After my other weekend camping plans fell through, I still wanted to have some time in the mountains, so I decided to go explore one of my favorite places, Rocky Mountain National Park. I knew that the moon was setting pretty early, and I have wanted to do more astrophotography, so I decided to do a night hike. I packed up my gear and left Fort Collins around 8:30pm. This meant I got to the Bear Lake trailhead at about 10:00, right as the moon set behind Flattop Mountain, perfect timing for seeing the stars. I started out walking around Bear Lake, ending up on the northern side to put the Milky Way solidly in the shot.

I tried a few different shots, but ended up liking the illuminated foreground the most. There were lots of bats flying low over the water, and they got in my flashlight beam and ruined a couple of pictures, but for the most part they were good company. I was hoping to get some reflections, but there was too much of a breeze for it. I continued on up to Emerald Lake from there, taking a couple pictures along the way.

I just like the trees pointing up to the sky in this one, taken from the shore of Dream Lake. There was more water in the lakes than I’ve seen, especially surprising given it is the beginning of August. Made for some really nice streams, but it was too dark to capture them.

I was a little disappointed, because some clouds started materializing over the Milky Way right as I got to the apex, Emerald Lake. So I sat for a bit and enjoyed the darkness (not too still, the wind picked up when I got there) and took some other pictures while the clouds moved away, then I left with a nice shot of a large dead tree pointing toward the sky:

I had some fun illuminating this one, since I didn’t like the bluegreen light of my LED headlamp directly, so I used my orange hat to reflect the light to brighten the tree slightly. I’m very happy with how it turned out! This is one place where I would have enjoyed having a 10mm lens though, or a full-frame body, just so I could have gotten the ground in as well. Anyway, after I had finished my time there, it was around midnight, so I decided to head back down to Alberta Falls. I knew it faced north(ish), positioning the Milky Way directly behind it to the south(ish). I hiked back to my car and drove to the Glacier Gorge trailhead, then headed back out into the darkness.

As I had suspected, the Milky Way had moved nicely behind the falls when facing it from a very photogenic angle, so I was very happy with my decision. Because there was so much water, there wasn’t an easy path across the stream, so I ended up taking my shoes off and walking back and forth in my socks. I had some fun figuring out ways to illuminate the waterfall itself, including dangling my flashlight down into the falls on a string of paracord, laying down and trying to light it from the inside with my arm stuck in the cold water, and just directly lighting it up. It would have been much easier with someone to operate the camera while I was doing it (other than automatic 20s intervals), but I think I got some good ones. My favorite came from me simply shining my headlamp on the rocks behind me, evenly illuminating the waterfall and the surrounding area.

Once I got these shots (and my battery had mostly died), I decided it was about time to head back, since it was ~2:00am. I hiked back to my car and drove home, content with my decision to hike alone in the wilderness.

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