Morning Jaunt to Glacier National Park

The older you get, fewer places blow your mind when you see them. What used to amaze you when you first saw the world might not make an impact anymore.

Glacier is not one of those places.

Though most people may spend weeks planning a trip to this awesome place, I found myself there almost inadvertently. I was contracted to shoot a wedding in nearby Whitefish, MT, with a couple other people from the same studio. Two days before our flight touched down in Montana, my second shooter Corey suggested we take the morning of the wedding to check out Glacier.

It was an obvious choice.

Corey wanted to catch the sunrise at Lake McDonald, so we woke up extra early to drive in the dark to the Park entrance.

When we got to the lake, there were some pretty serious clouds covering the eastern horizon; no fiery sunrise for us this morning.

Even so, the smoke in the air from the western wildfires gave everything a yellow hue, making for some very unique pictures.

The rocks in Lake McDonald aren’t quite as colorful as the pictures let on; they are still unique though!

One of my new desktop background images!

loons

looooooon

Once we decided the ‘Sunrise’ was done, we had a little bit of time to make our way up Going to the Sun Road.

I had rented a 70-200 f/4 for the wedding, and it really came in handy here. The longest lens I had owned up to that point was probably 140mm, so the extra zoom really allowed me to try some new things.

Handheld smooooth water

These were from a secret, off-trail spot

200mm power!

We drove up the road a few more miles and stopped at a bend in the river, where there was a nice surprise:

Do you see him?

I’ll zoom in a bit:

I actually saw two black bears just down the road from me! Successful trip!

At this point, we knew we had to head back to get ready for the wedding. We stopped one last time at the point we had shot the sunrise.

Look at those blue skies

If you were SUPing and kayaking in late August 2020 in Glacier, let me know

Thanks for reading, let me know if you enjoyed the pictures!

Handies Peak

Every year at the end of July, my extended family stays in some cabins in the San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado for one week. This year I could only go for part of one weekend, as I was saving vacation time for a 2-week trip to New Zealand in the fall. As such, there was only time to do one significant thing. I decided climbing a 14er was the best bang for my buck!

As with any 14er, starting early is a necessity. We woke at 5:15, and drove another hour and a half to get to the trailhead around 7-7:30. Along the way we saw a moose or two, and stopped a couple time for pictures.

We decided on the Grizzly Gulch Trailhead because I thought it was the easier one. I was wrong, the other one (a class 1, 5.5mile round trip hike) was up the road another mile and a half or so. That just meant that we got the whole 8-mile trail to ourselves!

The entire hike up was full of wildflowers and lush underbrush, a rare sight in Colorado otherwise.

Along with the wildflowers, animal life was all around, mostly in the form of Marmots or Pika.

One of the members of the group was having issues with the altitude, so I stayed lower with them while the other 3 went ahead and summited. So, I didn’t get any pictures at the top. But I did get some nice timelapses while we waited, and pictures!

When the rest of the group met back up with us, we saw a nearby snowfield and did the only logical thing…

…used an emergency blanket to sled down! It was super fun (and super safe!), and it cooled us off for our descent. Which wasn’t the best, because clouds rolled in quickly afterwards, threatening the daily afternoon thunderstorm. We heard a couple rumbles of thunder, but it never did rain on us while we were on the trail.

 

On the way back to the cabins we stopped in Lake City for the traditional reward for completing a 14er: The Ice Cream shop! Even though it was around 44F and wet at the time, the treat was too much to pass up!

Moose says thanks for reading

 

Willow Falls Hike

Don’t tell my scoutmaster, but I got lost, even with a map. I had gotten up early to scout out a place that I want to go Backpacking at some point, but in my haste, I turned onto the wrong trail. The day was ruined!

Clearly ruined. Only joking of course! I had been planning to hike up to the Willow Lakes, an area that my boss had recommended and that looks splendid! However, I had other plans, and took the path to Willow Falls, between Red Peak and Buffalo Mountain, just north of I-70 at Silverthorne.

I had recently gotten a new lens, so I used it almost exclusively on this hike! It’s a Samayang 85mm f1.4, meaning it is a bit longer of a lens than I normally used, with a very shallow depth of field, meaning I can get some great bokeh (blurry foreground/background) with it!

It was a peaceful hike, following South willow creek up the valley it carved to the saddle between the peaks around it. The waterfall itself was long and cascading, meaning I couldn’t figure out how to take a good picture of it.

I only saw one other group on my way up, and they were on their way down after spending the night in the saddle. I saw a group of deer too, I assume they had camped the night as well, and these guys:

I hike about 4-5 miles up, then turned around to get back to town for lunch.

Someday I’ll make it back to Willow Lakes, but I’m glad I made a wrong turn so I could explore somewhere unexpected!

Thanks for reading, let me know your favorite pictures!

–Legs

June Adventures

June is a great time of year, the beginning of summer. the weather is warm, the plants are thriving, and everything feels fresh. This June was super busy, so I’m just going to throw all the adventures together into one post. Enjoy!

Vedauwoo

At the end of May, I had finished my ‘Adventuremobile’ with help from Kadi, and we were excited to adventure in it! Basically it was a sleeping platform in the back of my pickup with storage underneath, made of 1/4″ plywood and 1x12s. So our first camping trip with it was up to the giant boulder-field that is Vedauwoo in Wyoming!

It took some getting used to the short ceiling, but it is so nice to be able to park anywhere and camp there! No need to find a spot to setup a tent, or find a place that doesn’t have any rocks (especially in this localle). It let us spend time just exploring!

RMNP

So I don’t actually remember if this was before or after Vedauwoo, but I’ll just throw it in here! I had a quick jaunt up to Rocky Mountain National Park one weekend just to relax and take some product photos for a friend, who gifted me the hammock if I took some pictures for him. Just a couple pictures in this set, but The Loch is one of my favorite places in the park!

(I don’t actually know who that is)

Rifle Falls State Park

The next adventure was going to Rifle Falls State Park, West of all the ski areas, and just north of Rifle, CO. I had heard good things about it, but we were leaving pretty late after work on a Friday, and I was worried about finding camping around the area.

Luckily, I have a pickup that can camp anywhere! So we pulled off the side of the road on some BLM land North of Vail to camp there, and enjoy the newly emerging Milky Way!

The next day we made it to the falls, and they were much larger and cooler than I was expecting! There are 3 different main falls in the area, with a few smaller ones around the peripheral.

One thing that we weren’t expecting was all the caves behind the falls! You could hike along the cliff for probably a half mile or so, and all along there were caves of various sizes that could be explored!

There was only one that went deep enough that it was pitch-black, but there were several others that you had to crawl through or duck into!

While we were there, we went down the canyon to the Rifle Mountain Park, a Mecca for climbers. There are just sheer cliffs on all sides in the canyon, which lends quite well to people who like to climb sheer cliffs. It was really fun to watch all the climbers doing their thing as we hiked along the cliff base for a bit.

With that, we headed back home to have some time with some family in town. Thanks for reading, let me know what your favorite picture was!

 

–Cameron

 

Phoenix Trip

So I’ve decided go back and recount the adventures of this year, since I want to put my pictures out there rather than let them clutter up my (now 5) harddrives.

I have my first set from April, when Kadi and I drove to Phoenix to visit her parents. I hadn’t been to Phoenix before, and I love Utah/Moab, so I was excited to have the opportunity to drive through!

We started driving Friday night after work, which put us in Moab around 1:00am. While setting up the tent in the cold spring night (even in April!), we saw a rare kangaroo rat jumping around, but I couldn’t get a picture.

The Ledge campsite was a nice place, not even close to full even in April, which was a pleasant surprise. There was a valley close by with some cottonwoods rustling in the small breeze, housing an orchestra of crickets that would have kept us up if we weren’t so tired from the drive.

Utah is basically Mars on Earth. So many red rocks!

Another reason we chose this campsite was because there was an arch nearby that I wanted to investigate: Funnel Arch. It’s not a long walk from the road, but it does require some class 4 scrambling up a gulley, but once at the top it’s smooth sailing!

Funnel arch is a pretty small arch by Utah standards, but it had some great views of canyons all around! Next time I’m down this way I want to setup a rappel from the top, since I could see anchors bolted in at the top.

As with many things, getting down is a bit more of a challenge than going up, and we butt-scooched our way down for many parts.

After we got back into Moab, I had to take Kadi to a legendary place to get lunch–Milt’s! If you’re ever in the area, Milt’s is a diner-style burger joint that has more character than you can take in with just one sitting. It’s closed on Mondays though, so beware!

Next stop on the way south was Wilson arch, right off the highway. It’s quite a bit larger horizontally than the last arch, but not too much higher vertically. I had rappelled off the side of this arch the last time I was there, so it was fun to reminisce about that!

After this we had a pretty long drive down to the border of Arizona, probably 4-5 hours. On the way we saw Mexican Hat, a fun rock formation that looks alot like, you guessed it, a sombrero. I was driving at the time, so I didn’t get any pictures of it, unfortunately. However, we also hit Monument Valley along the way!

Arizona is also Mars on Earth. Most of it at least, though it’s got more shrubs than Utah. I really  never realized how many different types of red rocks there could be until I drove through Arizona, but that makes it a very interesting drive. And I saw a Saguaro cactus for the first time in my life! Once again though, I was driving, so I decided not to endanger the car and pull my camera out.

It was really pleasant in Phoenix, I think the high was around 84F when we were there, meaning we could be outside without burning up! It was really cool to me to see all the dust devils throughout the desert plains surrounding the city, and everywhere was air conditioned (similar to Florida).

We stayed for a couple nights, but since it was just a 3-day weekend, we had to move on fairly quickly. We decided to go back through New Mexico this time, and check out some of the things along the way! This included Petrified Forest NP, which really reminded me of the Badlands of Teddy Roosevelt NP (alas, I’ve never been to the badlands of SD).

I had never driven through Albuquerque, and it was an interesting drive through even more different types of desert! But it was getting late and we had work the next day, so we had to make up some time we had lost by wandering around PFNP, so no more extraneous stops. Except…maybe two more.

The sun was just setting as we were going through Trinidad in Southern Colorado, and it really lit up Fisher’s Mesa, so I had to stop at a conveniently placed rest stop to grab this.

Finally, 30 minutes down the road I had to make one more stop to catch the sunset over the Spanish Peaks. After this we drove to Colorado Springs to grab dinner with family, then finally made it home at 1:00am!

Rocky Mountain National Park at Night

After my other weekend camping plans fell through, I still wanted to have some time in the mountains, so I decided to go explore one of my favorite places, Rocky Mountain National Park. I knew that the moon was setting pretty early, and I have wanted to do more astrophotography, so I decided to do a night hike. I packed up my gear and left Fort Collins around 8:30pm. This meant I got to the Bear Lake trailhead at about 10:00, right as the moon set behind Flattop Mountain, perfect timing for seeing the stars. I started out walking around Bear Lake, ending up on the northern side to put the Milky Way solidly in the shot.

I tried a few different shots, but ended up liking the illuminated foreground the most. There were lots of bats flying low over the water, and they got in my flashlight beam and ruined a couple of pictures, but for the most part they were good company. I was hoping to get some reflections, but there was too much of a breeze for it. I continued on up to Emerald Lake from there, taking a couple pictures along the way.

I just like the trees pointing up to the sky in this one, taken from the shore of Dream Lake. There was more water in the lakes than I’ve seen, especially surprising given it is the beginning of August. Made for some really nice streams, but it was too dark to capture them.

 

I was a little disappointed, because some clouds started materializing over the Milky Way right as I got to the apex, Emerald Lake. So I sat for a bit and enjoyed the darkness (not too still, the wind picked up when I got there) and took some other pictures while the clouds moved away, then I left with a nice shot of a large dead tree pointing toward the sky:

I had some fun illuminating this one, since I didn’t like the bluegreen light of my LED headlamp directly, so I used my orange hat to reflect the light to brighten the tree slightly. I’m very happy with how it turned out! This is one place where I would have enjoyed having a 10mm lens though, or a full-frame body, just so I could have gotten the ground in as well. Anyway, after I had finished my time there, it was around midnight, so I decided to head back down to Alberta Falls. I knew it faced north(ish), positioning the Milky Way directly behind it to the south(ish). I hiked back to my car and drove to the Glacier Gorge trailhead, then headed back out into the darkness.

As I had suspected, the Milky Way had moved nicely behind the falls when facing it from a very photogenic angle, so I was very happy with my decision. Because there was so much water, there wasn’t an easy path across the stream, so I ended up taking my shoes off and walking back and forth in my socks. I had some fun figuring out ways to illuminate the waterfall itself, including dangling my flashlight down into the falls on a string of paracord, laying down and trying to light it from the inside with my arm stuck in the cold water, and just directly lighting it up. It would have been much easier with someone to operate the camera while I was doing it (other than automatic 20s intervals), but I think I got some good ones. My favorite came from me simply shining my headlamp on the rocks behind me, evenly illuminating the waterfall and the surrounding area.

Once I got these shots (and my battery had mostly died), I decided it was about time to head back, since it was ~2:00am. I hiked back to my car and drove home, content with my decision to hike alone in the wilderness.