Sawtooth Range & National Forest

[Bo Zarts]

From Pinyon Peak Fire Lookout
Salmon-Challis National Forest/River of No Return Wilderness
Idaho
© 2019 Bo Zarts Studio

[royable]

1. Lovely as always!

The mist or smoke in that distant valley crossing the picture creates an interesting ethereal effect. Wonderful!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. The view here is amazing and the mist/fog/smoke only adds to the mystique! ♥

[electric_blue68]

3. Wow. A different looking mountain range than I've before either...

in hundreds of photos ovee decades, and those I've seen, traveled through, etc but n person.

Beautiful.

Ty!

[Bo Zarts]

4. Many (most?) of the photos one sees of the Sawtooth Range are of the North aspect of the mountains.

Most are taken from the Stanley Basin, shooting south to capture the north faces of the Sawtooths. But the Stanley Basin is, by definition, a valley. The Sawtooth mountains are on the south side of the valley, and the Salmon mountains are on the north side. I shot the image in the O/P from Pinyon Peak, which is in the Salmon moutains, facing south.

What can be very confusing for a new fire lookout is that there is a huge valley down in there somewhere. I have developed a lookout training program that covers that. But in the photo above it is easy; the valley is between the high jagged mountains and the more rounded mountains, and the valley has some drift smoke and fog starting to rise up as the morning warms.

The image below should be more like what you have seen of the Sawtooths before. I took this image from down in the floor of the Stanley Basin, on ID-21, facing south. It was early morning and the moon was setting over the Sawtooths. Didn't have time to stay and get a better shot, 'cause I had to meet a man with some mules (my boss with a string of pack mules to supply Ruffneck lookout).



Moonset over the Sawtooth Range
Stanley Basin, Idaho
© 2020 Bo Zarts Studio