Alpine Dreams
While I was out in Colorado I scouted all of my locations and hikes before the workshop I was leading.
This location was one that I added last minute and in doing so I did not do the adequate research into my hike.
I had read quickly before getting to the trailhead that there were lots of wildflowers through sweeping meadows and very little elevation change. I also remembered that it was about a 2.2 mile hike each way.
I was so very wrong.
After a few hundred feet of hiking up I began to realize I had read the description for a different hike in my haste but I hoped things would level off.
They didn’t.
I found myself doing something I have never done on a hike before, I was considering simply turning around because the hike was so hard. To put it into perspective, it was my first day in Colorado and I will typically do a warm up hike of a few miles. At about mile two with the trail not leveling out once I was sweating so much my hiking boots were soaked.
Eventually I got to the end of the hike, an amazing alpine lake. You cannot see it much here because the water was a little choppy so I composed a different shot with this clump of grass in the foreground.
But what I learned that day was the even though I do lots and lots of research on my locations and shots, I still make mistakes.
When it was all said and done I hiked just shy of 2,000’ of elevation on the 3.2 miles there and then got to hike back down. All in all I hiked a total of just over 7 miles in three hours (including shooting) and had planned for 4 with a couple hundred feet of elevation gain.