So I wanted to do something fun, I'm looking back at a shoot I went on from seven years ago, back when I was still in college in Colorado. I am also doing this because I wrote about the experience in a Google Doc back then, and I came across it today, so I wanted to share it. I did this shoot on April 20th, 2019, so almost exactly 7 years ago!
I will give some background, when I was in school I was part of the photography club and one of the officers, Morgan, would often post on his Instagram stories when he was going out for a shoot!
Also, when I wrote this back in 2019 I did it only for myself, so the original is just one continuous paragraph. For this I did clean it up a little; creating paragraphs, making some small edits, etc. The majority of it is how I wrote it back then, so apologies if it's a little rough. I also have a couple of videos from the hike that I'll add as well!
Sky Pond
Rocky Mountain National Park
4/20/2019
This trip started out with me actually wanting to go to Emerald or Dream lake for sunrise, but I then saw that Morgan posted on his Instagram story that he was going to do a sunrise hike up to Sky Pond. After a little back and forth in my head I decided to send a message and ask if I could join. He of course said yes! So now I was getting myself ready for sky pond! I was so excited, I had always wanted to go, but never fully committed before.
The plan was to meet up at Glacier Gorge at 3:30 AM, then immediately head out for the pond since it's a long hike. I then planned to leave home at 1:30-1:45 AM, just to get there a little bit early. But, one of the guys going said that he was willing to carpool and when I asked if I could get a ride, he said yes! The night before I charged up my camera batteries, got everything cleaned and ready, then went to sleep at around 10:30 PM. I woke up a couple hours later at 1 AM and started to get ready. I grabbed a pair of hiking boots from the closet near the door to the garage, and also a grey wind breaker, which turned out to be the best decision. I was so glad I brought it. After I was all set, I got picked up and we headed off to Rocky Mountain National Park.
The drive up didn’t feel that long like it usually does when I go, I guess not being the one driving and being with two other people helped a lot. Anyways, we arrived at glacier gorge around 3:10 AM and waited for everyone else to get there. Everyone else arrived around 3:30 AM, got ourselves prepped and then we were all set to head off. There were eight people in our group which was pretty fun, I never really go out on a shoot with other people. There were a few guys that were a little unprepared for the hike we were about to do. Anyways, we set out on the trail, under full moonlight with our headlamps on and a goal for a nice sunrise.
Morgan had us take a “shortcut” called the Fire Trail, which apparently was an old trail that was used in the 90’s. I will say, it did cut probably 15-20 minutes off our time. On that short cut, the two people I drove with decided to take the regular route because the shortcut trail was a little tricky to navigate. There was a lot of snow that was only getting deeper the higher we went. So now we were down two people, but we were still determined. As we continued, we came across a little creek we had to cross which was no problem for us, at first. The guys in the front made it no problem, then one guy's foot fell through some ice, but it was fine. However, one guy went all the way through, the snow and ice beneath him just gave up. His whole body went right through into the water, luckily it was a smallish creek and shallow so it just went up to his waist. He was soaked. Luckily he wore good pants, and I was honestly surprised he was game to keep going. After that we continued on, we met up with the regular trail where waited a minute for the other two to catch up, but never came.
At this point I put on my spikes since we were going to be going by a frozen lake and some more ice. We continued on with our group of six through the night towards the first lake, The Loch. The trail before the Loch was really cool, it was through this narrow-ish canyon, the moon right above us lighting it all up, and there was a decent incline near the end. Close to the end of that part of the trail, I looked back and I was looking down this moonlit canyon with the headlamps of our whole group behind me a decent distance, it just looked so cool, and I loved it. We then got up to the Loch and first off, in the moonlight, it looked absolutely sunning, I would have been happy if we just stopped there. It was this wide open space with the lake and mountains on all sides of you fully illuminated by the moon. We could have turned off our lights and would have been totally fine. At the Loch the wind was roaring and blasting our faces as we crossed the very sketchy, frozen Loch, by that I mean that there were puddles of water on the ice, and we were walking in the middle of the lake, so we decided to not do that on the way back. Our journey was not over, we still had the hardest part of the hike left, the accent to Sky Pond.
After the Loch the rest of the way was pretty much a steep climb up to Sky Pond. Just before the big waterfall that was frozen, we took a 5-10 minute break before continuing on. We then saw that to the east there were hints of light so we got back on trail but this time with a little more speed. This was by far the hardest part of the hike, it was straight up climbing on ice, it was almost like climbing a ladder, that's how steep it was, and it felt like forever. As we neared Lake of Glass, Morgan and another guy made it up before I did and Morgan was freaking out because of how great the alpenglow was. Rightfully so, because once I got up there I was blown away, the glow on the far big peak was absolutely incredible. It was very subtle, and had a nice magenta/red hue to it. Morgan quickly grabbed a shot while I continued onward towards Sky Pond and to where the composition would be.
As I was heading over, I couldn’t help but look behind me and up at the clouds because they were catching nice subtle hints of light as the sun rose. It just looked amazing. I then made it to Sky Pond and holy shit it looked so much better seeing it with my own eyes than through photos. The shark's tooth to my right was just so tall and imposing it was just amazing. So then I saw the way up to where I would shoot and it was another almost vertical climb on icy snow, and my legs were already dead after the first one just a few minutes earlier. I did it anyway because I was determined to get the shot. Morgan and I got to where we wanted to be and set up our cameras just as the sky was exploding in color, like holy shit, it was unbelievable.
First off the clouds were lenticular so they had a very cool and interesting wavy shape to them. They were also high clouds so they caught all the light the sun had to offer, just every part of the clouds were catching light which was so bright and saturated. So much so that if you just posted the RAW images, no one would believe you and say that it was edited and a little over-saturated. Also, the peaks on the shark's tooth were catching just a subtle hint of a nice red alpenglow that was stunning. The whole scene was too wide for my lens so I had to go with a vertical panoramic to get everything in frame. Also the wind was blowing like crazy, so much that Morgan's backpack got blown off the cliff we were on and went all the way down to the edge of Sky Pond. After the first panoramic up high on the cliff, I decided to head down to Sky Pond and grab a panoramic from there. On the way down, instead of walking down and possibly missing the light, I slid down which was much more enjoyable. I got down, shot another pano, packed up and re-grouped with the three others that made it up to Sky Pond (A couple stay down below the waterfall of ice).
After we were done shooting, we started our descent back to the trail head. Nothing too crazy happened during the way back other than me being crazy tired and sore from everything near the end of the trail. On the drive back home I was out like a light, sleeping the whole way home, and then slept much more later in the day.
I am so glad that I decided to go on this hike. The hike itself was a great time, but sunrise was by far the highlight, I mean it was the best sunrise conditions I’ve ever seen and I don't think it’ll be beat anytime soon. Anyways, it was a great hike with great company and I would 100% do something like it again and I am so glad I didn’t go to Emerald or Dream lake.
Hiking through the night
On the cliff where I set up my first panoramic
At the end just taking it all in
