Mount Sneffels autumn San Juans Ceramic Art Tile
— — the week the aspens turn the valley gold.
Not only on a wall.
“The Dallas Divide pull-offs on State Highway 62, between Ridgway and Placerville, are where photographers gather the last week of September. Sneffels rises 14,158 feet above the Sneffels Range, named in 1874 by the Hayden Survey for Snæfellsjökull, the Icelandic peak in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. For one week each autumn the aspen stands across Hastings Mesa turn the floor of the view gold, the sky cobalt, the snow on the peak arriving ahead of schedule. People drive five hours from Denver for that week. Nobody knows the exact date in advance. They watch the forecasts and go.
Mount Sneffels autumn San Juans Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Mount Sneffels rises to 14,158 feet (4,315 m) in the Sneffels Range, the northern group of the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. The peak sits within the Mount Sneffels Wilderness, a 16,565-acre tract administered by the Uncompahgre National Forest in Ouray County. The town of Ouray lies about ten miles east; Ridgway sits at the mouth of the valley to the north. The mountain was named in 1874 by members of the Hayden Survey, after a comparison drawn by geologist F.M. Endlich, who said the peak's profile recalled Snæfellsjökull, the Icelandic volcano at the centre of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
The defining week is usually the last of September. Aspen stands across Hastings Mesa, Owl Creek Pass, and the slopes below the peak turn yellow and gold in a narrow window that varies year to year with overnight temperature and elevation. Peak colour for the San Juans typically falls between September 22 and October 5; by the second week of October the aspens have dropped and the first heavy snow has dusted the upper basins. Yankee Boy Basin, the climbing approach south of Ouray, holds wildflowers in July and gold aspens in late September but closes to vehicles when snow arrives, usually by November.
The most photographed view of Mount Sneffels is from the Dallas Divide on State Highway 62, between Ridgway and Placerville. Pull-offs along the stretch above the divide are where the long-lens crowd assembles before sunrise the last week of September. For climbers, the standard route is the Southwest Ridge from Lavender Col, a Class 3 scramble reached from Yankee Boy Basin via a rough four-wheel-drive road south of Ouray. The summit is 14,158 feet; the round trip from the upper trailhead runs about seven miles with 2,900 feet of gain. The road and the basin close to vehicles when snow arrives.