The gravel road led past a small subdivision, then a few individual houses and small but beautiful Lake Lenoir, before climbing into the open and leading to a beautiful panorama of the Uncompahgre Valley and the snow-capped mountains to the west.
All the peaks remained snow-capped, giving sharply defined contrast to the green of their slopes and the blue of the summer sky.
Conflagrations are frequent, particularly in the months of January and December, when hot, dry winds resembling the Fdhn of the Alps come down from the snow-capped Elburz.
Farther south is a second group of lofty summits - the snow-capped Sunnin.
The mountains both in Victoria and New South Wales were snow-capped, and glaciers flowed down their flanks and laid down Carboniferous glacial deposits, which are still preserved in basins that flank the mountain ranges, such as the famous conglomerates of Bacchus Marsh, Heathcote and the Loddon valley in Victoria, and cf Branxton and other localities in New South Wales.