Wheeler Geologic Area

Author's Comments

The road in is the first thing you have to make peace with. Fourteen miles of teeth-rattling 4WD that takes most of a day, or a fourteen mile hike across high country that takes longer. Either way, Wheeler asks something of you before it shows you anything, and I think that is part of why the place still feels the way it does. It was nominated as a national monument once, back when monuments were easier to make. The designation never quite took, and what might have become a busy roadside stop instead became one of the strangest and quietest landscapes in Colorado. Volcanic tuff weathered over millions of years into pale spires and hoodoos, white and faintly pink, set against the dark green of the spruce forest behind them. The contrast does most of the work. In late July, at golden hour, the formations go almost luminous, and the surrounding wilderness reads nearly black by comparison. I have been twice. Both times I had the place almost entirely to myself, which is not something I can say about anywhere else in the state at this kind of geologic scale. The first visit I shot wide, trying to make sense of the whole amphitheater. The second I worked closer, looking at the way single pinnacles caught light against shadow, the textures in the tuff, the small details that get lost in the wider frames. Bring water. Bring more than you think. There is nothing out here, and that is exactly the point.

Gallery