Saturday, November 11, 2006

Sangre de Cristo sunset

In 1719 the Spanish explorer Antonio Valverde y Cosio awoke to the sight of the morning sun throwing reddish hues onto the snow-capped peaks of a mountain range to his west. Impressed by the sight, the explorer named the mountains Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ).

I drove up into the Sangre de Cristo mountains east of Santa Fe one evening on the road trip my wife and I took from Phoenix to Chicago. I wanted to get a photo of the sun setting behind the Jemez mountains to the west. As the sun dipped lower in the sky I continued up the winding road hoping to find a scenic overlook from which to photograph. Finding none and deciding there was no time to look further, I pulled into a small turnout, set up my camera and tripod on the roadside (quite a drop and no guardrail) and took several frames of the sky as it burned with color, then faded into twilight.

I built this panorama, which includes a portion of the road I had been traveling, from three separate photographs.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2006 James Jordan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We were privileged to do some driving in New Mexico about three years ago. Although in a different mountainous area, the scenery was spectacular. Thanks for this photo, which I think really captures that "I'm winding up the mountains look" and is made even more beautiful by the light. V. Schroeder