Bouldering and Prospecting, two activities that are as Colorado as it can get. Some love to climb rocks, others like to pan for shiny rocks in streams around the state. What does Bouldering and Prospecting have to do with photography and Rocky Mountain National Park?, well nothing at all in the case of this blog entry.

Bouldering and Prospecting refers to two of my favorite early spring locations to hike and photograph at in Rocky Mountain National Park. Boulder Brook is an amazing place to photography spring through fall and Prospect Pond commands one of the best views in all of RMNP prior to the lake sprouting pond lilies and high grasses along its muddy and boggy like shoreline. While Boulder Brook is very hit or miss in the springtime depending on temperatures and spring runoff, Prospect Pond also has it challenges and rewards when photographed early in the spring in Rocky.

With our weather being so warm and conditions mirroring what I would expect for late May, maybe even June during a cooler year, there are lots of great opportunities for landscape photography right now in Rocky that during a so called normal or average year, probably would not exist.

On the one hand its great to be able to get out and hike some of the higher elevation trails and not even need to use mircrospikes on your shoes, while at the same time being a bit unsettling. The conditions are the conditions and while we pray it gets better, there is no guarantee that will happen so you take what you are dealt and try to make the best of it.

I’ve been petering around Prospect Pond the past week or so but while I have some decent conditions to showcase this tiny lakes spectacular view of Taylor, Otis, Hallett and Flattop, I was hoping for something a little more dramatic while the lake is free of pond lilies and high grasses. Finally, it all worked out yesterday with one of the best sunrises over the Continental Divide all spring.

With trail conditions mostly awesome right now, photographing Prospect Pond wasn’t going to be the end of exploring for the day. With my car back at the Glacier Gorge trailhead, downhill I headed towards Boulder Brook to see how that look.

Boulder Brook is one of the best places in all of Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph a quiet unambiguous stream weaving through a small aspen grove. It’s an amazing place to photograph in the summer and downright one of the best places to photograph Rocky in the fall. I wasn’t really sure what I would get. If the brook is running to fast and hard with spring runoff it can make photography difficult. On a cold year, lots of ice and snow may be covering and obstructing much of the flow and the stream as well. As is the case all of the time now, tree fall from high winds, beadle kill, and Sudden Aspen Death always alter the landscape with dead and fallen trees strewn over and on Boulder Brook altering and in many cases ruining compositions along one of RMNP’s prettiest streams.

I found the flow at Boulder Brook to be just about perfect. Ice lined the banks where the cold water babbled down the hillside. The moss on the rocks just turning green and the forest appearing only to reveal the brook after keeping it hidden and protected under its rocks, trees, roots and soil. Not a bad April morning even if it felt like late May in Rocky Mountain National Park.

It may be mid April, trees are starting to leaf out, grasses are turning green and early season flowers like Pasque Flowers and Mountain Ball cactus are starting to flower. Even so, April is typically one of the best months to photograph wintry landscape scenes in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a very dry and practically snow-less winter and even drier and warmer spring, snow returned to Rocky Mountain National Park early this week with some more on the way tomorrow.

It’s a welcome sight to see snow return to Rocky after what has been a historically warm and dry winter. Snowpack levels are abysmal to date and the little amounts of snowmelt we have are melting at a more rapid pace than previous years due to a very mild and warm spring. At this point in the season, there is no chance we makeup for the moisture we didn’t receive over the winter but we can hope for a wet spring to triage what can only be described as a critically serious moisture deficit.

So with most of the lakes and streams thawed out about a month early this year in RMNP, and seasonal conditions that I would liken more to late May or early June in Rocky, it’s was great to have a heavy wet spring snow fall on the park on Tuesday and hopefully again tomorrow morning. For landscape photographers, the current oddity of having waterfalls, lakes and streams free of ice and snow so early in the season is bound to offer opportunities for photographers when the changing of the seasons inevitability clash.

Thats just what happened on Monday when I hiked up to Alberta Falls from the Storm Pass trailhead. I knew Glacier Creek and Alberta Falls would be free flowing and free of ice, so the snow covered waterfall combined with fresh snow made for a somewhat unique composition. While heavy wet snow fell on RMNP on Tuesday, Alberta Falls, Prospect Pond and the beautiful landscape along Glacier Creek offered endless unique compositions of flowing and open water and heavy wet spring snow all while helping to add moisture to our severely parched forests.

With another system incoming early tomorrow over Rocky Mountain National Park, lets hope we get some more of the heavy, wet snow that typifies spring time in Rocky. I’ll be out tomorrow morning just as this latest system runs into the park. It may not be snowing at sunrise tomorrow morning in Rocky Mountain National Park, but as long as it starts falling soon after we can all breath a slight sigh of relief.

I sound like a broken record, but the warm and dry weather that continues to settle over Colorado and more specifically Rocky Mountain National Park is really making for some unusual early season photography. Lakes and water below 10,000 ft are ice free or nearly ice free about a month earlier than I would usually expect. Snow is almost nonexistent in under the forest canopy below 9500 ft and streams and waterfalls are free of ice and snow and flowing freely. To summarize, as we move into the first week of April in Rocky, it sure feels like early June in the park.

Tuesday, which was the last day of March, I hiked up to Bierstadt Lake for sunrise. Typically this time of year Bierstadt is covered in ice or at least most of it would be. The Bierstadt Moraine and trail which gets plenty of sun and faces south is usually mostly free of snow by now but once you get to the top of the moraine, the entire forest surrounding the lake usually has feet os snow covering the trail and forest. As of now, there is barely any snow in the canopy or along the trail and the lake itself except for a small area on the west side is completely free of snow, just like I would expect to find in early June.

On Wednesday of this week, the first day of April we were lucky enough to get some light rain and snow over the park. Sunrise was clouded over and so I decided to hike up to Chasm Falls along the still closed Old Fall River Road to see how the waterfall was looking in the overcast light. Old Fall River Road was completely free of snow which is odd for April 1st and Chasm Falls was also completely thawed and free of snow except for one tiny remaining patch above the falls. The falls were flowing at a moderate clip and its actually a great time to photograph Chasm Falls with the road closed as a normally busy location essential becomes a backcountry like experience. In a normal year I would expect some snow and ice to still be encasing the falls but once again Chasm Falls looks like it does in June more than early April.

The warm weather pattern has not released its grip yet over Rocky. Every time the weather looks promising for a good dose of moisture in the form of snow or rain, the system underdeliver or peters out. I keep holding out hope we will have a rainy and snowy April and May as we transition towards even warmer summer days. Were never going to catchup to normal this year but here to hoping the pattern flips and more moisture finds its way over Rocky Mountain National Park this spring to assuage the overall oddity that has been winter and spring this season.