Rough Ridge--actually a spur of Grandfather Mountain--annually provides some of the most brilliant autumn color in the northwest North Carolina high country. The ridge and its sister Grandfather slopes also usually experience their autumn color peak earlier than much of the remainder of the Blue Ridge. Autumn 2008 was no exception. A week or so before mid-October, I made the short hike up the Tanawha Trail to a saddle midway up the ridge. Storms had moved in the night before, and the clouds that accompanied them lingered in the early morning. In addition to hoping to capture the fall color, I also used this short trip to test drive a new 500mm f/4 super-telephoto lens. This shot, extracting a portion of a small, especially brilliantly-colored maple, is one of the shots I made using that lens.