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| p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Reflections on the way up to Sky Pond RMNP | |
Had an opportunity to hit the park this weekend and decided to try at Sky Pond. I've done it a couple times in the summer, but never before the snow is melted. Doing it with snow still on the ground was a great hike, but definitely required ice spikes and trekking poles. The trail was pretty clear and packed down, but slick in spots, and steep in others.
The Loch, on the way up. It was still mostly snow and ice covered, but there were several areas near shore that had water showing through. I tried not to walk too much on the lake itself for the ice breaking risk.
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Up the waterfall to Lake of Glass. I had been previously worried about going up the waterfall due to the potential for scrambling on ice, but it was all snow covered. The snow trail had indents of other people's boot steps on the way up, and a smoothed out area to the side of it. It was steep, but doable with the spikes and poles. This was the east side of the lake which showed some thaw, but the rest was also pretty snow covered.
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Sky Pond from the east bank facing west, looking at Taylor glacier. Not as thawed out, but my foot did break through a little here.
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Made my way over to the south bank of the lake to try and get an angle on the Sharkstooth spires. Both feet ended up breaking through the ice near shore, but thankfully only went ankle deep. Since it was fairly temperate (40-50ish degrees F, not much wind), I took off my boots, wrung out and hung up my socks on my trekking poles, and spent several hours hopping along the rocks barefoot and taking pictures. This worked out pretty well, because I had been planning on waiting on the weather to change anyways. The forecast had rain on it in the afternoon, and I wanted to get some shots with moody clouds.
This was an attempt at doing a very low angle shot (tripod center column inverted, camera upside down, barely an inch above the water.) I took several shots with the focal point adjusted slightly each time and then focus stacked them when I got home.
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Finally around 1130, some low clouds and fog rolled in and really transformed the look of the place. I was so awestruck that for the first several pictures, I just snapped them off and didn't bring my camera back up to a usual low position rather than the very low angle. Gotta work on not getting so overwhelmed by gorgeous conditions and think through the composition a little more next time.
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By 1230, the fog had covered up most of the Sharkstooth. By 1240, it was so thick that visibility had dropped to less than 30m. Figured that was a good time to head out. The steep snow slopes were much faster on the way down, since I just sat and slid down them.
Overall it was a great hike that makes one glad to be alive. It was much less crowded than it is in the summer as well, which was an unexpected bonus. I think I only saw 6 people in the distance at Sky Pond itself, and maybe 8 more as I was coming down and passing the other lakes.
C&C welcome! This is one of my first attempts at doing the focus stack on the super low shot. Had the tripod set, started with the autofocus tiny box at the bottom of the frame, then bumped it one space up on the grid for each successive shot, up until it had hit the middle of the frame or so. Just combined/blended them with the automatic tools in Photoshop. I'm sure there's more complexity to it, but I'm at that stage where I don't know what I don't know in terms of focus stacking.
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