Rocky Mountain National Park

As I had mentioned, I have not been shooting as much because the paper is on a summer break. So when Chad asked me to go to with him to Rocky Mountain National park in Colorado, I jumped on the opportunity.

We left late on Sunday night. Chad and I picked up two other guys, Jaron and Amos, before we left town. We got out of the valley around 7 pm because we had to go back to the studio to get Chad’s tripod. We made good time on the drive.

Once we got into Steamboat Springs, we had a fun time finding the condo. Our directions and phones, both with Google maps, told us to turn left and keep on Pine Grove Road—a misleading set of directions. However, Amos used his phone with GPS directions, which told us to go straight though the light. We got to bed around 2 a.m.

The next day, we got up, got some food, including some steaks for dinner, and then started on the 2-hour dive to Rocky Mountain National Park. When I asked Chad why he wanted to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, he told me that “word on the street” is that there is a lot of wildlife, including bears, in the park at this time.

We were in the park for only a few minutes when we saw a ton of cars on the side of the road, all focused on a moose just off the road too. So we set up all of our gear, which consisted of a 5D with a 400mm, a 30D with a 70-200mm, a 20D with a 16-35 and a G10. I got this shot of the moose before we continued further into the park.As we drove, the cloudy skies became dark, and when we were stopped at a pull-out, the rain began to fall. As we drove up the mountain, the rain became snow and the snow became a white-out. The wind blew the snow more and more as we drove up the mountain. We knew as we drove that we were missing some great views because of the snow, but we kept driving hoping that the snow would stop.

The snow storms passed as we got around the mountain, so we stopped to take a look and were treated to a nice full rainbow over the valley.The drive down the backside of the mountain was nice, sunny and green. We were going to find a place to stop and have lunch when we had our first run-in with the law. A ranger pulled us over to say that we were speeding and had been close to the centerline. When he finished telling us to be careful, we asked if he knew of any bear sites. He told us there were some on the Silver Lake Highway. We decided to eat some lunch before heading off and got out and ate our sandwiches.

As we ate, we saw an animal move across the field, but we were not sure what it was. So we grabbed our gear and ran down the road where some other people were going into the woods. We heard that it was a bear that had walked across the road. We went a few yards into the woods when we saw it, and I got two pictures, this one and one of its ass. Then we lost it and didn’t want to end up scaring it anyway, so we went back to the car.

We started toward the area with the bears, but the rain started again. When we saw some elk, we stopped to take pictures, but because of the rain we stayed in the car. That is when another ranger came up and flashed his lights, so we moved and started to go back towards the other side of the park.

This time, the views at the top of the road were spectacular. I did an HDR photo and then a panorama HDR when we stopped at a pull-out.

This is just a 3-exposure HDR.This is a 3-exposure HDR and 7 frame wide Panorama for a total of 21 pictures. The HDR in this one was not the best, but I love the panorama part of it. Up the road there was a visitors’ center that was closed, but there were also some stairs leading to the top of the mountain. So we went up, and I did another panorama from the top of the mountain that is 16 photos wide. If you look close, Chad is on the trail to the far left to give some size perspective. I was happy with the landscapes I had taken. Part of me wanted some more animal shots, but it was getting late. We pulled out for Chad to do an HDR, and I took pictures of the water collecting on the pine trees. We put the cameras back into the trunk because it was getting dark. We drove a little ways down the road when we saw some more elk in an opening on the side of the road. We pulled over, got the equipment out again and walked over to the opening. There was probably at least 12 elk in the clearing’ all of them were male and most with big 6X6 or 5X5 racks.
What made it even better was that the rain and time had caused a lot of people to leave the park, so we shot with only two other people taking pictures. It was like our own personal photo shoots with elk models. After finishing with the elk, we headed back to the condo to have our steak dinner. We stopped to shoot the sunset just outside of the park when a cop came up to us again because he thought we were getting ready to go tip cows. That finished our trouble with the cops.
These are all photos from my cameras, but I have some on Chad’s G10 I need to get from him. If you want to see more, check on my Facebook. I will post them there in the next few weeks.