What better way to start the week in Rocky than up a timberline in summer. A few blog posts back I was preaching how the area at timberline in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of my favorite locations to shoot, especially in prime summer conditions which happen to be right now. So with that said, and the cloud forecast looking like Monday’s sunrise would have clouds over the north and west sections of the park, I headed out once again to a favorite alpine tarn.
Setting off from the Alpine Visitors Center well before sunrise, the skies were mostly clear. As I headed out along the tundra trail, I could see clouds starting to form and move in from the north and west. As we photographers know, good forecasts or not, trying to figure out where the clouds are going to be and where one has the best chance to add some additional elements into the landscape such as colorful clouds is a fools game at best. Even so, the game here is to place to your bets on a location based on the forecast and take your chances.
I arrived to my location a good twenty minutes before sunrise. I setup my camera with the small seasonal tarn located below and with the spectacular Never Summer Mountains in the distance and waited. As the earths shadow that precedes the sunrise began to glow over the Never Summer Mountain of Rocky Mountain National Park, I could see a defined bank of clouds to the west. A few other clouds floated over RMNP and the mouth of Forest Canyon and the headwaters of the Big Thompson River.
Even with some wildfire smoke in the air from fires in western Colorado and Utah, the cloud setup and predawn light looked like we should have a beautiful gentle sunrise over Rocky. The skies turned red and pink and the Never Summer Mountains to the west glowed red as they always do still covered in remnants of snow from last season. As I clicked away and enjoyed this beautiful July morning in Rocky Mountain National Park, I though to myself it just doesn’t get much better than this.