Blizzard at the Maroon Bells

My plan had been to drive from Great Sand Dunes NP up to the Snowy Range. But Mother Nature did not plan the seasons on my vacation schedule. Turns out the Snowys were living up to their name and WyoDOT had already closed the road through the mountains.

Darn.

Ok, so now to reroute. I took a break, got out the map and a Dublin DP from the cooler to ponder for a moment. A good DP helps with that and a Dublin DP is about as good as it gets, but I digress....

Decided to drive over Independence Pass and then to Maroon Bells. I always thought that the Bells were overdone, heck there is even a bus stop to haul in the tourists.

But it looked promising for snow and maybe a little fall color hanging around.

I got there to find not only snow, but it was almost whiteout blizzard. The Bells were not out. The fall color was 98% gone. That might be generous on my part.

But the blizzard more than made up for it! Limited visibility with snow billowing in. It was not touristy at all. It was spetacular!

It reminded me of being in the Misty Mountains. The peaks I could see were hazy in the snow and the whole place took on a magical far away look.

And I had it all to myself!

I set to making a few images. Then wipe the snow from the camera as it was really coming down.

I stayed until dark photographing, hoping the mountain might pop out but there was just the snow. It didn't matter as this was so good I just enjoyed the time and the view.