Bear Lake

Fianlly made it up to Bear Lake today. Took a few panoramas on the way up:

And a few non-panoramas:

          

There was an incredible display of iridescent clouds, which were as impossible to get decent photos of as they usually are.

Beak Lake from the scenic overview:

It was not the best day for photography of Bear Lake. The sky was a bit hazy, and the lake is fairly well iced over; the result is a bland lake. Bear Lake, on clear, ice-free days, is a most astonishing blue. Anyway, apart from a stop in Logan to get the earlier panoramas, I pretty much drove straight to Bear Lake, passing up many photo-worthy stops on the way. I lef tthe Bear Lake region around noon, meaning I still had several good hours for photography left. My plan was to drive back slowly, and take a buttload of pics on the way.

Yeah….

And then this happened:

Seems this car spun out on the slick road and slammed straight into the car just beyond it, head-on. I got on the scene within a minute or two of it happening. There were no truly serious injuries… but the driver of the brown car was in a *lot* of pain. Once I saw that her foot was attached to her ankle at a truly unique angle (roll axis +60 degrees), I could see why. I started clearing out room in my econobox to pack her and her kid into it to drive ’em down the road to Logan, but those of us chuckleheads on the scene decided that since the injury was not immediately obvious to be life threatening, best thing would be to leave her to the pros. Took a fair while for the authorities to get on scene… we were well up in the mountains with no cell phone service, so a few early responders took off down the road to contact 911 before I got there. I spent half an hour or so freezing my harbls off a few hundred yards down the road, by a blind bend, trying to slow down oncoming traffic (with variable success).

When the authorities did eventually show up, they arrived in force: a forest ranger (first one on scene) , two state troopermobiles, a paramedic truck, a fire truck, an ambulance and a second very large paramedicmobile.

By the time I left the scene, the daylight was fading fast, so I didn’t get much done in the way of photography.

Snowmobiles are exceedingly popular in some places, and they leave faint trails. They are subtle, but if you know where and how to look for them, you can find them…

And just as I pulled into Logan proper, the two State Troopermobiles caught up with me…. and they were escorting the  towtruck which was hauling the car that got mashed:

So, all in all a bit of a bust of a day. But at least it was better than it was for others.