It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been able to get out and photograph sunrise Rocky on a Christmas morning. As anyone with young children can attest, Christmas morning usually starts around 4:00 am with the children’s sleepless anticipation of what Santa placed under the tree resulting in a pile on in Mom and Dad’s bedrooms with pleading to wakeup.
The high wire act of wrapping presents, setting them under the tree just after the kids go to bed and getting a little bit of sleep on Christmas Eve are all part of the fun of being a parent. While it can be a crazy time, it goes by much too quickly. Before you know it, you little angels turn into cranky teenagers who are happy to sleep in all morning. While you miss those precious early years, for the first time in fifteen years, I could head out in the morning and into RMNP for sunrise on Christmas morning.
We have had very little snow so far this year in Rocky Mountain National Park and the high winds have been epic even by RMNP standards. Staying motivated to get out in shoot in throttling winds and a brown landscape isn’t as easy as it sounds. The saving grace amongst the dry landscape and hurricane force winds has been jaw dropping colors at sunrise. While opportunities are somewhat limited with the snowless landscape and high winds, the colors at sunrise have been some of the most amazing I’ve photographed.
So for the first time in years, I settled on a nice ’S’ curve along the Big Thompson River in Moraine Park to photograph a Christmas sunrise in Rocky Mountain National Park. With the Big Thompson flowing freely and nearly free from any ice, I setup my camera and watched a spectacular late December sunrise unfold on the east side of Rocky. It may be one of the last sunrises I photograph in 2025, but it will be one of most memorable. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!.