Many Parks Curve Overlook

Author's Comments

The name is honest. From the pullout you can count them - Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, Beaver Meadows - the wide flat-bottomed valleys the glaciers left behind, laid out in front of you like a lesson in geology made visible. The overlook faces east, which is the thing to know. Sunrise here in late September, when the aspens in the valleys below have gone gold and the first light comes over the foothills, is the photograph worth setting an alarm for. The valleys hold mist in the early hours. The mist burns off slowly, and there is a window of maybe twenty minutes where the floors of the parks read soft and blue while the ridges above them catch warm light. I will be honest that this is not the most dramatic stop on Trail Ridge Road. The higher pullouts have more sky, more tundra, more of that thin-air strangeness that the road is famous for. But Many Parks earns its place by what it shows you about the shape of the land. You are looking at the work of ice. The valleys are wide because something enormous moved through them, and from this height the geometry of that movement is unmistakable. Bring a wide lens. Arrive before the lot fills, which in summer means before nine. And give yourself time to sit with the interpretive signs before you raise the camera. The photograph improves when you understand what you are looking at.

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