Ridgway State Park - Dallas Creek Arm

Author's Comments

The Dallas Creek arm asks for stillness, and stillness is not always what it gives you. I have stood on the shore at first light in late September with the cottonwoods going gold behind me and watched the reservoir surface ripple just enough to break Sneffels into a hundred soft pieces. That is the gamble of a reflection shot in this country. The wind comes down off the range early, and the window between true calm and the first stir of morning air can be twenty minutes or it can be five. When it works, it is one of the better mountain reflections in Colorado. Sneffels at 14,150 feet anchors the ridge, and the rest of the range steps away from it in that distinctive serrated line that gives the San Juans their character. The Pa-Co-Chu-Puk area is where I set up. The angle there gives you the full sweep of the range with enough water in the foreground to do real work, and the cottonwoods along the shore frame the composition without crowding it. Fall is the season I keep returning for. Early summer brings higher water but the cottonwoods are just green, and green does not carry the image the way gold does against blue mountain shadow. October mornings, frost on the grass, the range still holding the last of its summer snow in the high couloirs. Golden hour here is short and earned. Be on the shore before the light arrives, not after. The reservoir does not wait, and neither does the wind.

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