Saturday I thought I’d hike to Mill’s Lake. Frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to go, but Mills seemed like the right sort of distance for me that day. I didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn, and I’m a bit lazy when it comes to hiking through snow. A couple of miles each way seemed just about right.

The forecast high for Denver was 62 or 64, depending on who you listened to. I guessed it might be a bit breezy at Mills, but what the heck. It’s always windy at these lakes in winter, right? But generally it’s not bad in the forest. I arrived at the Glacier Gorge parking lot a bit after ten. I was thinking with such nice weather I might not get a parking spot there, but it was only about half full. As soon as I stepped out of the car it was obvious why – the wind was quite fierce. Took me about 30 seconds to decide not to hike. I exaggerate only slightly when I say the wind nearly knocked me down. I do this for fun, not as some sort of test.
I got back in the car and drove up to Bear Lake just to check it out. Not many hardy souls there, either. I was only in the parking lot for a few minutes but still managed to see three or four cars pass through without stopping.

I headed back to Moraine park for a while; it’s the first time I’ve bothered to check it out since the Fern Lake fire burned the area back in October. I sat there for maybe an hour, watching the world go by. Took a few pictures but nothing very interesting. The grass will be back in a few weeks, the shrubs might take a while longer. Maybe they’re not all dead but we won’t know for a few more weeks.

Then I headed back toward Deer Mtn. to watch the clouds fly over the mountains and set up the cameras. Eating my picnic lunch in the car isn’t as nice as at some alpine lake, but there are worse places to eat. I didn’t bring the GoPro mounts for the car, so I had to use the little gorilla pod instead of the suction cup. The suction cup does okay up to about 80mph and would have handled the wind. The lesson here is to always carry all the mounts with me whenever I take the camera. Oh well. I set the SLR up on a tripod, as low as it will go, on the leeward side of the car. Unfortunately, the wind here was still quite bad. Both cameras got moved around quite a bit.

When I looked at the raw footage I was a bit disappointed. I knew the cameras were moving quite a bit but hoped there was something I could do with the shots. I decided to make use of the “old film advanced” video effect. It makes the video look like an old film that’s been run over by a tractor. I figured the jitters in the footage looked a bit like film jumping a sprocket.

But it wasn’t a total loss. This was the first outing with the new battery grip for the EOS 20D. Worked like a charm. Shot over 1,100 photos without a snag. The grip supports either 6 AA batteries or two of the Canon battery packs. The grip shipped with two, so now I have three, even after tossing the original which no longer holds a charge. The only sub-optimal issue is that even with a full charge, the meter only reads a partial charge. I’m looking forward to trying it when it’s not so windy.