The total eclipse of 2024 cut a path through the Eastern United States in early April, a time of year notorious for uncertain weather. In the weeks leading up to it, I followed forecasts in the path of totality from Arkansas to Maine. It wasn’t until a few days before April 8 that I decided on the Adirondacks. A late-season storm had dropped several feet of snow across the mountain range. Eclipse-day forecasts called for clear skies to the east and cloud cover to the west. I gambled on the in-between, hoping for a cirrus cloud sweet spot.
With Google Maps, I compass-scouted dozens of potential shooting locations in terrain view, looking for a snow-capped peak to offset the eclipse’s steep, 49° angle. A prominent rock formation called Cobble Lookout protruded from the forest canopy near Whiteface Mountain. For reasons unknown, my lens lost focus at the precise moment of totality … quantum entanglement perhaps. Three minutes and twenty eight seconds to figure it out.
For six months thereafter, I fretted about how the snow-white of April would blend with the color-change of October. As luck had it, the seasons’s first cold storm dusted Cobble Lookout during my two-day shoot. Afterward, I backpacked through the range with only a point-n-shoot. Blending the two seasons was pure joy.
