I’m back in town after a quick trip to sweltering Tucson for family affairs, so it was off this morning to the nearby Rocky Mountains for yet another sunrise photo op date–a date I have had scratched on a yellow Post-It-Note for the past couple of months: Mount Lady Washington, or “MLW”, for the setting of a full Moon just after sunrise (yes, again).
Would the weather and trail conditions cooperate? The record snows in May have lathered the high country with an unusual mantel of January white…but it’s June now–what’s with that!
I made the summit by 4:35a.m. (1:10a.m. departure from the Longs Peak Trailhead) using a combination of bare boots, microspikes, and snowshoes, depending on the trail and snow cover. Once above treeline, and with the normal summer trail buried, following boot/ski/snowshoe tracks of others is always a lottery–you never know if the person(s) who came before were expert mountain men and women with a GPS unit, or if they were merely a wandering band of clueless zombies. Luckily, I found some good tracks up the East Ridge of MLW that were fairly well set and frozen…they worked much like stair steps up the steep slope. It’s nice to hike in the early hours–later, in the warmth of the day, the same slope would surely turn to mush and a post-hole Hades, even following established tracks.
Always the magical mystery moment for me on these hikes is breaking free of the shadowy, faintly foreboding night forest and entering the wide-open tundra zone above–especially on a calm, bright, moonbeam eve like this, with the white-capped mountains reflecting the light as if it were noon…The stars winking above…The distant and bright lights of Denver, “shining like diamonds” a world away…magical…magical…magical…
As it turned out, the angle of the moonset (angling down and right, from my view) put the Moon behind the ridge just south of The Keyhole before the sun came up. My vision of an illuminated Longs Peak with a Moon over The Keyhole was not to be. I could have walked down the boulder-strewn MLW ridge to the north and aligned the Moon better with The Keyhole, but you start to lose the view of the Diamond when you do that. Looks like I’ll be back a few more times to see if I can get something really spectacular.
Here is a sampling of images. Back country skiers and climbers might find the visual beta useful–but conditions are changing rapidly up there and certainly won’t be the same a week from now as a heat wave rolls in.
A full Moon (at f/16) illuminates the Meeker-Longs-MLW group. Now, which set of tracks do I follow…which are the firmest?
Denver is just 50 miles away, but the environment couldn’t be more different. Traffic and freeways, skyscrapers, gangs, operas, stadiums, art museums…and here in the mountains, a potentially very hostile–but simple and beautiful–world of white…
In the early-blue, pre-dawn light…
And then it disappears. Can you spot the last sliver of the Merry Moon?…
Here comes the eastern light…
Nice glow on the Diamond, but the Moon is long gone toward San Francisco and points beyond …
A view of the famous Keyhole. Can you see the human tracks (versus the many “snowball” tracks)? You can also see the cone-shaped stone Agnes Vaille shelter, built in 1927. Agnes was the first woman to climb Longs Peak in winter way back when women were women (and men were hairy) and climbing peaks wasn’t seen as a feminine pursuit…
Of interest to snow climbers and extreme skiers–the snowpack looks good along what used to be the Cable Route up Longs Peak. How long will it stay that way? Not long…
Looking east out over the mist-covered Great Plains…
Looking down into the void at Chasm Lake. It is only now just beginning to thaw…
Look closely. You can pick out sections of the recently opened Trail Ridge Road. Note also that the snowline is fairly obvious–and it will creep upward rapidly over the next few weeks…
He/she didn’t seem too concerned with my presence. I had time to drop the pack, pull out the telephoto lens and look for a good angle…
Nice pics….you are making my summer trip a difficult decision….RMNP or Glacier. We’ve never been to Glacier. We’ve been to RMNP quite a few times.
Do Glacier, for sure. There won’t be many glaciers there in another 20 years.