Searching for Gold

The canyons of the Front Range Foothills make for accessible outdoors, especially with all the trail development that’s happening right now in Jefferson County. But across the county line in Clear Creek County, it’s a different story. I have visited “Tunnel 6” in Clear Creek Canyon many times in the last four-plus years, but the number of high-wire practice lines for “tightrope walkers” exceeded anything I had ever seen previously!

The road through Clear Creek Canyon is US Highway 6, and the old “Tunnel 5” is no longer in use, but the names have yet to be changed. There are several areas to pull off of the highway to stop and access Clear Creek as it flows down to the east and the plains where it merges with the South Platte River. On my most recent visit, I saw a number of people fishing on the sunny western side of the short tunnel, but no tightrope walkers.

Just south of where I was, Floyd Hill has been developed, including a new High School along with more residences in the Beaver Creek region. To the west, Idaho Springs hasn’t changed very much, having already expanded to fill the valley between high country bedroom communities like Evergreen and historic, tourism-driven, Central City. The only access is either up and down the steep sides of the canyons or along the highways, where I have found a tiny wonderland in the curves and turns of the creek.

As a former prospector of sorts, I knew where to go to find “gold”—at least, golden color in photographic form! Well, once I’ve changed the color settings to the warmest possible range and added some serious overexposure, I had more gold than I knew what to do with way back in October of 2020.

Returning to that same location more than four year later, I was thrilled to find gold once again! Of course, it was much colder. The creek was mostly frozen over but the warmth of the sun was still reflecting off of the rocks of the canyon walls. This is the spot where I first witnessed someone fall off of a high wire while walking. I gasped in shock, but the acrobat was saved from falling to the creek below by a safety harness and bungie cords. I was still gasping the second and third time he fell, even when I knew he was safe, as I felt it in my gut each time!

But I had some help to find gold on this visit, and I certainly wasn’t expecting what I found. In fact, it could be said that it was an accident. But it was no accident that I brought a drone that had a special ability for taking vertical photos. I should share the results with you now before there’s too much suspense built up…

I had discovered a tunnel: a tunnel filled with gold!

That is, using a DJI Mini 3 Pro and it’s unique ability to point it’s camera straight upwards, I can create a 360° panorama from a series of photographs taken in series and stitched together. As has been shared here in this newsletter previously, the resulting image can be made to resemble a “tiny planet” using the nadir, or point directly beneath the drone, as a reference for polar coordinates and a center for the resulting image. But in a canyon, the horizon that would form the edge of a circle in the graphic is irregular.

Here’s another “tunnel” that I thought was interesting as the photographs that were stitched together were taken from a low elevation and low angle above the ice on the creek, again using the zenith, or point directly above the drone, as the center point for the panorama.

Of course, that same series of images can be processed with the nadir for the center point. The resulting tiny planet has an irregular edge due to the height of the canyon walls and the low angle of the photographs.

In the above image of the tiny planet, you might recognize some of the same features from the image of the previous tunnel. In fact, if you look closely, you might see some artifacts where the image was stitched together along the trunk of a prominent tree. The issue could have been caused by the gusty winds that were blowing down the canyon, bending the tree between being captured in different shots. Or, it could just be a digital artifact from the software used to create the panorama. Either way, on one side of the tree limbs, branches have been doubled to fill in the line between the images. In the first image, the tree is less prominent and the artifacts aren’t particularly noticeable. But in the tiny planet version, the biggest tree has been digitally enlarged with repeated patterns! Can you see the result?

Even if you can’t see the minor artifacts in the images, thanks for checking! And thanks also for reading all the way to the end of this little article. It was a joy checking out the canyon, and a thrill to see the results. I hope you like reading this, and please share with your friends, family, and anyone else interested in seeing more Colorado HIGH SKY!