“These summer storms always blow through, just wait and see.”
A few weeks back, my friend Elli and I made a plan to meet up in the mountains for a sunset photography mission without even considering what the weather might do. I never even opened the weather app until 6pm when I walked outside and dark clouds had rolled in over evergreen. Most summers, these storms last 45 minutes and move on, so I encouraged @elliexplores to come on up. We started driving up the scenic byway to Mt Evans and stopped along the way to photograph a field full of wildflowers that we’re doing their best to bring some cheer to the gloomy weather. Elli stepped right over what looked like a stick in the middle of the trail, but was to my surprise a severed deer leg. Elli was as convinced it was an omen, but I couldn’t tell you if it was a good or bad one. I can certainly agree it was ominous.
We drove on, fog creeping through the trees and across the road, socking us in as climbed. “Oh this is just an inversion layer, we’ll break out of this once we can get a little higher,” I thought to myself. But the further we drove, the denser the fog got, until our visibility was reduced to the length of two yellow lines on the road. Twenty-five feet at best. Elli gripped the door as we drove around the hairpin turns, astounded at the lack of guard rails on the mountain road. I’m not sure if it was a good thing or bad thing that the clouds made it impossible to see how far the drop off was on the right side. For all we knew, we had already died and were stuck in purgatory. Headlights surprised us, only breaking through the fog 3 seconds before the incoming car passed us, shattering the illusion. At least we weren’t alone up here.
A few more switchbacks and I gave up, there was no way we would be coming out on top of this weather, even if we made it all the way up to 14,000ft. I parked the car at the nearest pullout and we hopped out for a few photos of basically nothing before heading back to the safety and visibility of the lowlands. I didn’t make many photos but it made for one hell of a memorable adventure regardless.
