An excerpt from Sketchbook Traveler: Southwest. Schiffer Publishing. September 27, 2022. Click on the image below for a look inside the book:
Bachelor Mountain above Creede, Colorado from below Wagon Wheel Gap Journal-painting 3.5 x 10.5 inches. October 17, 2019
North of Del Norte Colorado is the La Garita caldera. Its massive eruption during the Cenozoic era dumped vast quantities of ash and debris across the surrounding terrain. Twenty-five-million years of erosion have created rocky spires and other picturesque formations located within the Wheeler Geological Area managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Similar formations extending to the west include Bachelor Mountain, which rises above the village of Creede, Colorado. During the 1880s, silver mines fueled a booming community. Like many mining-camps Creede became a den of iniquity, infested by organized crime. Silver mining declined in the wake of the Panic of 1893. Ranching continued in the bottomlands south and west of Creede. Mining survived on Lead, Zinc and Copper. Dude ranches and fly-fishing camps along the headwaters of Rio Grande today contribute to the local economy. Driving north from del Norte past South Fork, Colorado Highway 149 ascends the Rio Grande through a deep defile, framing the distant distinctive mass of Bachelor Mountain—an outlier of the Wheeler formations ten miles to the east. Readers wondering why I did not hike to the ridge-line for a better view, the first rule of traveling in wilderness areas is never to do it alone. Leaving the car on a wide shoulder above the river, I located this prospect looking northwest from 37.7592 x -106.7813. Framed by high wooded ridged on both sides, Bachelor Mountain was reminiscent of Titian’s Dolomites, Thomas Moran’s Mount of the Holy Cross and Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire.
Now available: Sketchbook Traveler Southwest. Schiffer Publishing. September 27, 2022
Click on the image below to learn about Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley
