My son and DIL left early this morning to drive back to their home in the Denver area, since both had to report back to work on Monday. They would return the following Friday, so I would be on my own until then.
I set out driving on FSR 380, hoping to find another good campsite farther to the west and stopping at opportune times to shoot a few photographs.
My first stop this morning was at the end of FSR 243, where I had seen indications of waterfalls or large stream cascades on a creek that crosses at the end of this road.
The image above is a screen shot taken from Google Earth of the end of FSR 243 and the stream, which a newer version of Google Earth labels Treasure Creek. There was a strong water flow along this stream at the time this satellite image was taken. There was not so much water flowing, when I explored this area and maybe had the water flow been much less, when the satellite image was made, I might not have paid it much attention.
There is an official trail into a wilderness area that starts on the south side of the roadway, but no trail to the north, which is the way I wanted to explore. There was a faint trace of a trail, created by hunters and their horses, on the northwestern edge of the creek. So I hiked along that side of the creek. The climb was steep and not knowing what I would find, I decide to travel light with no camera gear and no backpack. I took one small bottle of water, figuring I would not travel very far from my vehicle.
I soon saw that the creek would be picturesque in many places, but getting to the best vantage points for photographing the creek would be challenging due to the steepness of the gully in which the creek ran and numerous back and forth creek crossings, balancing on rocks and/or logs. I decided that I should make many scouting iPhone photos to be sure I captured some of this scenery, since I soon convinced myself that coming back with heavy camera gear, a tripod and backpack might not be safe to do alone and might be more strenuous of an undertaking than I wanted to do.
This stream presented so many compositional possibilities that I spent a considerable amount of time checking out many little details and points of interest along it. I also extracted some of the flowing water details to make abstracts with the light refracting into rainbow like colors and other highlights.
I made so many images along this stream that even presenting a selected subset of them will require multiple blog post to avoid overwhelming readers of this blog.
The moss covered rocks ranged from deep green to a golden yellow with the sunlight bring out the colors even in late morning; although, the iPhone does not handle strong light contrast well, so some portions of the images have blown out pixels. One would have to be there in person to really appreciate the magical feeling created by the sound and color along this stream.
Along the ridge above the creek I found a few tree stumps or portions of fallen, weathered trees with interesting texture and patterns.
After working my way slowly along the creek for awhile, I saw a wispy waterfall in the distance.
Encouraged by this sight, I was determined to continue this journey for awhile longer.
More on that in subsequent posts.
Thanks for following and be safe,
Ken