They opened the trail to Ponytail yesterday so I went today at daybreak to see the aftermath.
This falls and the lower Horsetail were on the extreme west end of the Gorge fire but got hit pretty good as you can see. I did not even bother with a tripod shot walking in…
I took a few around the falls a bit more professional, but to be honest, the Gorge in brown is not pretty…
F.6, 1/25, Handheld. iso400
Any comments, as far as I know these are some of the first real fire damage photos of one on the major falls.
Certainly a beautiful place and the blackened trees provide a bit of a story. The light and color look good. The depth is hard to perceive for me. It looks like the trail goes under the falls, is that right? And then it doesn’t seem to exist out the other side though there are some lines of tree trunks that seem to suggest the trail is there, but it’s not, or so it seems. So this feels a bit confusing visually, even in the larger version.
Dan, nice job of depicting the effects of the fire. While this was a massive tragedy, nature endures, as evidenced by the under-story already showing some signs of starting to return. Like what happened in Yellowstone, some things will be gone forever, but it will also provide some new opportunities over the next decade as the gorge recovers.
It’s always disheartening to see the effects of wild fires. But as the saying goes, one can always “make lemonade from lemons…” And I think this image does a good job of showing both the damage and remnants of the fire, but also now in the recovery.
