High winds tore at Gothic Mountain as the sleeping giant watched over the cabins nestled in Gothic, Colorado, a remote outpost accessible only by skis during the valley’s harsh alpine winters.

Each winter, an unknown percentage of the Rocky Mountain West’s snowpack disappears into the atmosphere, as it was doing on Gothic Mountain, near the ski-resort town of Crested Butte.

High winds tore at Gothic Mountain as the sleeping giant watched over the cabins nestled in Gothic, Colorado, a remote outpost accessible only by skis during the valley’s harsh alpine winters.

A sign for Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s visitor center in Gothic, Colo. A laboratory on Colorado's Western Slope has been operating for nearly a century in the ghost town of Gothic.

In the East River watershed, located at the highest reaches of the Colorado River Basin, a group of researchers at Gothic’s Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) are trying to solve the ...

Researchers are trying to figure out why some of the snow that falls never shows up in the river. The wind tears snow from the top of Gothic Mountain. Wind is one of many factors driving snow ...