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| Sunrise from Mt. Wilson |
Summits are magical places. Reaching the summit of a high peak gives me the exhilarating, humbling
and awe-inspiring experience of being a tiny speck on top of the world. To me, mountaineering is almost
a metaphor for the human condition. It embodies in concrete form the way we reach for the sky, yet can
only climb so high. In the spring of 2006, I began working on a series of images I hoped would capture
these complex emotions. Most photographs I'd seen that were taken on summits were, to be frank, rather
boring. How could that be, I thought, when the emotional experience of reaching the summit is so enthralling?
Then I thought about when those photos were taken: at noon, in midsummer, when the sun is as high in the sky as it
will be the entire year. Most summit photos taken at that time of day show distant, hazy peaks almost lost
in the white glare of the midday sun. In an attempt to give my images an impact that matched my emotional
experience, I decided to start shooting sunrise from the summits of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks.
I started with 14,433-foot Mt. Elbert, the highest mountain in Colorado, in mid-May of 2006, and immediately realized
that I had set myself an enormous task. My initial estimate that I could do all 54 Fourteeners in two years
if I worked hard at it quickly ran into reality. Camping on the summit is a poor option. Even
if I could carry all the necessary food, water, camping and camera gear up 3,000 or 4,000 vertical feet to the summit, I would
then be camped atop the tallest lightning rod in the vicinity and would be likely to wake up with a killer case of acute mountain
sickness ‒ if I could sleep at all. Instead of camping on the summit, I began climbing the peaks
in the dark, with only the wind and stars for company. To summit a Fourteener before sunrise, starting
from the road or a high camp, usually requires getting up at 1 am. With my 50th birthday looming
less than a year away, I found it difficult to recover from a night of lost sleep, followed by a strenuous climb, while camped
at altitude. Climbing one peak a day for several days in a row exacted a heavy toll.
But taking a rest day between climbs seemed like a waste of time, with summers so short, the list of peaks so long
and the pile of work back in the office so pressing. Faced with these challenges, I have done sunrise Fourteener
shoots in spurts, as time, energy, injuries and two back-to-back spinal surgeries have allowed.
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| Snowmass Mountain Panorama |
A huge project
like this could obviously be defined in any number of ways. Where do I start each ascent? How do I decide when I've
"done" a peak? Here's how I have defined this project. I start
each climb where the road stops. For two peaks -- Pikes Peak and Mt. Evans -- that means I drove to the top. For Fourteeners
in winter, that means parking where the plow stops. In some cases, such as Mt. Elbert and Mt. Yale in January and Uncompahgre
Peak in March, that meant starting as low as 9,300 feet. For the rest, I drove to the end of the four-wheel-drive
road -- or at least as far as a stock vehicle can safely go. And while I made it easy for myself in one respect -- driving
to the top of Evans and Pikes -- I made it harder in another. In several cases, it's straightforward to climb
two Fourteeners in a day. Grays and Torreys, Sunshine and Redcloud and Oxford and Belford are three of the most obvious
pairings. However, I decided that to "do" a peak meant being on the summit at either sunrise or sunset.
The best photo might not be taken at the almanac time of sunrise or sunset, but I had to be there at one of those times to
feel I'd done that peak. Climbing a second peak the same day and shooting a few photos two hours after sunrise wouldn't
count.
At the time of this writing, in December, 2011, I have done 41 shoots on 28 peaks. After five years
of effort, I'm now just over halfway. For a complete list, see below. Not all shoots
produced good images. Both my February and May, 2011, attempts on Mt. Princeton ended at 2:30 am just above timberline
in ferocious ground blizzards. During my first attempt on Quandary Peak in mid-May of 2008, I had the misfortune
of choosing a night that was so warm the snowpack never froze solidly. It had been a snowy spring, and
the snowpack still extended right down to the parking lot. I wasted so much time breaking trail on snowshoes
in bottomless depth hoar that I was still 200 feet below the summit at sunrise. To add to my frustration,
the sun rose into a massive cloud bank that killed any chance of interesting light. You can read about
my rematch with Quandary Peak in January, 2010, by clicking here. The photos I've chosen to show here are the closest
I've come so far to capturing the joy, excitement and wonder of climbing a Fourteener.
Although I hope to complete all 54 peaks someday, the goal was never to simply tick them off. Rather, the goal
is to come back with outstanding images, and that means carefully considering composition, sunrise and sunset angles, best
time of year, etc. Regardless of how many peaks I eventually do, I cherish each opportunity I can create to climb
another Fourteener in the dark and shoot sunrise from the summit. At 54, with a history of serious spinal problems,
I am acutely aware that I will not be able to do these shoots forever.
I've arranged the thumbnails below in the order in which I did the shoots. To read a chronological
account of this project, please start by clicking the image in the top left corner of the thumbnail array and proceed left
to right in rows as if reading a book. Clicking a thumbnail will open a new page with more information
about the image as well as a larger version. You can also proceed chronologically through these stories
by clicking on the link at the bottom of each full-length image description. To
purchase a print of any of these images, please visit my product catalog. To go directly to the product page for any of these
images, please click on the thumbnail below, then select a link from the choices at the bottom of the page that
opens.
I will donate 5 percent of the retail price of any Sunrise from the Summit print purchased through
this website to the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the non-profit dedicated to building and maintaining sustainable trails on Colorado's highest peaks.
All images on this site are copyrighted by Glenn Randall. None may be used in any way, whether online
or in print, without specific written permission from Glenn Randall.
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| Sunrise from Sunlight Peak |
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| Twilight Wedge from Sunlight Peak |
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| Sunrise from Mt. Sneffels |
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| Sunrise from Wetterhorn Peak |
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| Dawn Light from Uncompahgre Peak |
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| Sunrise from Handies Peak |
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| Sunrise from Redcloud Peak |
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| Sunrise from Humboldt Peak |
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| Moonrise over the Mosquito Range from Mt. Elbert |
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| Uncompahgre Peak Panorama |
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| Snowmass Mountain Panorama |
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| Sunrise from Mt. Sherman |
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| Sunrise from Mt. Harvard |
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| Stormy Sunrise from Mt. Columbia |
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| Sunrise from Mt. Evans |
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