The first snow dusts the shadowed slopes of central Colorado's Rocky Mountains in early autumn, portending the changing seasons. When I visited this incredible alpine valley in the heart of the mountain range, the aspen trees had begun to turn and would reach full color in a couple of weeks.
The valley where I took this photograph and the mountains surrounding it were formed from an ancestral mountain range's metamorphosed and uplifted sediment. More recently, earth slides blocked Maroon Creek, which drains this basin, creating a shallow lake and a large meadow bounded by 14,000-foot summits. Extraordinarily steep, these photogenic peaks are temporary features in the broader sweep of geologic time. Built of friable mudstone, the mountain's flanks quickly crumble, sending rocks tumbling and reverberating down scree slopes, echoing across the valley.
Long-lived spruce forests are replaced by aspens when a landscape is decimated by fire, old age, or, as here, avalanches. Aspens proliferate, are fire-resistant, and have short lifespans. They precede the next generation of spruce, which will ultimately replace them a century or two later.
I remember the cluttered piles of broken and uprooted trees after a 1989 avalanche. In this photograph, taken a few years later, the line of remaining aspens has survived. In the background, budding aspens fill the avalanche's path. A few of the older snapped aspen trunks litter the foreground. The standing aspens may have been small enough to bend rather than break during the avalanche or, situated above the chute, may have been missed by the torrent.
Location research and commentary by James Baker.