Jeanne and I spent yesterday in the thin air of the Colorado mountains. The temp was 99F/38C in the city (Denver) and 50F/10C at the top of Mt Evans. It is 14,000 feet/4.000m above sea level. It started to sleet/slush/rain when we were at the top. It's the monsoon season, so you have to go early. We'll leave the studio next Saturday morning at 0600. That will give us several good hours of making photographs.
The place is stunning and mind boggling all at once. We drove the longest/highest paved road in North America to get there. The drive was fun! A lot of it looks like what I would imagine some distant planet might resemble. Very few plants or animals can survive at that elevation - no trees - only small plants and grass. It's brutal! Jeanne and I were climbing over over some huge rocks to do some photos and I was instantly winded. There's not much oxygen at 14,000 feet. It freaked me out a little bit. I need to remember to move slower next Saturday.
The Collodion was thicker and dried faster up there. The UV was off of the charts. I was making exposures of one to three seconds with my lens stopped down to f/7 and f/22 respectively. My face got sunburned too. I thought living at 5,200 ft was intense, at 11,000 and 14,000 the sun seems overwhelming. It would be nice to work with f/32 and f/64 that way, you could do several second exposures and make some really nice photographs. One more thing, I was using old Collodion, too. I'm not sure you could get an exposure there with new Collodion unless you had a shutter. Stop action Collodion photography at 14,000 feet!
It costs $10 to enter - well worth every penny!
Quinn stunned at the beauty of Squaw Pass - 11,500 ft. photo by Jeanne Jacobson. 
Looking over Squaw Pass - 11,500 ft - unbelievably beautiful.
On the other side - Squaw Pass, 11,500 ft.
If you look close, you can see the mountain sheep eating at the patches of grass and relaxing as an (almost) snow/sleet storm comes in - it feels like Mars at the top.
Quinn and Jeanne at the top of Mount Evans!! Quick, get us some oxygen!!
Colorado has some Bristlecones that are almost 2000 years old! The Bristlecone pine tree is the oldest single living organism on earth. It has the ability to live up to 5000 years. This is in Goliath Park.
