Month: November 2012

Enchantment Lakes [5]

Day 2. Approaching Lower Enchantments

On our first day I still had energy to walk and there were still 2 hours till sunset but John and Josh decided to camp night out at Upper Snow Lake. The second day I learnt why.

The last mile of this hike was the toughest. It was pretty much continuous scramble up a face of a big rock. There were no flat spots big enough to setup a tent. Once we were there there were only two options: walk up or walk down. Even in day light it was easy to loose the trail, since in many cases there were no trail. At night it would be extremely hard to stay on it.

I was not used to go such steep trails. My muscles were sore from previous day hike. So, I was moving slowly, checking that my muscles would not give up on me before making each steep step. Loosing balance was not an option. It took us 3 or 4 hours to get to Lake Viviane. (In other words we would not make it before night fall the day before.)

As we climbed higher and higher we could see golden larches in the distance. Larches were glowing in sun light. Now they were not only above us; we left some below.

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The grand view of the whole valley we had been walking up so far was opening up to us.

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Enchantment Lakes [4]

Day 2. Sunrise at Snow Lake

We woke up to quite morning. First thing first: locate the camera that I left for the night to photograph star trails. Next onto photographing sunrise, breakfast could wait just a little bit.

It was freezing but no wind at all, absolute stillness. Good opportunity to photograph reflections in Snow Lake. The water level was incredibly low exposing steep banks of the lake that typically lay deep under water.

The textures created by sand and dust deposits brought here by water then dried up when the water level dropped were fascinating. We could see golden larches at higher elevations. They seemed so close.

The tops of the mountains were lit up pretty nicely. I wish there were some clouds too to add to the light show but the sky was as clear blue as it could be.

After photographing sunrise we made breakfast from freeze-dried bags. Once both our creativity and bodies were fed we packed up and moved out toward Enchantment Lakes.

Enchantment Lakes [3]

Day 1. Sleepless Night

As I wrote in the previous post our first camp was next to Upper Snow Lake. By the time we made and ate dinner it was dark. And there is not much to do when it is dark in the wilderness. So we settled for a sleep.

I was excited: my first night in the wilderness. I may have been too excited to get any sleep. Or maybe it was just too uncomfortable. I had too much clothe on and was too hot, I had no pillow, the mattress was blown too stiff, the air was freezing and freezing air was causing runny nose. (Only by the last night of the trip I found the right combination of all the things to get a good night sleep.)

Anyways, I could not sleep. I was just lying trying to get some rest. At about 1am I, finally, gave up, got out of tent and decided to enjoy the night a little bit. And I was rewarded with Aurora Borealis. It was not the biggest I’ve seen but it was fun.

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Once that was over I decided to photograph star trails. It took me about 15 minutes of trial-and-error to find Northern Star – the center of the spin. Once I found it and figured out the right exposure I set my camera off on the longest exposure I’ve ever had – 1.5 hours.

The good thing of being in the wilderness is that I could leave camera up for whole night and nobody would steal it. So, once I started exposure I went back to the tent and finally got some sleep.

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