Mount Magazine
February 10-11, 2006
We had no idea Mount Magazine would be
covered with snow when Joey and I drove up for a quick Friday
afternoon photo road trip. A series of rain showers had just
moved through the river valley, and I thought our chances of
finding afternoon fog below the mountain were pretty good. When
we left Van Buren, temperatures were warm - the upper 40s - so
snow never entered our minds.
As usual, we were running late and the sun
was close to setting as we pulled into the Cameron Bluff
overlook. With the light and colors fading fast, I didn’t
have time to walk around looking for scenes to photograph. I
just took pictures of stuff in the immediate area that captured
my attention.
Joey and I weren’t the only ones
taking pictures that evening... 50 miles to the north, author
and nature photographer Tim Ernst was documenting the same
remarkable sunset clouds. He would later publish them on page 8
of his Buffalo River
Dreams book.
Rarely do we have the opportunity to take
pictures of snowy landscapes, so we headed back down to Mount
Magazine Saturday morning. We parked at the Brown Springs
picnic area and walked to nearby Mount Magazine Cascade. We
made a half-hearted attempt to walk down beside the cascade,
but the steep terrain was choked with dead vines and sticker
bushes, and with the snow on top of all that it just
wasn’t worth it. I said something along the lines of
“The heck with this!” and Joey was in agreement.
When we got back up to the trail, we
continued walking west. Temperatures had dropped like a rock
overnight and there was a stinging wind blowing steadily in our
faces. Joey announced that he was going back to the truck; I
lasted maybe five minutes longer.
We drove over to the parking area above
Mount Magazine Falls. The wind wasn’t bad there, so we
walked down to check out the falls. I suppose we were hoping
for some magical winter scene of a snow-laden frozen waterfall,
but what we found was a thin layer of water running over dark
rock. We had to cut short our adventure since we both had to go
in to work.
