Tag: Grand Lake

Rolling Over To The West Side Of Rocky

With Trail Ridge Road open for the season again, I’m going to end up spending a decent amount of time photographing on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. This morning, I headed over to the Kawuneeche Valley to photography this locations. It’s only a few weeks before the water recedes and the grasses grow so high as to block out the reflection of Baker Mountain so this morning seemed like as good a morning as any to photograph this location. Technical Details: Nikon Z7II, Nikkor 24-120mm F4 S lens

Once Trail Ride Road opens for the season, it feels like you get access to an entirely new national park. The west side of Rocky Mountain National Park feels a lot different than the east side. It’s significantly colder, wetter and to me at least always feels a little more primal than the east side. Wildlife abounds, lakes, streams and forest are teeming on this side of the park.

While I try to visit and photograph a variety of locations in Rocky, year after year one will often find themselves in the same or similar locations. Often, many of these locations are best photographed at certain times of year and thus, you tend to take advantage of the conditions and end up in certain areas more often than not.

This location in the Kawuneeche Valley is just one of those locations. With the Colorado River overflowing with snowmelt, this meadow floods and this small pond acts as a perfect spot to photograph Baker Mountain reflecting above the valley. This spot also almost always has a handful or more of Moose milling around. A month from now, much of this water will have receded and the grasses grown so high that a reflection is no longer possible or mostly obscured.

So it has become a tradition of sorts to spend more than a few mornings in the Kawuneeche Valley on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park photographing the overflowing Colorado River before it quickly recedes. It’s also a nice break from the east side of the park where I easily spend 70% of my time, especially during the winter months once Trail Ridge closes for the seasons.

After photographing the Kawuneeche Valley, I headed into Grand Lake to see whats going on in town this season. I was walking along the beach and wandered over to the town dock where I took this photo of the sun hitting the dock and lighting the lime green aspen trees in the background that had just leafed out. Baldly looking as regal as ever in the background with a mostly calm Grand Lake looking as beautiful as ever. Technical Details: Nikon Z7II, Nikkor 24-120mm F4 S lens

After hanging out on the west side, I took a ride into Grand Lake just to see how things look. Grand Lake is my favorite town in all of Colorado, and spending a little time along the shore drinking a coffee on a cool morning is one of life’s joys. Just as I arrived at the beach, the sun rose above the ridge and over the North Inlet and illuminated the town dock. The aspens in background have just leafed out and are a brilliant green, especially when side lit like this morning.

So I’ll be spending a decent amount of time the next few weeks exploring and photographing the west side of RMNP. Of course this time of year I alway joke that I wish I could be in about ten locations at any given time and more often than not I’m going to try to be where I think the best light is. Hopefully, a few mornings that light is over on the west side!.