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.