I had less than 15 seconds to get this picture. Only seconds to capture this one image before the sun slipped below the horizon. Only minutes earlier, I had been on top of that mesa at the end of the long, recently graded dirt road — waiting impatiently for the sun to finally appear below that wide bank of clouds in the sky.

I was in the Oklahoma Gloss Mountains in Major County, a rugged mesa landscape about an hour and a half drive north by northwest from Oklahoma City.

The mesas that make up the Gloss Mountains have always had a strong visual appeal to me as a photographer with their stark badland topography as a backdrop. It's so unlike central Oklahoma where I grew up. A visitor to the Gloss Mountains might think they were in the heart of the American Southwest, rather than on its fringes in western Oklahoma.

I've made many trips to the Gloss Mountains over the years, and I remember being instantly intrigued when I saw the sole landmark designated on the map around the Gloss Mountains area, and that was Lone Peak.

I started exploring the Gloss Mountains before the Gloss Mountains State Park opened in 1997, and back then, I pretty much had the place to myself. I don't think I ever ran across anyone else except local ranchers while wandering around the area between Cathedral Mountain and Lone Peak.

The mesas are a striking picture set against the surrounding plains, but one of the best views is from a mesa-top itself. From your high vantage point, you will see mesas extending beyond the Gloss Mountains State Park stretching north and west toward the high plains of the Panhandle. It's an arid landscape, not desert, but short-grass prairie with Southwest-style mesas that have a weathered and eroded badland-type terrain that is visually striking and a great place for landscape and nature photography.

From Cathedral Mountain you can see the thin line of the Cimarron River as it threads its way across the contours of the land laid out before you. With little on the Plains to obstruct its progress, strong prevailing winds create sand dunes along river terraces and breaks along the river's winding corridor. Little Sahara State Park and it's wandering collection of sand dunes are a huge, off-roading mecca just northwest about 25 miles as the crow flies.

From the lofty perch of a mesa-top, you can see for miles. It's a good way to get the lay of the land. I am certain, without knowing for a fact, the mesas of the Gloss Mountains served as lookouts for centuries.

The first time I climbed Lone Peak, I found a rugged, but obvious trail that snaked up between fallen chunks of red dirt embedded with selenite crystals. This trail was not a tourist trail, but a spiritual one. Be warned. There are rattlesnakes hiding along this trail. I have not been for some time, so this area may now be off-limits.

I highly recommend Cathedral Mountain for any hike: it's much bigger, with a more expansive mesa-top, easier highway and trail accessibility and less rattlesnake risk as you hike up the metal stairs that take you to the top. Explore the view from every direction while you're up there. Venture over to north rim for a perfect photography location to shoot the very photogenic Lone Peak just across the way to the north.

Arrive early to capture soft morning light hitting its eastern side softening the mesa's rough edges or plan your visit later to capture brilliant evening light that casts everything in sharp relief. And if you have the patience, you will be rewarded as the scene slowly changes as the angle of the sun lowers and every surface, fold and cranny, every crumbly dirt and selenite rock cluster becomes a study in shadow and light. Just remember, most state park sites like this one, close at sundown. That means you need to be off the mesa and out of the parking lot before the sun goes down and the park gates close.

It's a remote place the Gloss Mountains. Driving, you see them long before you reach them. Highway 412 slices through a pass between two mesas with Gloss Mountains State Park on the north side of the road and an unnamed mesa on the south side. The park is situated between Orienta, north of Fairview and Bouse Junction, a lonely intersection where Highways 412 and 281 cross paths.

After visiting the Gloss Mountains, a trip north on Highway 281 at the intersection and will take you past the dunes of the Little Sahara State Park and further on, Waynoka.

The dark silhouette of Lone Peak stands in sharp contrast against a starry sky and the Milky Way. Astrophotography requires planning, a tripod, and preferably very little to no moonlight

The first written accounts of the Gloss Mountain area came from survey and military expeditions in the 19th century.

In their reports and journals, travelers described seeing the mesas from the trail and being struck by their unusual appearance from a distance. They called them the “shining hills” and noted the glassy effect caused by selenite crystals embedded throughout the red Permian rock.

Originally, the mesas were called the Glass Mountains on a 1873 U.S. General Land Office map. A later 1875 map contained a drafting error, the 'A' was misread as an 'O' and 'Gloss Mountains' stuck and over time, became the accepted local pronunciation.

The red dirt and rugged badlands erosion effect coupled with the white, shiny selenite crystals make an otherworldly portrait. Almost Mars-like. The same ancient seas that laid down the Red Bed Plains responsible for Oklahoma's distinctive iron oxide-enriched dirt, left sediments, gypsum, and selenite, building the layered Permian formations that you see today as the Gloss Mountains' shimmering red-and-white- mesas.

Today, visitors can explore the Gloss Mountains and climb a metal walkway to the top of Cathedral Mountain. There they can explore the unique mesa-top ecosystem and see stunning 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside — miles and miles of land divided by straight section lines receding off into the distance in every direction.

Crunch Time

From my high vantage point on top of Lone Peak that day, it was much the same panoramic view laid out before me as I waited for the sun. There was a nice glow in the sky that evening and I was pre-visualizing the picture I wanted to capture. I could see the thin line of the Cimarron River, shining in the light, snaking across the darkening plains and I was hoping for an amazing sunset to complete the picture.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that the best sunset picture I could get that evening should include the very mesa I was standing on. Here I'd been taking pictures from the top of that mesa for the last few hours and waiting impatiently for the last 30 minutes for the sun to make its grand finale— and now I had to get down. Quick!

I scrambled down, camera still on my tripod and ran to my car, jumped in, and tore up the road to get a good vantage point where I could include a view of the mesa in the composition.

I glanced into my rear-view mirror and saw to my dismay; the sun had not only dropped below the cloud bank — it was close to disappearing below the horizon completely. I stopped, jumped out of my car and set up with about 15 seconds to spare before the big blazing ball of light seemingly speed up and quickly slipped below the horizon.

Lone Peak at Sunset remains one of my favorite pictures and one of the few images I have ever titled. I especially like the sun, the view of the big, blazing ball slightly distorted by the thin line of clouds as it sets. The composition is strong with the mesa and ragged line of fence on both sides of the long dirt road leading the viewer into the scene. It's just a very atmospheric picture. Everything you need is there. It's not quintessential Oklahoma, but it is very Oklahoma.

The Gloss Mountains of Major County are worth a visit. A climb to the top of Cathedral Mountain is an experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Just don't do it in the blazing hot sun. Get out early or later in the evening. Stand on the very same shining hills frontier travelers marveled and wrote about.

Look out over the landscape, stand where the Apache, Kiowa and Comanche might have once stood. Imagine the scene when vast herds of bison grazed on the grassy plains below as far as the eye could see. And there rising above it all like “ships on a prairie sea”, the shining mesas of the Gloss Mountains.