WESTERN PHOTOGRAPHY GUILD
Box 2801
Denver, Colo. 80201

You've driven south from Denver 35 miles, past Cherry Creek reservoir, through fragrant alfalfa fields, past Parker and Franktown, up a winding road through the dark pines of the Black Forest. The terrain flattens, and on either side of the road you see little but scrub oak and grazing cattle. With the looming eminence of majestic Pike's Peak ahead, you drive across a bridge and head for the summer delights of Colorado Springs, lying at its foot.

You've gone by our Hidden Valley without even noticing it.

Oddly insignificant when you drive over it, the bridge is a graceful, arched structure spanning the precipitous walls of a beautiful valley winding three miles on either side.

Gene Licka by Don Whitman / Western Photography Guild

We first found our valley when we went to see what the Denver Post, needling state highway officials, had christened "The Bridge to Nowhere." A handsome concrete span, little of which can be seen from the road, costing over a million dollars, it was to be part of a new highway to Colorado Springs. Subsequently discovered geological problems, however, caused the route to be shifted west, leaving the bridge little used (though not actually going nowhere; you can still get to Colorado Springs that way).

The valley, not more than 100 yards at its widest, descends almost vertically from grazing land to grassy, sandy bottom bisected by crystal-clear Cherry Creek, ordinarily a stream no more than ten feet wide, but a raging torrent when sudden summer cloudbursts hit the area.

Getting down into the canyon is a problem until you've discovered the best route. In any event, you must pick your way through huge outcropping rocks, along narrow ledges, down abrupt drops. Once down, you're in another world — a primitive, elemental, awesome world that seems in a trice to have made you forget everything outside. A place of towering rock walls under a canopy of blue sky, soaring pines and the gentle splash of the translucent stream.

The spell worked by the abrupt transformation from the parched, flat grassland to the cool fastness of this lush valley affects one and all. Conversation becomes muted, and there's a feeling something is about to happen, unknown though not menacing. It's as if some storybook wizard had cast a magic spell over the whole place. Stripping down for pictures seems the most natural happening that could take place, and ideas for poses tumble forth in abundance. Our film is almost always gone before the ideas are exhausted.

Then, even though the posing may have been strenuous and feet are tired from sharp rocks, there is a reluctance to leave and return to the ordinary world, as if the magic spell, once broken, will never return. But return it always does, unchanged, unfailing.

Larry Scott by Don Whitman / Western Photography Guild

Intruders seldom find our valley, but the bleached bones of a deer and a beaver dam give evidence of wildlife there. The canyon turns and twists, and if someone does invade the scene, a short retreat beyond the next bend will effectively cut him off. One afternoon, while photographing Barry Craig, we heard from time to time distant echoes of male and female voices. On finishing the session we hiked downstream and saw, in a clearing halfway up the canyon wall, a handsome young couple. He was painting a canvas, and she was serving as his nude model. We left without making our presence audible, and to our knowledge they never knew we were there.

Photographing Jim Plummer and Jerry Stevens wrestling in thick grass along the creek, we suddenly spotted a foreign element in the scene, an 18-inch snake gliding alongside Jim's bare body. It turned out to be a harmless garter snake, and Jim, rugged as they come, wanted us to get it in the picture. However, it was gone before we could, making Jerry, no lover of snakes, happy.

Almost every model likes to pose standing, sitting or lying in the stream. Occasionally, just before shooting a pose, we will douse him with water to get the effect of glistening drops on flesh. One such tactic with Gene Licka developed into a full-scale water fight, and before it was over both of us behind the camera, Gene and his buddy who had accompanied us were thoroughly drenched.

Larry Scott was entranced with Hidden Valley. He contrasted the multi-hued rocks of many sizes and shapes with Muscle Rock near Los Angeles, a solitary stone against a wooded background, used so often that it is virtually worn smooth. While we were photographing him and Carter Lovisone together, they frequently got into rip-roaring water battles in the middle of the stream.

If our valley ever became well known, perhaps a picnic ground, its virginal quality and much of its attractiveness would be gone. Since one incident, we have quietly indoctrinated each model in the necessity for its preservation. We were photographing Ray McGuire on two consecutive Wednesdays. When we got to our shooting site the second week we found the remains of a campfire and an ice cream container. Several of our best prop branches had disappeared, apparently into the fire. After listening to imprecations against the interlopers for several minutes, Ray confessed that he and some friends had picnicked there the preceding Sunday. From that time on, however, there's been no lasting evidence of intruders.

Willie Noffsinger by Don Whitman / Western Photography Guild

Although our valley is unknown to most Coloradans, a few have discovered it on their own, as we found out when we took one of our models there for what we thought was the first time. "Hey, I've been here before," he said, and proceeded to show the exact spot and tell us of a romantic late-evening tryst. How they negotiated the canyon walls by moonlight remains something of a mystery.

Mystery and violence are no strangers to the valley. Winter before last, when snow lined the banks of Cherry Creek, newspapers told of the discovery of the body of a young drifter last seen in Denver two days before. He had been slain and his body thrown off the bridge. The motive for his murder and the perpetrators are unknown, and may remain a secret the valley will never give up.

Rocks of every size and description make the area a photographer's paradise for shooting in any direction he wants. Taking pictures at extreme angles is not without its hazards, however. Joe Morris was posing on an outcropping rock ten feet over us for an up shot when a piece of rock under one foot gave way. Losing his balance and starting to fall, Joe, an excellent gymnast, thrust with his other foot and literally dived over us, turning a somersault as he landed, and ending up with only a few scratches -- and two photographers and much equipment luckily unharmed!

Indians knew our valley before we did. In addition to arrow heads, we've found hide scrapers and other artifacts. Pieces of petrified wood abound everywhere. When summer rains fill ordinarily dry depressions in the rocks, minute shrimp come to life, perhaps evidence from ages ago when this land was at the bottom of the sea. In the unrecorded millennia since that time many creatures have stalked the valley as the patient stream slowly deepened it -- none , we're sure, more in harmony with its timeless beauty than the handsome physical specimens we photograph there today.

Behind the Scenes: Hidden Valley