#AdventureDiaries: Cherry Creek in the Winter

Winters in Denver are odd for a woman who used to live in the "Great White North", also known as Wisconsin and Minnesota.

You see, up North it snows, it freezes, it snows some more, it freezes, and eventually you just have this permanent one foot or taller snow blanket on the ground. Sometimes the snow is so frozen that you can skid a rock across the surface, and it won't even go into the snow, it'll just eventually slide of onto the road, or hit something that stops its momentum.

Here in Denver, it gets cold enough to snow, then warms up enough within the same week or two to melt all the snow away. The point in telling you all of this is to let you know that snow does not stay in Denver, so if you want to capture photographs of snow, you must go out the same day that it does snow. If you know it is going to be cold enough the next day for the snow to remain until then, you are probably safe to wait, but at that point you are gambling, because let's face it, the weatherman is wrong... a lot.

We actually got a decent amount of snow this last week. It looked to be about five to six inches where I live, which I believe is the heaviest snow fall I have witnessed down here. It had snowed Friday night going into Saturday. Saturday was the day Jeremy and I went to the Denver Zoo (read the blog post about it here). The next day I went on a photo walk by myself along Cherry Creek Trail, excited to get some photographs of the beautiful snow.

It was a little nerve wracking going off trail with the blanket of snow on the ground. I was testing the ground before each of my steps unless I knew the area particularly well, and made my way down the hill to the creek.

I thought the rocks along the creek looked kind of cool underneath a layer of snow.

The view of the creek from where I was standing amongst these rocks was breathtaking.

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Obviously, a lot of the plant life was buried underneath the snow, and I tried very carefully to not step on anything I could cause harm to. Some of the plants are tall enough to poke out of the snow which made going around them easier.

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I made it down to a waterfall, expecting to have a gorgeous shot, but after seeing this image on my computer, I didn't feel there was enough of a focal point for it to be a successful image. It was still a gorgeous sight to see though.

There's this oddly placed picnic table along the path. It's not on the actual trail, but off trail about five feet, and is just sitting atop this hill.

Do you recognize this next shot? It's very similar to one I took when there was no snow on the ground. You can view that image in this blog post here.

I went back down to the edge of the creek and got this next image there. Didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but that's okay. It still made for pretty pictures.

After very carefully walking along the edge of the creek back to the foot path, I had to climb back up the hill.

When I was about halfway up the hill, I heard a slight rustling coming from the leaves to the left of me. I looked over and snapped this as a hawk was flying away from me through the woods.

Watching the bird fly away, I rushed up the remaining portion of the hill and watched the keen-eyed predator perch upon the very tippy-top of a tree.

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There were a lot of birds out that day. A plethora of ducks coasted down the creek or stood upon rocks, ducking their heads under the water to fill their bellies. Geese flew back and forth across the sky in various V-formations. Predatorial birds were perched in high branches in the trees. I even briefly saw a woodpecker.

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After I while, I made it down to where the path splits and decided to turn around. The sun was getting towards the end of setting, it was getting colder, and to be honest, I was exhausted. It was the first photo walk I have ever jogged for a portion of, and was the first photo walk in a few years tredging through the snow.

On my walk back, I saw another hawk, and liked the way shadows played with the light with the setting sun.

When I was very close to home, standing at the corner at the end of my block, I noticed the sunlight peaking through an evergreen tree and I really liked the glow it was giving off.

I captured my last photograph of the day, walked the half of a block down to my condo, and slipped inside. It was another successful adventure.

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