01/17/2026
“Elevated”
Photographed January 19, 2022 at Powder Mountain at the top of Woody’s World in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.
The last gasp of this storm dropped just a handful of individual snowflakes onto my painted wooden boards. Over the next hour, while I was busy photographing Snowflake 148 and others, frost was growing on the board. This snowflake appears to have landed gently on top of the sea of tiny frost crystals, leaving it slightly elevated above the board. The same process that causes frost to grow appears to have sharpened the edges of each arm.
Just a few hours earlier, a few snowflake flurries drifted lazily from the sky outside my window. It wasn’t even supposed to snow today, but it did. And the snowflakes were perfectly shaped. It was too warm at my house to photograph the snowflakes, so I drove as high as I could, to the top of Powder Mountain where it was much colder. A pink pillar of light on the horizon caught my eye and I stopped at the top of Woody’s World to watch the sunset. The snowflakes looked amazing and the wind wasn’t too strong, so I set up right there as the colorful sunset faded away. My eyes immediately focused on more than a dozen perfectly shaped crystals on my snowflake board. Usually I’m fortunate to find one or two at a time. The next two hours produced the best images of the season. Then the clouds cleared, the stars came out and the nearly full moon rose over the top of the Hidden Lake summit. It was a truly magical evening.
Temperature: 16°F
Elevation: 8800’
Edition of 250
This artwork is currently showing at the Timberline Lodge at Powder Mountain through mid-February 2026
