Howdy,
It's been awhile since my last post. Life has been getting busy and there hasn't been much to take photographs of. Spring has arrived a little early this year. Here's hoping it sticks! Anyway, the result is that everything is melting. The snow is dirty and mud-splattered. The ground, where not still encased in a shell of ice, is muddy and unphotogenic.
When the weekend came around, though, I discovered one nice benefit of the early spring weather: the icemelt at Triple Falls!
The sun climbs much higher into the sky, now, with the Earth's relative angle to the sun becoming less extreme. Sunlight even clears the walls of the gorge enough to cast directly onto the ice formations. A little fancy footwork, and you can use the droplets as tiny little lenses.
This year, a large tube of ice formed under one of the main flows from the waterfall's bottom tier. Melting cracked it near the base, allowing me to carefully extend my camera inside for a photo looking upward. The interior of the tube is large enough that I could stand comfortably inside of it. Comfortably, if not for the cold and the possibility that it could fall and crush me, anyway.
The greenish color of the ice is a little strange. It may be algae that thrived in the farm run-off that was trapped in the ice. Then again, it could be something else. A biologist or geologist could provide a better theory.
The thawing and re-freezing create some spectacular formations, too. This little blobby ice formation was between two large ice formations, with a sheet of conjoined icicles behind it.
This may be the last time I can get ice photos from behind the waterfall this year. The forecast calls for temperatures far above freezing for the foreseeable future and it was already a little too dangerous to be near the huge ice formations. The above photo shows a huge crack that runs across about fifteen feet of the formations near the top. When it fully breaks, the blocks will collapse and shatter.
Just one last photo... I was driving through the countryside, avoiding the highway on my way home, and saw this. I had to do a U-turn and pull over for a few photos. Who knows what the farmer thought, if he or she saw.
I started my drawing for the poet-artist collaboration, but didn't get as far as I had hoped. I will be focusing on that and other pressing concerns in the near term, but hope to spend a little more time with the Steem community when things get a little less busy.
Thank you for taking a look! If you enjoy my work, please click the upvote button. Comments are also greatly appreciated.