The Artful Engineer

Alamosa, Colorado, sits in the middle of the vast 8,000-square-mile San Luis Valley. The valley floor is at an elevation of over 7,500′ and is surrounded by mountain ranges that feature 14,000′ peaks. The valley is primarily agricultural—lots of ranching and farming—and there is a fair amount of open space, as is pretty clear in the image above. One of those distant peaks is San Luis Peak (14,022′) and on the right hand edge of the frame is the beginning of the Great Sand Dunes of the eponymous National Park. There is a lot more to see in this valley than the one tree I found above.

In the southern part of the valley sit the San Luis Hills. I liked the rock outcroppings above, in particular, and I also like the subtle warm colors in the foreground grasses and brush. It was late enough in the day that the light was pleasantly directional and warm, but certainly not to be point of being dramatic. It would probably benefit from a little more post-processing love than I have given it—some dodging and burning would undoubtedly liven it up a bit.

The headwaters of the Rio Grande are west of the San Luis Valley. Once it reaches the valley, it flows through Alamosa (likely the reason that Alamosa is where it is, of course) then turns south towards New Mexico. Eventually, it forms the border between Texas and Mexico. We explored a beautiful little stretch of the river as it flowed through a shallow canyon:

The fallish-colors in the foliage and the exposed dark, volcanic rock were a beautiful combination. The rocks themselves were also covered in lichen, which I always appreciate:

This would definitely be an interesting place to revisit at other times of year: spring is an obvious choice, since I am sure there would be lots of wildflowers, but I think winter could be fun too, with black rocks and white snow. It’s not that difficult to get to, but I’m not sure that I want to cross the bridge in my truck if it was covered in ice and snow. (It’s one of those bridges where there are planks along the top of the bridge decking that make a two-track setup that you should really keep your wheels on, which might be tricky if any ice was in the mix.) So, I would need to make sure that I approached this spot from the side of the river that I think I would most want to be on in case the bridge itself was icy. Fortunately, if you plan ahead, approaching from either the east or west is possible.

Returning to the northern end of the valley, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the eastern side also reach 14,000′ (with an abundance of peaks over 13,000′, too) so they catch the late-day color beautifully. Unfortunately, in the image above, I was about 15 miles away on an east-west road which made it hard to properly feature them. So instead I focused on the spindly bleached plant in the foreground and just left the mountains in the background as part of the supporting cast. Without the white plant, this image falls apart, but as it is I think it stands out enough to make this image work. The barbed-wire fence is perilously close to leading the eye off the left side of the image, but the dark clump of trees seems to help stop that from happening, at which point you notice the colorful mountains, and all is well. Despite being at f/11, the depth of field is pretty much limited to the bottom right quadrant of the image, which also helps keep the viewer in the image. Perhaps surprisingly, I think having the colorful distant mountains sharp would hurt this image, not help it.

There are north-south roads in the area, too, which should give some opportunities to better feature those mountains on a future trip.

As I explored the northwestern part of the valley late in the day, I found a number of corrugated water tanks next to the road. With the sunset colors peaking through the rain and clouds, the sky was a lovely combination of pastel pinks and purples, all of which was picked up by reflections on the tank itself. I have quite a few variations of the above image: some with the whole tank in silhouette, some with two tanks, some showing the gap between two adjacent tanks. There were lots of choices, and most of them work.

Overall, I am very happy with our trip to Alamosa and the surrounding valley. I definitely did not do a thorough job of it—Great Sand Dunes National Park, in particular, was unjustly short-changed—but as I mentioned earlier, this valley is over 8,000 square miles and even when based-camped right in the center, it is easy to drive hundreds of miles in one day of exploring. There are also lots of little gems scattered around and you never know when you are going to bump into one of them. Next week’s post is not about this valley, per se, but I will feature a couple images to illustrate what I mean.

This is definitely on my (over-long) list of places to return to. Especially, when you consider that at the right time of year the sandhill cranes migrate through this valley on their way to and from wintering grounds in Arizona and New Mexico.

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