Redcloud and Sunshine

Redcloud Peak, Colorado

On Tuesday my buddy Chris and my friends’ dog Lily and I hiked two fourteeners in the San Juans – Redcloud and Sunshine Peaks. Nothing too spectacular about these mountains, just a long stroll up two massive San Juan rock piles. One cool thing, actually, about Redcloud Peak is its colorful bands of red, orange, and yellow rocks. I spent quite a bit of time up there taking abstract photos of these colors; perhaps I’ll post a small collection of these another time. But for now, here’s a few photos from the hike. The one above is Redcloud Peak, as seen from its neighbor Sunshine.

More photos below!

Redcloud Peak panorama
[+] Click to view much larger!

Here’s a 3-shot panorama from near the summit of Redcloud. I love how the Jupiter-esque side of Redcloud slopes down on a perfectly smooth angle. The valley at left goes towards Cinnamon Pass and American Basin.

dog on summit

Lily poses for a photo at 14,037 feet.

View from Redcloud Peak

Interesting shapes and colors in the mountains around there. In the distance is the pyramid shape of Wetterhorn Peak, another fourteener.

11 thoughts on “Redcloud and Sunshine

  1. Jack, you’re making me homesick for my old stomping grounds. Nice work, great color. And that’s one cool puppy dog.

  2. I love all of these…great job on focusing on the abstract side of things. This is a great area for that. When I climbed these in June two years ago you would have thought it was winter. Needless to say, I didn’t see all this red, but I did see a lot of white.

    1. I took a lot of more abstract photos which I haven’t posted here. These are the more landscape-ish ones which have mountains and horizons. Anyhow, I would love to return here someday in the spring with my snowboard; looks like great potential ski terrain in these mountains!

  3. Totally martian Jack! The red palette and the soft colors are so warm and look great.
    You know, the last photo got me thinking about a recurrent problem I face when trying to render a view from the summit and it’s the lack of FG elements. When I view it here on your blog it looks just great, but when I face the same situation I tend to have that strange mental block- the urge to just go ahead and stick a rock on the FG. Really must be a psychological matter of getting used to repeat a proven (fg elements with something great behind) comp over and over…..

    1. Good point, Nicolas. Yeah, in that photo I wanted to focus the attention on the abstract shapes and colors of that mountain, so a wider angle with foreground wouldn’t really help with that. I know what you mean though, I too often have that tendency to look for the formula foreground + background. But foreground doesn’t always help a photo. I actually did take a lot of photos that day with really strong foreground colors/lines, but when I look at the images on the computer monitor, they just seem like a whole lot of rocks… not as interesting as I thought they’d be.

  4. Wow, who needs low-angle light? These are beautiful, probably the best I’ve seen from the area. The sweep in the pano is really exhilarating (and definitely lends itself to ski/board fantasies)!

    1. Thanks Jackson! Yeah it was really nice to forego the sunrise light and start the hike at a reasonable hour, for a change. Got to love it when the mountains provide their own colors!

  5. Dude!
    Amazing photos as always, but the current site BACKGROUND makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a dark forest!
    Awesome!

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