I traveled the Wyoming Range and Upper Green River Basin in Wyoming's Yellowstone Region last week. I was making images of oil and gas fields and sought out a place known as the Upper Hoback - a roadless area in the Wyoming Range that is proposed for a massive natural gas drilling operation. I flew over the site with LightHawk, then hiked here to get a sense of place and try to reckon with a plan to drill and destroy a fragile, important link in the Yellowstone ecosystem. I watched the sunset and the tundra turn to cinammon honey, storm clouds over the Wind River Range gathering magenta light before fading to gray, then black. There were no signs of human presence, save for a cairn on the summit. Conservationists across the region are contesting the gas leases. For more information, please contact www.wyomingrange.org and www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org. The USFS will make their decision whether to permit drilling very soon.
We just wrapped up a trip to the South Colony Lakes area in the Sangre De Cristo Wilderness. Marla, Annie, Mike and Chris (and me) all successfully climbed Crestone Needle, 14,191' and Humboldt Peak, 14,064'. Better still, our adventuresome crew agreed to a 3:30 a.m. start in order to reach Humboldt's summit by sunrise. We were treated to an awesome cloud spectacle with valley fog wrapping around the giant peaks. After making this image, we met Mark, the guy in the bottom of the frame and an accomplished mountaineer from New Mexico. We hiked out together and Mark shared a ton of information from his many 14'er climbs. Congratulations to our group and thanks to Mark for helping to make the day memorable!
I just returned from a trip to Gunnison and Black Canyon of The Gunnison National Park for my Sage Spirit project. I wasn't prepared for the exhilaration of standing on the rim of a 2,700 foot deep canyon! It is deep, narrow and a knee-shaking experience to stand on the north rim of this lightly visited National Park. This image also gives a sense of the diversity on the sage steppe of the American West. You wouldn't even know a canyon is here from the sage flat uplands 1/2 mile away.
