Where Eagles Fly : Heaven Opening ~ Flying Amongst Crepuscular Rays Above The Rocky Mountains

Flying over wilderness terrain presents many awe inspiring landscapes, it is what compels me to travel into the remote back country. But sometimes the sky reveals truly inspirational scenes all on its own, such was the theater of light on display when flying across the Medicine Bow Mountains in the Rawah Wilderness. of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

To get the full effect of each image, please click on the photos to open them full screen.

I was flying along the outer edge of an early autumn thunderstorm, and the atmospheric sky conditions were creating a moderate to deep-vertical nimbostratus cloud cover up high, with a scattered layer of lower altitude stratus fractus-pannus clouds below. An awesome sight!

The sun was high in the sky, bathing the tops of the clouds with bright light forming a magnificent spectacle of brilliant Crepuscular Rays, more commonly known as sunbeams, sun rays, or god rays. To my eyes they look like Heaven Opening up.

Streaming down through gaps in the cloud cover, these cosmic rays are columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud-shadows. Interestingly, though they seem to be coming down in a fan like shape (converging at a top point) they are in fact near-parallel shafts of sunlight. 

Though they seem to unmistakably convergence, it is an optical illusion, a perspective effect, such as the way parallel railway lines seem to converge at a point far in the distance. In atmospheric optics, rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located are called Crepuscular Rays.

These rays look amazing from the ground but when you are flying close to them it is visually intense, much like an aerial ballet. I am moving through the air in my bush plane and the clouds are also moving, yet in different directions thank I. With the different layers of wind pushing the different cloud types, all around each other, the effect of me moving through them, while they all move around each other... is an extraordinary experience.

After flying through this wonderful experience for about an hour I finally came to the outlying edges of the storm system. Here the clouds up higher had begun to occlude the sky so the rays no longer shone down. These photos illustrate the beauty of clouds and sun rays on their own, without the need to include the ground, illustrates that the disparate parts of nature are each beautiful on their own. When put together will all the various elements then the result is what we call home!

I lensed these images at different times while exploring this awe-inspiring wilderness area for my ongoing project, "Where Eagles Fly". 

About The Project

Where Eagles Fly - The American Wilderness Expedition is my personal mission to introduce people to these amazing locations that surround us. I am piloting a bush plane while exploring and filming throughout the remote back-country areas of North America to raise awareness of the 47% of the USA and 90% of Canada that remain unpopulated wilderness.

About The Author

My name is Zedekiah Morse and I'm a Bush Pilot, Photographer, Explorer and Filmmaker. I live in the Rocky Mountains and devote my time and resources to exploring as much of the world as I can by air. If you wish to watch a short film detailing how I do my work and this project, go here.

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