493 steaming up the Animas River canyon

Today I decided to try out my wife's new Nikon camera with some panoramic narrow gauge views. Jack and I hiked (and postholed at times) thru deep snow to the canyon rim and waited for 493 to come up the Animas canyon with the Silverton train. In this setting the mountains are majestic, and the trains are tiny.

In this scene the train is steaming along the edge of the river.





I wish 493 still had her silver smokebox like in Rio Grande days, which would make the engine much more distinctive in photos, but I am afraid that black smokeboxes are the new trend on D&S and CTS. Even 315 has lost her silver smoke box.



Zooming back, the train is almost lost in the vastness again, and the white roofs of the passenger cars tend to match the snowy condition of the canyon. Time to hike to some lower elevation view points if the snow conditions allow.



It seems to me that this year's snow pack, although heavy, does not quite match the snow pack from 3 years ago. Plan B for this day was to hike to the waterfall just below the narrows, but the stream feeding the waterfall is still very low, the high elevation snowmelt haviing not really gotten underway yet, while the Animas is running high from the lower elevation and south facing snow.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2023 11:07PM by Olaf Rasmussen.