Never Summer Range, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Never Summer Range, Clearing Storm,
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

The Never Summer mountain range in the northern Colorado Rocky Mountains has a most intriguing name.

Never summer? Of course, it's very high and cold, and the highest peaks extend far above treeline, along the North American Continental Divide. There are many such high and wild places in the Rocky Mountains, the Cascade Mountains, the Olympic Mountains, and of course Canada and Alaska. Still, few have captured my imagination in quite the same way as the Never Summers. After several rugged dayhikes and backpacking trips there, my fondess only grows stronger. The photographs I've made there reinforce both the memories and the appreciation.

This photograph was made in 1979 on 4x5 black and white sheet film. It was a raw, cold, sleeting early summer day up on the Continental Divide. Exhilarating, really.

I made only one exposure of this scene, which has amazed me ever since. Why not at least a second one, in case the first negative would become damaged? All I can figure is that I was either so sure of my technique at the time (a poor assumption), or else I was eager to continue on with the search for ever more images, which would have been my usual inclination, even in a situation such as this. Sometimes you can't appreciate the moment fully until you can step back and take it in from afar. The moment almost lost. As Edward Abbey wrote, "Acting on impulse, as planned."

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