Review by Ed Quillen
Mountains – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado’s San Juan Mountains with historic photos by Joseph Collier
by Grant Collier
Published in 2008 by Collier Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9768218-5-1
IF YOU TOOK a survey as to which Colorado mountain range is the most photogenic, the San Juans would likely win. They’re not quite as tall as the Sawatch Range, and they don’t rise as strikingly as the Front Range or the Sangre de Cristo Range. But thanks to their volcanic origin, San Juan rocks come in a multitude of colors, and on account of glaciation, peaks and ridges are ragged, and many valley walls are nearly vertical.
Also, the human history of the San Juans provides some variety. Some parts — around Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, and Lake City — have been intensively prospected and mined, leaving picturesque ruins of old shaft houses and headframes. Other parts are still wilderness, nearly as untrammeled as in the days of the Utes.
Grant Collier captures all this as well as one can on paper, in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, his latest photographic collection. As always, he has a good eye for detail, giving us intimate portraits of wildflowers and lily pads. He can also frame big scenes like Mount Sneffels soaring behind a hay field, and captures much in the middle, like slot-canyon waterfalls and alpine lakes.
Further, these aren’t just summer and fall pictures. There’s a lot of winter here (and the older I get, the more I like observing winter in the Rockies from the comfort of my overstuffed chair), with ice-clad cliffs and struggling trees in snowy meadows and on steep slopes. My favorite is a shot of Lizard Head Peak, bleak and windswept in the winter snow. And Collier often gives us clouds, from either above or below, to remind us that the sky isn’t always clear and blue, and offers visual dimensions of its own.
One of my first memories of the San Juans is from a camping trip Martha and I took in the early fall of 1970. When we pulled out of Lake City and drove up Henson Creek, we had no idea that we would end up going over Engineer Pass in a two-wheel-drive vehicle. My fingerprints are probably still on the steering wheel of that old Dodge Townwagon, for it was a terrifying drive and I gripped the wheel with a strength borne of raw fear. That night we camped at Amphitheater Campground above Ouray, and we watched the clouds swirl below us. It’s something I’ll always remember.
That precise image isn’t in here, but there were quite a few that refreshed my memory of that wonderful but terrifying visit.
An additional delight of this collection is a section of San Juan photographs taken by Grant Collier’s great-great-grandfather, Joseph Collier, who lugged heavy glass plates into the high country in the 1880s. These old photographs provide some scenery, but they focus on pack trains, mines long closed, and towns — some still with us, like Silverton and Lake City, and others long gone, like Red Mountain Town and Summitville.
All in all, this is a fine assortment of old and new that helps us see our mountains in different ways, large and small, old and new.
