Landscape Photography @ Lake Haiyaha

Details

One of the great joys of landscape photography, is the incredible locations that you are able to visit. A beautiful landscape photo can be shot from anywhere that’s true, whether that be a car window, or a popular roadside viewing area. However, where landscape photography truly comes into its own, is in the track to remote locations in search of vistas that very few people get to see in person.

With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to attend Visually Speaking‘s second Alpine photo hike of 2023. We are going to remain in Rocky Mountain National Park and start from the same trailhead as the previous Alpine photo meetup, but this time, we will venture a little farther afield. Lake Haiyaha sits at the end of glacier gorge, and was disturbed in the summer of 2022 by a massive rock slide that churned up the bottom of the lake itself. This released a bunch of different minerals into the lake, changing its crystal clear water to an opaque, pale turquoise. This has remained as the lake has frozen, giving the ice and incredibly unique appearance. This is our destination, and our objective for another dawn landscape photography meetup.

As with prior meetups held deeper in the mountains and at higher elevation, micro spikes are a necessity. As we get closer to the day, as information clarifies, snowshoes may also be required, but that will remain an unknown until the week of the meetup. In February, the snow pack is usually deep enough and hard enough to make hiking relatively easy. As with any winter time hiking, very warm clothing is necessary, insulated shoes are a must, and if you don’t have a great sense of equilibrium, trekking poles may also be extremely helpful.

Camera gear will be kept as light as possible, with a camera body, a wide angle lens, and a tripod being your main photo gear load-out. Bringing along a telephoto lens will not hurt, neither will a filter set, but as you will need to carry everything on your back in very cold conditions, I will leave that up to each attendee. At high elevations, battery life tends to retard very quickly, so extra batteries are a very good idea as well.

Sunrise is at 6:59 AM so a 5AM start time is necessary to allow for us to make the ascent by sunrise and be in position to shoot pre-alpenglow. Once we're settled at the lake's edge, I'll be available to offer any assistance in setting up the perfect shot. Managing exposure with the various light intensities at sunrise can be a challenge, and I'll be available to help with that and any other optical and creative problems that arise.

Recommended Gear: