Right now my focus is on capturing the remaining autumn colors of the fall season in Rocky Mountain National Park. We are past peak in the park but there is still some great pockets of color and we have had some amazing weather to go with our quickly waining fall season. Even though my primary objective right now is to photograph the remaining autumn season in RMNP, there are often circumstances when one has to change course and take whats handed to them. This was just the case on Tuesday morning in the park.
Tuesday, October 7th we were blessed with a full moon, but even more importantly, a Harvest Supermoon which is more pronounced and brighter than many moons. To be frank, I enjoy a full moon just as much as the next person but I’ve never geared my photography around capturing or photographing moons. If they are there when I’m out great, but I’m not likely to chase one just for the heck of it.
A weather system had just moved through Rocky the day before coating much of the park above 8000 ft. with snow which mixed in just beautifully with the autumn colors still remaining. The forecast called for partly skies on Tuesday morning but when I arrived the skies were cloudless above the inversion which had parked itself right over the town of Estes Park. Hoping to find some interesting atmospherics, I headed into Moraine Park which is often a great place to find low hanging fog over the valley.
Sure enough, with the full moon shining down on Moraine Park, there was a nice layer of ground fog over the meadow and Big Thompson River. I headed down to the Cub Lake trailhead just to see how thick the fog layer would be guided by the bright moonlight. It was truly magical in Moraine Park as the cool blue hued light from the supermoon above illuminated everything in a combination of cool blues to deep indigos.
As soon as I park at the Cub Lake trailhead, there it was. A bright and vibrant Moonbow hanging right over the Big Thompson River. I hustled out on the trail with my camera in tow. With Elk bugling in the meadow, fog and a bright cool blue light shining over Moraine Park, Rocky took on an otherworldly like appearance and vibe. It was spectacular, primal and something I had to photograph.
With the meadow closed due to the Elk rut, I only had a few spots I could shoot from. A few hundred yards from the trailhead, right alongside the Cub Lake Trail is a sweeping bend in the river which I’m sure many who have hiked this trail are familiar with. The Moonbow arched right over the middle of the river in this bend so it was about as good a location as there is to photograph it.
After a few short minutes of long timed exposures with my camera, the fog receded and the Moonbow was gone. As always when in the field, your never really sure if you captured the moment but even so, the experience was beautiful and exhilarating. Once the Moonbow had disappeared, it was on to a a spot overlooking Moraine Park for sunrise. Overall, not what I had planned for a morning in Rocky Mountain National Park but an amazing one regardless.