Mount Doom, AZ 2004

A few weeks ago I drove north to see some autumn colors, and here's another view looking south from the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona. Last year's panorama [link] was taken a bit further down, near where the cluster of people are, so I climbed higher to get a better view. For awhile I thought I was highest-standing person in the entire state (11,637 feet according to the GPS), then I noticed that guy on the far right, who's clearly a few feet up more Ah well, it's still quite a rush to literally be so high

They were doing prescribed burns of the forest again to thin out some of the underbrush, so the air's a bit hazy...but I think this one turned out better than last year's! There was a bit of concern recently because the peaks were carved out by glaciers and a volcano so naturally when Mount St. Helens started acting up, people started freaking out! The experts say that it's "completely dead" but who knows for sure

There's a nifty user-controllable webcam at [link] and it has a preset for the San Francisco Peaks so you can kind of see just how high up it is.