Notes from the Roan Plateau

The Roan is, by my own informal count, the second-least-photographed major landform in Colorado. Probably because the road in is not paved, the gas industry has been working the area for thirty years, and the access — for a non-resident, in any season other than late summer — is genuinely difficult.

It is also some of the most quietly beautiful terrain in the state. Long sandstone benches, deep canyons cut into them, and a sky that does the kind of unobstructed work the high country never lets it do. The wildlife is plentiful and largely unbothered. I have seen more elk on the Roan in two visits than in two seasons on the Front Range.

I am writing about it here against my own self-interest. I will be sorrier if it becomes photographed than I am at the prospect that it stays nearly unknown.