Notch Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park
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(Shift moves in; Command on Mac zooms out. Might need to click on image first. On iDevice, can move device around to pan)
View from Notch Mountain, Continental Divide, Rocky Mtn NP. Hide... Notch Mountain, just north of Flattop Mountain. View east is over the gorge holding Fern Lake (fartherst away to left), Odessa Lake, and Two Rivers Lake (to right; the edge of Lake Helene is barely visible below Two Rivers Lake). Farther away Estes Park is visible. In the distance beyond Two Rivers Lake is Bierstadt Lake (left) and Sprague Lake (right). Going right, the pair of rocky skyline peaks are Twin Sisters (left one is Twin Sisters Peaks); Estes Cone is just below and right of Twin Sisters Peaks. To the right, the prominent square-topped mountain is Longs Peak with a smoke plume from the Coldwater Canyon fire rising and spreading to the left. The broad curved summit across the gorge is Flattop Mountain with rounded triangular Hallett Peak just beyond. Farther right and just west of south on the prominent ridgeline beyond North Inlet's canyon is the complex summit of Andrews Peak; that ridgeline is anchored by Ptarmigan Mountain at the right. Beyond that ridge is the Williams Fork Range. Ptarmigan Point is the nearby hill farther right, with the distant Gore Range to the right. The southern Bighorn Flats area stretchs to the SW and west under distant ridgelines and, farther right, the Never Summer Mountains. Mt. Julian (?) is the sunlit peak just left of the rubble pile of nearby Knobtop Mountain. Farther right, the Mummy Range is on the skyline (just east of North) with Ypsilon Mountain and the rounded summit of Fairchild Mtn. Below that is Trail Ridge with the brown scar of the 2012 Fern Lake Fire. 9 July 2016.
The landforms here show the difference between the recent glacial erosion carving the deep valley to the east in contrast to the exceptionally gentle relief (at over 12,000') on the Bighorn Flats. Its hard to create low relief above such high relief, so most geologists interpret the Bighorn Flats as a relict of an older landscape, yet the age and significance of this surface remains disputed.
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