Vail Mountain Gore Range Overlook

Author's Comments

The gondola does most of the work, and I am usually grateful for that. Ten thousand feet arrives without the usual cost, and you step off into thin air and a meadow that in late July is doing something I have never quite gotten over - paintbrush and lupine and yarrow all going at once, and the Gore Range standing behind it like a row of broken teeth against the sky. The ridgeline is the photograph. That sawtooth profile runs across the northern horizon and the light reads it differently every hour, but afternoon is when the shadows deepen between the peaks and the range stops looking like a postcard and starts looking like geology. Earlier in the day the light is too flat and the peaks go two-dimensional. Wait. Let the sun move west and watch the western faces go gold while the couloirs stay blue. I tend to work the foreground hard up here. The wildflowers want to be in the frame, and a wide lens low to the ground will give you meadow and mountain in the same exposure, which is the photograph that justifies the gondola ticket. A longer lens compresses the range into something more abstract and is worth carrying for the same reason. Mind the last car down. I have cut it close more than once, watching light I did not want to leave, and the walk off the mountain is long if you miss it. Bring a layer. The summit runs cold even when the village below is in shorts.

Gallery