Behind the Photo - Force of Beauty

I arrive at the trailhead in the dark.  The wind, blowing hard enough to shake the car.  It’s one of those mornings that you sit in the car talking yourself into getting out.  Have you been there?

Coffee finished, boots on, I hit the trail.  Given how warm and dry it has been in CO, I shouldn’t be surprised by the dry, snowless trail, but I am.

As I make my way up the switchbacks and reach the Loch, I’m hammered by the strong wind and pelted by the icy blowing snow.  Who willingly does things like this? 

I put on a few more layers and continue plodding along.  The trees give a little shelter from the wind, but roar as it blows through their tops.

I can tell I’m getting closer to treeline as the wind starts to hit me hard again.  And, I’m catching glimpses of the wall where the trail scrambles up icy ledges to a beautiful shelf lake.  This marks the turn around for me as I wasn’t planning to come this far and left the appropriate gear for the icy ledges behind.

As I break out of treeline, the icy snow starts hitting me in the face again.  The sunlight is blocked by the wall allowing the icy wind gusts to give me a cold shiver.  I turn a sharp switchback to start the final steep climb to the start of the ledges.  

I look up to see a large cloud of snow blowing through a break in the wall.  I put my head back down and continue kick stepping up the snowy slope.  When I get to the top of the slope and look up, my eyes are immediately drawn back to the cloud of blowing snow.

By this time the sun has risen over the ridge line and is also filtering through the break in the wall.  The light filters through icy crystals of snow and makes for a magical scene.  For so many reasons, I don’t want to take my pack off and get my camera out, but I can’t let this moment pass without capturing it.  

It’s hard to hold the camera steady between the gusts of wind and my now exposed sweaty, cold back making me shiver.  I continue shooting hoping to catch a few non-blurry images.

The cloud of snow continuously changes shape and the brightness of the sunlight constantly changes, so I turn my camera dial to the continuous shooting mode to catch it all.  I’m certain this is the first time I’ve used this mode for landscape photography.

My face stinging form the icy crystals hitting it and my right side frozen from the wind, I put my camera back in my pack and lift it back onto my back.  I watch the illuminated snow cloud a minute more, a small part of me wanting to get my camera back out.

Finally, I turn my back on it and start the slippery decent down the snow slope.

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