After shooting near Dallas Divide in the early morning of September 18, I stopped at a little coffee house in Ridgway for a cup of coffee and a breakfast taco, then topped off the fuel tank, since I planned to be in the mountains with no services for several days.
I then proceeded to Owl Creek Pass Road, aka County Road 8 and forest access road 858, when it enters the national forest. There are spur roads off of 858, along which are dispersed forest campsites. The campsites are free and available on a first come basis. The best sites are always popular, so it is best to find one before very late in the day. There are also several fee campgrounds near the Silvercreek Reservoir that are run by the National Forest Service. Those campsites are nestled in Aspens, have trash service, pit toilets and potable water available (no RV hookups at the campsites). There are also pit toilets near some of the dispersed camping areas.
Most of the dispersed campsites have fire pits constructed of local rocks and some even have free firewood stacked at the sites, which I did not take advantage of, not wanting to reek of smoke and having to tend to the fire late into an evening; even though, I would have really enjoyed a cheerful, crackling fire.
Owl Creek Pass Road is rated as an easy, maintained, 4-wheel drive road and usually drivable by an ordinary passenger vehicle. It is wide enough in most places for vehicles to pass and there are pull outs along the road, otherwise.
There was road maintenance (new gravel and grading) work going on over the lower portion of the forest road during my visit, which caused very little delay; but I did have to follow a grader over one stretch during one day on the road and shared the roadway with dump trucks a couple of times.
The road can be washboarded, which was the worst condition, other than mud after a rain, that I encountered. Most of the worst washboarding was on county road 8 prior to getting to the forest road.
The drive itself is quite scenic along all of the forest road and along the spur roads, which I explored, scouting for a good campsite that would allow for late afternoon and maybe even early morning photos without having to drive to another location. I was fortunate to find a very nice, secluded site with great view from the site and good photo opportunities within short walking distances from the site.
In fact my site was so good that a couple walked by as I was setting up the solar panels, came back by in a few minutes and hailed me. They asked how long I would be staying, since they wanted to bring friends up to camp and they said my site would be perfect. I told them that I anticipated only staying for the night and would then move on in search of another site. We chatted a bit. I learned that they had a place in Telluride and Tucson, Arizona, staying in Telluride in the summer and Arizona in the winter. They were intrigued by my camper vehicle, as most people are that see it, asking lots of questions about it.
After setting up the solar panels, I walked around near my selected campsite shooting scouting photos with my iPhone mid to late afternoon, checking locations which I thought would have favorable sunlight near sunset with interesting features to photograph.
All of the photos in this post are via an iPhone. I will follow up later with DSLR photos made at sunset at this location.
On the topic of iPhone and/or point and shoot cameras, one of my former work colleagues, an avid photographer and photographic mentor, has recently posted articles on National Parks Traveler about shooting with point and shoot cameras, including phone cameras. [Check out her webpage, you will like what you see and may not want to come back to my site afterwards : > )]. I sometimes forget that I have a fairly good point and shoot camera (iPhone) in my pocket; but I have been trying to get into the habit of using it more often to capture scenes for scouting, reminders and documentation, when getting out the DSLR is not practical.
Thanks for following and don’t forget to comment and/or critique the photos or blog writing.
Ken