After a day of rain, there was a brief respite in the late afternoon on Friday at American Basin. Hoping for a show, Liz Godfrey VanDenzen and I sat in field surrounded by a riot of color (her term-she named this picture): indian paintbrush, alpine bistort, sneezeweed and alpine buttercup. Indeed, we got our show, as fog descended into American Basin about an hour before sunset. Within 10-minutes of this shot, the entire upper basin was lost in fog for the remainder of the day.
On Saturday morning, we woke up really early and hiked to to Sloan Lake at 13,000', at the very top of American Basin. We found the lake still partially covered in ice. Liz made some oatmeal, which was a welcome warm breakfast on a cold alpine morning. This is one of our favorite places on earth to watch the sunrise and even with the lack of clouds, it did not disappoint. We had been worried that we might get skunked given the heavy fog that had descended the night before, but it turned out to be a perfectly clear morning.
The alpenglow on two prominent unnamed peaks reflects into the shallows of a lake deep in the heart of the lesser-visited San Juans.
