Douglas-fir Forest After Winter Snowstorm, Poudre River Canyon, Colorado
This photograph of Douglas-fir, heavily laden with a fresh snowfall and lit up by mid-morning sunshine, was taken very near where I once lived in Colorado.
The canyon of which I was a temporary resident was the Poudre, or more formally the Cache La Poudre River canyon, named by French Canadian fur trappers who had stored (cached) a supply of gunpowder and shot somewhere near the mouth of this watershed so that they could continue their travels with a lighter load, way back in the early 1800's or so.
I was a young buck of a forester, only a year out of college, and I decided to rent a small cabin in the mountains instead of living down in Fort Collins. It was a long and winding commute down and back up the canyon each work day, but what a treat. Craggy canyon walls with Ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir and aspen forests strewn around them, the rushing, cold, clear Poudre River on its way from the high country to the plains below. Not bad.
On this particular morning, I woke up to a heavy fresh spring snow from a storm that had hit the previous night, after which it had moved on. It left the following day perfectly clear, cold, and sunny.
The Douglas-fir trees on a nearby north facing slope were heavily weighted down with snow, which lit up when the sun came over the surrounding ridges. The foliage and branches beneath the snow warmed, causing it to fall to the ground in soft thumps. Hiking around, I started to slip in the "ice cream" snow conditions: wet, heavy, melting snow.
Photo location: Cache La Poudre River Canyon, Larimer County, Colorado.
