Winter Storm Approaching Cathedral Rock

After a February storm, snow holds on Cathedral Rock's granite spires for perhaps an hour after sunrise before the warming releases it — and this image was made in that hour, in the first clear light after the storm, the spires white against a sky that had finally opened after days of clouds. The approach required arriving in the dark, before the storm's aftermath had fully settled, navigating a valley floor that had not yet been plowed. Made on medium format, the image holds the blue shadow on the shaded faces and the near-white of the sunlit snowfields in the same frame — without the compression that high-contrast winter scenes can impose. Cathedral Rock rises above the south wall of the valley; the spires are visible from most of the valley floor, but this angle finds them at their most precise.