More Ups and Downs - Mount Lemmon in the Snow

I felt a little guilty that I didn't have any downward-looking shots last night in my entry for the Round Robin Challenge: Look Up/Look Down. So on Saturday afternoon around 4 PM I set off with the dogs for Mount Lemmon and the Catalina Highway. After all, on a mountain road there's plenty so see, both looking up and looking down. Besides, it was another chance to try to get the dogs someplace there was snow, and tp see how they would react! (More on that in the next entry.)

From Mount Lemmon Highway

What I found is that you can look down (and more to the point, aim your camera downward) at almost any pullout or vista point, but the photo won't necessarily make it obvious that what it sees is below you. The guy in this first shot, for example, is probably about thirty feet below me as well as in front of me. Not easy to tell that, is it? This was taken at Molino Canyon Vista.



And here's the view down to Molino Creek.



By the time we reached the Bear Wallow/Bear Canyon area, there was a little snow at the side of the road, accompanied by signs warning of ice. Patches of highway were wet with runoff from melted snow. At Windy Point, there was a fair amount of snow, and a mini-pond of runoff at the edge of the parking lot. Here we are looking up at the distinctive rock formation that's one of my favorite Windy Point landmarks.



Late afternoon shadows and the reflection of snow created problems with some of my photos, with the upper parts of them overexposed. But here is a view down to another part of the same road - whether ahead or behind I'[m not quite sure.



At San Pedro Vista the dogs and I had to climb a not-fully-compacted snow bank to get to the view downward.



There were lots of little cataracts on both sides of the road, created by runoff from melting snow. This one was at Marshall Gulch, the snowed-in picnic area just past Summerhaven at the top of Mount Lemmon.



Here's a view down to the creek that runs along the road at Marshall Gulch.



Another view downward, mostly, at Windy Point at sunset.



Looking down toward the city at dusk.

Karen