Lake – Adventures Beyond The Lens

Morning at Bear Lake

April 8, 2019Posted in LandscapeTagged Bear Lake, Lake, National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park1 Comment

This photo was taken at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. The park has gotten extremely popular in recent years, with a 42% increase in visitors in the last 6 years. While it is great that so many people are out enjoying the park, it means that the park gets busy. Very busy. Parking lots in the park being completely full busy. We avoided this issue by started our hikes early every morning, before the crowds of people arrived. On this morning, we arrived at Bear Lake on the first shuttle, then did the 10 mile hike to Fern Lake, before taking the shuttle back. The park is popular for good reason, the views along this hike, and basically every other hike we did, were amazing.

Lonely bench at Bear Lake

March 6, 2019Posted in LandscapeTagged Bear Lake, Lake, National Park, Rocky Mountain National ParkLeave a comment

This photo was taken at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park after a wonderful, though exhausting, day of hiking to see several lakes within the park. Even on an overcast afternoon, this bench looked like the perfect place to sit and take in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.

Empty bench in front of Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The importance of a beautiful sky

February 11, 2019Posted in LandscapeTagged Colorado, Lake, National Park, Rocky Mountain National ParkLeave a comment

A great sky can make or break a photo. Especially when it comes to sunrises or sunsets, the clouds need to be just right. There can’t be too many clouds, there can’t be too few, and they need to be high clouds, not low clouds. During the day, a solid blue sky can be nice but a handful of big white, puffy clouds can give a photo some pop.

This photo is of Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. The lake is beautiful with mountain peaks in the background, snow in the valley between the peaks even in August, and a mix of trees and boulders surrounding the lake. The hike to get to Emerald Lake from the Bear Lake trailhead is moderately challenging and the trail passes a couple other nice lakes along the way. On the day we hiked to Emerald Lake, unfortunately, the sky was filled with clouds the entire day. The weather was otherwise nice and the hike was wonderful. This photo is just missing a beautiful sky to take it from being a nice photo to a really good photo, but it’s still one of my favorite photos from one of the best hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park.