Visiting Glacier National Park
For a week in July, I visited Glacier National Park in northern Montana. While Glacier is a unique place in the national park system, only a very small part of the park is actually covered by glaciers themselves these days. The glaciers are smaller than what you would find in Canada and Alaska and they are continuing to get smaller. In 1850, the area now comprising the national park had 150 glaciers, but today there are 25 active glaciers remaining in the park. The definition of a glacier is a large body of ice moving slowly down a slope or valley or spreading outward on a land surface. Many of the original glaciers have disappeared or been reduced to permanent or semi-permanent snowfields that have become stationary, thus no longer defined as a glacier. Despite this gradual change, the park is an incredible place to see and photograph. There are many glacial carved valleys, colorful lakes and shapely mountains in the park. One of the most popular overlooks is from just above Logan Pass on the famous Going To The Sun Road. Here you hike to the overlook of Hidden Lake and Bearhat Mountain.
This might be the most popular trail in the park...and for good reason. Not only do you get a great view for relatively little effort, but you also will likely see mountain goats that come up close to you right along the trail.
If you can tolerate the crowds and sometimes even bumper to bumper traffic on Going To The Sun Road, mid-July is one of the best times to see Glacier National Park. By then, enough of the snow has melted to allow for wildflowers to be in full bloom...including beargrass. These large, showy white flowers have the appearance of giant Q-tips in the wild, or something that would appear in a Dr. Suess book. Beargrass is a common wildflower found in Glacier National Park and this year has produced prolific blossoms thanks to a higher than average snowpack this winter and warmer than average temperatures so far this summer. The plant was first called beargrass by members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Beargrass is not a grass and actually not even consumed by bears but sheep, deer, elk, and goats are known to eat beargrass. However, bears will use these leaves as denning material.
The pink flowers next to this beargrass above Grinnell Lake are known as Pink Spirea. The hike up to Grinnell Glacier is in my opinion one of the most scenic trails that I have been on in a national park. After leaving Many Glacier Hotel, I boarded the ferry that goes across Lake Josephine (pictured below) to access the Grinnell Glacier Trail that goes above Lower Grinnell Lake (also pictured below).
Lower Grinnell Lake is among one of the most colorful lakes I have seen as the teal color comes from glacial silt, a suspension of fine particles of limestone (calcium carbonate) ground up by glacial movement. The hike leads to Upper Grinnell Lake and Grinnell Glacier. The lake (pictured below) has been newly formed within the last 100 years due recent melt from Grinnell and Salamander Glacier.
Another great hike is up to Iceberg Lake (pictured below). Iceberg Lake is a bit lower in elevation and does not have as much ice as Upper Grinnell Lake, but still has some leftover icebergs in it. It is believed that if current warming trends continue, there will be no glaciers left in the Glacier National Park by 2030. You can find more about the change in these glaciers from this article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/24/climate/mapping-50-years-of-ice-loss-in-glacier-national-park.html
While wildlife and spectacular mountain scenery with lakes is the highlight of photography at Glacier, some of my favorite photographs were from along the streams. So many waterfalls, colorful rocks and beautiful water formations!
Music Meadows Ranch & The Wet Mountain Valley Of Colorado
Back in June, I visited the Music Meadows Ranch near Westcliffe, Colorado. Westcliffe is located in the Wet Mountain Valley of Southern Colorado and is away from the touristy ski resorts of Colorado. Westcliffe has more of an "Old West" feel to it and Music Meadows is a great place to experience an authentic guest ranch. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains make for a great backdrop, but it is the horses that are the real stars! If you are interested in finding out more, you can visit their website at musicmeadows.com
Even without any horses, the scenery is also quite amazing in the Wet Mountain Valley!
Storms Of 2017
May and June are my favorite months to roam the Southern and Central Plains in search of photogenic storms. Back on May 16, I drove out to western Oklahoma where some tornadic thunderstorms occurred at the town of Elk City. There were a lot of chasers on this storm and the tornado was obscured in sheets in rain, so I decided to turn south away from the storm to get a different perspective. To me, chasing storms is more than looking for tornadoes, When there are too many chasers on a storm, I like to step back and find my own art with storms from afar. The images above and below were taken south of Elk City, Oklahoma.
On the afternoon of June 5th, I drove out to one of my favorite locations on the plains of Colorado, Pawnee Buttes. The curtains of heavy rain (probably containing hail, too) made for a nice backdrop.
On June 12th, I started off at Wheatland, Wyoming and would up at Alliance, Nebraska around sunset. I saw 4 brief and weak tornadoes. None of them really made for good pictures. Either they were too far away or too brief. Seemed like each time I saw a tornado, by the time I parked on the side of the road and pulled out my camera, they were gone. The most photogenic scene of the evening was this scene below from just east of Alliance, Nebraska. The "mothership" appearance is of a rotating supercell thunderstorm.
On June 15, I spent the afternoon and evening in Central Kansas. One storm in the Hays, Kansas area was strong enough to produce a tornado warning. While there did not appear to be a true tornado, there was what us meteorologists call a "gustnado". One should think of a gustnado as a little circulation along the leading edge of a gust front where cooler outflow winds are blowing out from the thunderstorm. They are weak and often brief. A tornado would otherwise be a rotating column of air that goes from the rotating part of a thunderstorm that extends to the ground. Also, notice the greenish tint to some of the clouds. It is believed that the greenish color to the sky is a sign of large hail.
The storms became rather messy with a lot of rain obscuring the best parts of the storm, so I decided to find a hotel in Salina, Kansas. Coming into Salina, I noticed some bumpy looking "mammatus" clouds overhead in the sky and the sun was about to set with some clear skies on the western horizon. I was getting that feeling that sky was going to look incredible soon. While pulling into the hotel parking lot, I noticed this church across the street and down the road about a 1/4 mile away from the hotel. It turned out to be a yesteryear museum based on the heritage of Kansas. The little model church made for a great subject against the picturesque sky. Sometimes the best pictures are after when the storm "chase" is done!
Waking Up At Midnight
This morning, I woke up at midnight to begin my day. In all my years, I don't think I have ever done that. Certainly, not voluntarily! However, I had this date circled on my calendar. I was told from Glenn Randall, a pro photographer from Colorado, that on the morning of the full moon in June that you can get a unique shot. When at Twin Sisters Peak, he said that the moon would set between Longs Peak and Mount Meeker in Rocky Mountain National Park. This only can be photographed one morning each year, when the moon sets the furthest south all year. We might be the only 2 people have attempted this hike specifically with this shot in mind. It involved a hiking trail in the dark starting at 1am and crossing a few leftover snow patches. A headlamp was necessary. The moonlight, as well as the footprints in the snow, was also helpful for guidance. There was a short section where I struggled to get up an icy patch on a somewhat steep slope. It proved nearly impossible to walk up it in normal hiking boots. But with some scrambling on my hands and knees I was able to get pass that obstacle. Once above the treeline, I was greeted with howling winds. I would guess gusting to about 50 mph a couple of times. It was sometimes tough to just walk straight and a reminder on how harsh the environment can be at over 11,000 feet. Thankfully, the winds died down some as the moon was setting in the west and twilight was coming in from the east. I was also worried about the cirrus clouds obstructing the detail of the moon. It was sometimes thick enough to make the moon a little fuzzy. However, it thinned out enough to get more detail on the moon. The thin cirrus clouds also added a little color to the sky as the first light from the sun was hitting the upper layers of the atmosphere. It was a challenging hike and photo shoot. However, once I got the shot that I was looking for and I was able to get up and down safely off the mountain, it was totally worth the extra effort of getting up at midnight! A visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Earlier this month, I made my first visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Located in the western part of North Dakota, it is one of the least known of the national parks in the lower 48. I honestly had not even heard about this place until a few years ago when it was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. In that feature, it mentioned that President Roosevelt frequently visited and hunted this part of the country and this helped to inspire his vision of protecting our land. I heard about it again last year when a couple of other photographers said it is the 2nd best national park to view wildlife, behind Yellowstone. I haven't been to every national park, but this seemed to live up to expectations. This is among some of the highest concentrations of bison you can find.
Not only was there was bison, but there were also feral horses.
While the wildlife is the highlight of visiting Theodore Roosevelt, the landscapes are also really nice. The park contains landscapes of grassland plains, rolling hills, badlands and hoodoos.
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