About 50 (80 Km) miles from my house is a park called Letchworth State Park. It is a beautiful place with waterfalls and a gorge. It was carved by the Genesee River at the end of the last Ice Age when glacial debris blocked the old channel. In the second half of the 19th century some people were going to develop the place as an industrial site using the water as power source.
A Buffalo industrialist named William Letchworth used to visit the area often and decided to take action. He purchased all the land around the waterfalls and built himself a "summer house" and named it The Glen Iris. At his death he willed thousands of acres and the house to the state of New York for use as a park. The house still serves and an inn and restaurant. There is a fountain that shoots a stream of water 50 feet (16 meters) into the air. They leave it running year round.
This past winter has been one for the record books as we just had the coldest month ever recorded since 1830 when records were kept in this area. So the fountain is now about 45 feet (15 meters) tall. My wife and I decided to go take a look. This is my
K3 and a
Sigma 17-70mm lens. The temperature was 28F (-3C) when we were there. The auto focus on the Sigma essentially stopped working in the cold so I switched to manual focus.
The "Ice Volcano" has received worldwide attention. The BBC actually sent a crew to film it.
3 shots here. One of the "Ice Volcano". Another one of he Middle Falls only a few hundred meters away and one from an overlook called Inspiration Point looking up the rive towards the middle and upper falls.
Because of the snow pack and ice, you could not get too close to the falls for safety reasons.