In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

As a superfluous reminder, we — Melisa and me — used to live in Colorado, and I took a few photos while we lived there.

Today, I continue with photos from June of 2012. Depending on how you count them, Colorado has a few mountains (53 or 58) topping 14,000 feet in elevation (4,270 meters), and a few of them (two) have roads allowing people — people like me — to drive to their summits. Pikes Peak is one of them Fourteeners, and Mount Evans is the other and the subject of this post.

The original post for these photos is HERE. Notice the post has the coda “The Woods“. That’s because there are other posts covering other aspects of our visit. For now, I’m sharing the 37 photos from THIS Gallery. As one might gather from the title, this has to do with trees . . . trees made of wood.

Note: some are shared as large files so that interested readers can click and zoom in. Be patient since I don’t know how fast they‘ll load.

Until you get above the tree line (approximately 12,000 feet), there are few places where one can see distant scenery through the trees, but mostly you see trees.

I like trees . . . and I especially like the trunks of trees. I mean, I like leaves, too, but usually only at certain times of the year. Unless they are super-duper-interesting leaves.

Here we are at Echo Lake, just about a half mile from the Mount Evans Scenic Byway, which would lead us to the summit . . . I saw a few of interesting trunks, but only one was photographed to represent them all, and that’s the one in the above photo.

As we headed up to the peak, and nearing the tree line (past which no trees grow), we came to the Mt. Goliath Natural Area. From the site:

Located within the Mount Evans Recreation Area, the Mount Goliath Research Natural Area contains 160 acres set aside for the protection, study, interpretation, and enjoyment of the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine. The Dos Chappell Nature Center contains excellent exhibits that interpret how living things adapt to the harsh environments of the sub-alpine and alpine tundra. The main attraction is the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine tree. These trees are 700 to 1,600 years old, making them some of the oldest tree species in the world.

I was especially taken with the leaning trunk on the right of the above image . . .

It evoked an image of an Ent in an uncharacteristic hurry. Of course, I did a treatment of it . . .

Here, you can see the extension of its hip . . .

But, the local attraction is Bristlecone Pines.

Their trunks have a lot of texture and definition, and their shapes could be called ‘animated’ there are reasons for it, which you can read here:

Even when battered by the weather, burned in fires, or struck by lightning, they provide interesting textures and shapes; a feast for the eyes, they are.

Yes, one can interpret their contorted shapes as one would passing clouds . . .

. . . but their colors also capture one’s attention. . .

The roots of this toppled giant provide lots of opportunities for a fertile imagination.

Here’s the other side of the above . . . the Sun-bleached side.

See, not that many photos, and here’s the slideshow for the gallery. If you prefer, you can just visit the gallery by clicking on the link I provided above.

Note: the transition is set to 2sec, but — if you move the cursor anywhere within the photo — you’ll see a pause button on the lower left, and, once paused, you can use the left and right arrows on both sides of the photo to navigate the slideshow. This is especially useful because I included the captions.

If you click anywhere in the photo instead of the pause button, you’ll exit the slideshow and find yourself in SmugMug. You can then scroll through the photos or interact in other ways.

Slideshow of Mount Evans — The Woods Gallery — (37 photos)

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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