Molas Pass Overlook

Author's Comments

Eleven thousand feet feels like a different country. The air is thinner, the light is harder, and the Grenadier Range stands across the Animas valley like a wall of broken teeth, sharp in a way that lower mountains never quite are. I have stopped at Molas Pass a dozen times and the overlook itself does its job, but the photograph I keep chasing is not at the pullout. It is down at the lake. A short walk from the campground brings you to the shore, and on a still morning in late August or early September the reflection is almost too clean to believe. The Grenadiers on water. The peaks doubled. The fireweed gone to seed at the edge of the frame. You want to be there before the wind comes up, which usually means before seven, sometimes earlier. The clouds are the other reason to come. Afternoon storms build over the San Juans almost every summer day, and from this elevation you watch them form rather than arrive. The light underneath those clouds, when a shaft breaks through and lands on a single ridge across the valley, is the kind of light you cannot plan for. You can only be there when it happens. Fall narrows the window. The aspens below the pass turn in the last week of September, and the contrast between gold valley and gray-blue stone above is the photograph that earns the drive over Red Mountain. Bring a wide lens for the panorama and something longer for the peaks themselves. The Grenadiers reward a tighter compression than most people give them.

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