At nearly two miles above sea level, Lake Irwin lies in the heart of Colorado’s Elk Mountains. The ghostly remnants of a late-1800s silver mining camp can be found nearby. During a winter storm, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone but the hardiest backcountry skier or snowmobiler in the area.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s “quiet” per se. On a ridge overlooking the lake, a lone, cylindrical contraption — perched atop a steel tower — periodically belches out flames.
The device is a remotely operated cloud-seeding generator. When the conditions are right, it shoots a vaporized chemical solution into the atmosphere, catalyzing ice crystal formation and, subsequently, snowfall. The generator at Lake Irwin, along with its 15 counterparts around Gunnison County, together contributed an estimated 19 billion gallons of water into the Colorado River watershed last season.
