Water in Motion

The La Plata Mountains northwest of Durango are often featured in coffee table books of Colorado for their splendid displays of wildflowers, particularly columbine. We have only travelled to these mountains twice and a return trip will certainly happen in the near future.

Our occasion to photograph this waterfall came out of a misfortune. The day before this photo was taken, we had hiked up an old road along Boren Creek and climbed Babcock Peak (July 2012). Since there is some dispute as to which of three summits is actually the highest point for Babcock, we first found ourselves on the westernmost summit. From there, we could see that the next summit east of us was the highest so we had to descend several hundred feet down a tenuous couloir and then do some 3rd class scrambling to reach that middle summit.

Later that evening, we discovered that one of our cameras was missing. After searching our vehicle thoroughly, the only conclusion we could reach was that we had accidentally left it behind somewhere on the mountain. The next day we returned to Boren Creek and hiked about 3/5ths of the way back up the peak searching every place we had stopped the day before. We never found the camera. It may still be on that first summit, but we did find this beautiful waterfall on Boren Creek and the return trip gave us the opportunity to take more photos like this.