Mountain Creek Winding Though The Snow

Artwork: #93 of 1224 by Photography Moments - Sandi

Tags: nature photographs, landscape photographs, blue photographs, green photographs, water photographs, nature canvas prints, landscape canvas prints, blue canvas prints, green canvas prints, water canvas prints

Featured:

All Natural Beauty...

02/20/2013

All Natural Scenic...

02/19/2013

Artists News

02/19/2013

Title:

Mountain Creek Winding Though The Snow

Artist:

Photography Moments - Sandi

Medium:

Photograph - Print - Photography

Description:

Information found on en.wikipedia.org - Sawtooth Mountains Range, Sawtooth National Forest, Idaho State Highway 21, Stanley Idaho and Winter

The Sawtooth Range is part of the Rocky Mountains, located within a few miles of Stanley, Idaho, in the Western United States. Much of mountain range is within the Sawtooth Wilderness, part of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The Sawtooth Range includes parts of four counties: Custer, Boise, Blaine, and Elmore.[1]

The mountains encompass an area of 678 square miles (1,756 km2), and the two highest peaks in the Sawtooths are the 10,751-foot (3,277 m) Thompson Peak and the 10,716-foot (3,266 m) Mount Cramer.[2] The range is bordered to the east by the Sawtooth Valley.

Sawtooth National Forest (SAW-tooth)[6] is a federally protected area that covers 2,102,461 acres (850,836 ha) in the U.S. states of Idaho (~96 percent) and Utah (~4 percent). Managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it was originally named the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in a proclamation issued by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. On August 22, 1972 a portion of the forest was designated as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA), which includes the Sawtooth Wilderness. The forest is managed as four units: the SNRA and the Fairfield, Ketchum, and Minidoka Ranger Districts.

Sawtooth National Forest is named for the Sawtooth Mountains, which traverse part of the SNRA. The forest also contains the Albion, Black Pine, Boulder, Pioneer, Raft River, Smoky, Soldier, Sublett, and White Cloud mountain ranges, as well as Hyndman Peak, the ninth-highest point in Idaho at 12,009 feet (3,660 m) above sea level. Sawtooth National Forest contains a variety of land cover types including sagebrush steppe, spruce-fir forests, alpine tundra, and over 1,100 lakes and 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of rivers and streams. Plants and animals that are found only in the Sawtooth National Forest and adjacent lands include Christ's Indian paintbrush, Davis' springparsley, the South Hills Crossbill, and the Wood River sculpin.

The area that is now Sawtooth National Forest was first occupied by people as early as 8,000 BC and more recently by the native Shoshone people after 1700 AD. The first European descendants migrating from the eastern United States arrived in the area around the 1820s; they were mainly explorers, trappers, and prospectors, and they founded many of the current towns around what later became the forest. Sawtooth National Forest offers numerous opportunities for recreation, including four ski areas, whitewater and flatwater boating, hunting, 81 campgrounds, and over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) of trails and roads for hiking, mountain biking, and all-terrain vehicle use, including two National Recreation Trails.[3]

Idaho State Highway 21 is the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway,[2] primarily a two-lane highway from Boise to Stanley. With two-thirds of its length in Boise County, it passes by historic Idaho City and the village of Lowman to the western edge of the Sawtooth Mountains, then along their northern boundary to Stanley.

The road is designated as one of Idaho's scenic byways and provides access to Sawtooth National Recreation Area from Boise and the Treasure Valley. It primarily follows the Boise River and its tributary Mores Creek to the Boise Basin and beyond, and then the upper South Fork of the Payette River and a tributary from Lowman to Banner Creek Summit.

State Highway 21 begins at exit 57 of Interstate 84 southeast of Boise, exactly 3000 feet (914 m) above sea level. The highway is an eastern extension of Gowen Road, which runs along the southern and western perimeter of the Boise Airport (and the National Guard's Gowen Field) to connect with Orchard Road at exit 52 of I-84.

After three miles (5 km) eastbound from I-84, Highway 21 descends and crosses the Boise River to connect with Warm Springs Avenue, old SH-21, starting in east Boise. The highway heads upstream, briefly as a four-lane divided highway, along the north bank of the river in a basalt canyon. The route passes the century-old Boise River Diversion Dam and several miles later the Lucky Peak Dam.

After the Highland Valley Summit above the Lucky Peak Dam, SH-21 ascends the Mores Creek tributary to the Boise Basin gold mining area centered around Idaho City, leaving the sagebrush to enter the Ponderosa pine forest of the Boise National Forest. After Idaho City, the highway continues to climb with Mores Creek for another 13 miles (21 km) to the Mores Creek Summit at 6,117 feet (1,864 m), and with Beaver Creek to the Beaver Creek Summit at 6,041 feet (1,841 m) ten miles (16 km) further. Following this summit, Highway 21 descends 2,240 feet (680 m) in switchbacks to the village of Lowman at 3,801 feet (1,159 m) above sea level. At Lowman is the intersection with the Wildlife Canyon Scenic Byway[3] which descends with the South Fork of the Payette River through a canyon popular for whitewater rafting, westward to Banks at Highway 55.

North of Lowman, SH-21 ascends the South Fork of the Payette River to Grandjean on the west side of the Sawtooths, and climbs the Canyon Creek tributary to the Banner Creek Summit at 7,056 feet (2,151 m), the route's maximum elevation, over 3200 vertical feet (975 m) above Lowman.

At the Banner Creek Summit, SH-21 enters Custer County and the Challis National Forest, and descends northward with Banner Creek and Cape Horn Creek, tributaries of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. At "Cape Horn" the highway turns southeast to gradually climb with Marsh Creek to the border of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, where SH-21 enters the drainage of the main Salmon River, and gently descends to Stanley. About four miles (7 km) west of Stanley is the turnoff for the three mile (5 km) spur road to the photogenic Stanley Lake at 6513 feet (1985 m), framed by the jagged McGown Peak at 9860 feet (3005 m).

In Stanley, SH-21 terminates at 6250 feet (1905 m) at the junction with SH-75, the Sawtooth Scenic Byway from Galena Summit and Ketchum to the south, originating in Shoshone.[4] North of the intersection in Stanley, Highway 75 becomes the Salmon River Scenic Byway, and continues due north for a mile, then veers east with the twisty main Salmon River as it descends to Clayton, then north towards Challis, where the route terminates and rejoins US-93 just south of the city limits.[5]

The upper elevations of Highway 21 are often closed during the winter months, due to light traffic and heavy snowfall.

Stanley is a city in Custer County, Idaho, United States. The population was 63 at the 2010 census; down from 100 in 2000. The center of population of Idaho in 2000 was located in Stanley.[4]

Fur trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company discovered the Stanley Basin in the 1820s, but it was mostly avoided due to scarcity of beaver. Captain John Stanley, a Civil War veteran, led a party of prospectors through the area in 1863 (or 1864), but they found little gold and moved on and discovered the Atlanta lode on the south end of the Sawtooths. The site was not considered a town until 1919 when its streets and lots were surveyed and recorded.[5]

Winter (/ˈwɪntər/ WIN-tər) is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.

The tilt of the Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane plays a big role in the weather. The Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.44� to the plane of its orbit, and this causes different latitudes on the Earth to directly face the Sun as the Earth moves through its orbit. It is this variation that primarily brings about the seasons. When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere faces the Sun more directly and thus experiences warmer temperatures than the Northern Hemisphere. Conversely, winter in the Southern Hemisphere occurs when the Northern hemisphere is tilted more toward the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on the Earth, the winter Sun has a lower maximum altitude in the sky than the summer Sun.

During winter in either hemisphere, the lower altitude of the Sun in winter causes the sunlight to hit that hemisphere at an oblique angle. In regions experiencing winter, the same amount of solar radiation is spread out over a larger area. This effect is compounded by the larger distance that the light must travel through the atmosphere, allowing the atmosphere to dissipate more heat. Compared with these effects, the changes in the distance of the earth from the sun are negligible.

Mountain Creek Winding though the Snow - Scenic Idaho Winter Landscape Painting Photography

Posted:

Statistics:

Viewed 238 Times  -  Last Visitor from San Francisco, CA on 06/06/2013 at 8:32 PM

Colors:

Image Link:

Sales Sheet:

PDF Sales Sheet