See the 2023 solar eclipse, as seen from Elko, Nevada. Video by Joshua Murdock of the Missoulian.
ELKO, Nev. — Mother Nature almost didn't raise the curtain on Saturday morning's much anticipated solar spectacle in Elko.
On Saturday morning, longtime friends Dorothy Hudig and James C. Powers were parked along a dirt road about a 45-minute drive south of Elko, a town of roughly 20,000. Powers, a serious amateur photographer from Atlanta, and his wife traveled to Seattle and then Elko, where they rendezvoused with Hudig, who came over from Reno. It was Hudig's first eclipse; Powers photographed an eclipse only once previously: the 2017 total solar eclipse that crossed the U.S. from coast to coast.
He confessed that he probably won't ever see four or five eclipses. But he already has a trip booked to Austin, Texas, to view the total solar eclipse that will sweep from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024. "It’s on a tracking mount so that if the clouds do part, we can dial it directly to the sun," he said before the eclipse peaked,"and then it’s connected to a camera that will take pictures of the sun."In Peace Park, Donald Stump, a wedding photographer from Ogden, Utah, had his camera aimed upward with a large white paper shield attached to the front.
The clouds did part, mesmerizing viewers and eliciting cheers from the well-attended watch-party at the California Trail Interpretive Center about 12 miles southwest of Elko on Interstate 80.