2021 Fall Wrap Up

It was a tremedous fall season here in Rocky Mountain National Park. I cant remember a better season in recent years where we had both beautiful and interestind weather, vibrant fall colors in both the trees and understory while also enjoying an exteded season due to the mild weather and lack of wind storms. Here’s and image from the morning of September 30th along the Bierstadt Moraine. Fresh snow on Otis, Hallett and Flattop with fog and brilliant colors on the Bierstadt Moraine itself. Technical Details: Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 24-70mm F4 S lens
It’s a wrap. Sure its still technically autumn in Rocky Mountain National Park but we’ve pretty much moved on to the down and brown season here. It’s always a sobering watching summer move to autumn in the park and then within a few short weeks its over and done with.

Fall 2021 in Rocky was awesome however. The colors were spectacular, the weather was mild but also interesting. We had a nice dusting of snow on the high peaks, fog, some rain and very vibrant reds and oranges along with our traditional yellows and golds. With the mild weather much of the underbrush turned in unison with the aspens and cottonwood trees.

From my perspective of photographing RMNP over the past 23 years, I cant remember a season with such great color, weather. To build on those two great factors, I also cant remember a time that fall color hung around for as long as it did this season either. The first week of October still had great fall color on places like the Bierstadt Moraine which is typically long past peak by this time.

I’m still working through a backlog of images from the fall and I’ll have plenty of material and images to post here as we move into winter. Hoping many of you were able to get out and enjoy what was an amazing few weeks for us landscape photographers.