, Wetterhorn to the other, ridgelines in every direction softened by the haze of distance. July mornings are the window. The afternoon thunderstorms build fast up here and you do not want to be on the exposed sections when they do, so I aim to be at the top by nine and back below treeline by one. The mining ruins are the other reason I come. The Frank Hough sits weathered into the slope like it grew there, and the detail work rewards a longer lens and a slow walk - the grain of old timber, rusted iron, the geometry of structures built by people who had no business being at this altitude and built anyway. The wide shots are the ones that travel well. The detail shots are the ones I keep. Crowds are not really a concern up here. The road filters them out. What you get instead is wind, light, and silence at a scale that takes some getting used to.
Gallery
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