Tag: National Park

Shaping Up To Be A Banner Year For RMNP!

It’s shaping up to be a banner year for wildflowers in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a very snowy winter and a wet spring, we are being rewarded with some awesome wildflower displays early in the season. Moraine Park looks amazing right now with Golden Banner growing all through the meadow as seen here during yesterdays sunrise. Now is a great time to get out and photograph RMNP. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, Nikkor 17-28mm F2.8 lens

Sure I’ll be a little cliche here and say it. It’s a banner year for Golden Banner in Rocky Mountain National Park. These beautiful yellow wildflowers that grow in clumps and appear in the early part of the spring through mid summer depending on your elevation and now budding up all over Rocky’s middle elevations.

While the arrival of wildflowers in Colorado and RMNP is always a welcome sign that summer and warmer weather is approaching, this years bloom on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park has been the best that I have witnessed in my 26 years photographing the park.

Right now, Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, along with the hillsides of Upper Beaver Meadow have beautiful patches of Golden Banner proliferating in a manner I have not witnessed. It’s a photographers delight as one can take their pick of vantage points and work in the beautiful yellow wildflowers.

To date, the best area right now is Moraine Park. Huge groups of Golden Banner can be found just about anywhere in the lush green meadows. Rocky’s snowy winter and wet spring are really paying dividends for us photographers as the weather is now quickly warming.

While Moraine Park looks great for landscapes, its also teeming with wildlife right now as the elk take advantage of the greening grasses. While photogrpahing sunrise, this group of elk watched me with curiosity as I setup in front of this huge clump of Golden Banner growing in the meadow. Technical Details: Nikon Z8, Nikkor 500mm F5.6 PF lens
While the Golden Banner are the main attractions, lots of other wildflowers are revealing themselves in the same areas. Wild Iris, often growing in or near the patches of Golden Banner look great on the east side of the park as do a handful of other wildflowers such as White Evening Primrose and Marsh Marigolds. Calypso Orchids should be out now as well though I have not seen or photographed any as of yet.

These are the early season wildflowers in Rocky Mountain National Park but we should start to see the summer blooms gaining traction over the next few weeks as the remaining snow melts and the days continue to be long and warm. Columbine, Paintbrush and Alpine Sunflowers will all be covering the hillsides shortly.

This is my favorite time of year. Summer is short in Rocky and it’s fleeting nature and beauty or both exhilarating to explore and photograph each year but also a little solemn knowing that it will be short lived and one can only be present for so many sunrise and or sunsets in the park before the weather begins to turn cooler.

So now is the time to get out in RMNP and explore, enjoy summers warm embrace and all the rebirth and beauty that comes with it. Don’t waste a minute but make sure to enjoy every aspect of this awesome time of year before looking back and wondering where all the time went. Hope to see you out enjoying and photographing my favorite time in the park.

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!.