{"id":4414,"date":"2019-08-03T17:09:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T23:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=4414"},"modified":"2019-08-03T17:10:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-03T23:10:52","slug":"dawn-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2019\/08\/dawn-patrol\/","title":{"rendered":"Dawn Patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Friday, August 2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My alarm went off at 2:45am this morning. Crazy, yes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kristin and Coop are in the neighborhood with plans to do a week’s worth of back country hiking. I’ve known them online for about a decade, and met them a year or two back. They’re nice people and we share a common passion so I reached out to them to see if we could get together to break bread or something. They suggested a few alternatives. Two of them don’t fit my schedule, and the third was to meet at the Bear Lake parking lot at 5am for a hike up to Dream Lake to watch the sunrise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get to Bear Lake at 5am, I need to leave the house not long after 3. This sounds like a stupid thing do, so of course I said “yes”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason behind this is that Coop is a much better photographer than I am. My photos tend to be more like documentary evidence that I’ve been somewhere, while his you could call “art”. There’s a fundamental difference in how we go about it. That’s probably not correct: there are perhaps several fundamental differences in how we go about it. One of those is that he wants to take pictures during the “golden hour”. That means being somewhere at sunrise or sunset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which, today, means getting my butt out of bed before 3 and driving a couple of hours, then hiking a mile in the dark, all so we could be at Dream Lake for sunrise; to see Dream Lake and Hallett Peak bathed in the colors of the rising sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems I’m always saying I got out of the house a few minutes later than I’d wanted, and that I arrived at the trailhead late. But today I managed to leave by my desired time, and as might be expected, I hit no traffic once out of the city. So instead of being late I was at the Bear Lake parking lot early. I could have slept another fifteen minutes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hit the trail at 5. First decision was whether to take the shortcut to Nymph Lake or not. We went for the shortcut, but none of us could find it in the dark, so the long\/usual way it was. Once at Dream, Coop picked a spot near the outlet. Another photographer was already set up there, and space was at a premium, so rather than get a poorer quality shot of the same thing as the others, I went for a slightly different angle and found a spot on a rock outcropping that wasn’t in their view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GoPro is fully automatic but I set it running anyway. I figured it would have a hard time with the lighting conditions, but you never know how things will turn out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m really not a very astute photographer, and I still haven’t figured out all the ins and outs of the new camera. (I figured since it was another Canon it would be fairly similar to my old one. It is, but it isn’t. Most of the features that are in common work the same way, but not all. And there are loads of new features.) So I made some guesses and tried a few different things hoping that maybe I’d get a result I like. In the end, I think I did okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After watching the sunrise and taking in Dream Lake and Hallett Peak in all their glory we headed up to Emerald Lake. Kristin wanted to go there because it’s been a long time since she was there in summer. Hiking up there, it became obvious to me that I haven’t been there in summer in a long, long time myself. There are some wood bridges we crossed that I don’t recall ever crossing. I’m pretty sure every time I’ve been there in the last thirty years involved hiking across snow most of the way between Dream and Emerald.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were up there early enough that it wasn’t crowded yet. We weren’t alone, but there were far fewer than the fifty or so (minimum, even in winter) that I’m accustomed to. I set up the GoPro again and we hung out there for quite a while. Hikers came and went the whole time, but the biggest group we saw was a mama duck with her eight ducklings. They swam around and stumbled over some deadwood floating on the edge of the lake before getting onto the trail like they were going to hike back to Dream Lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When we got back to the Bear Lake parking lot we discussed where we should go for breakfast and headed back to Estes Park. We ate at Molly B’s, sitting at the tables outside. It was quite pleasant (another beautiful day in the neighborhood), in spite of the heavy truck traffic rumbling up and down Moraine Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They explained where they were going to be hiking. It sounds like a nice time. I don’t know that I’m up to spending a week in the back country, but four years ago I’d have said I wasn’t up to any backpacking at all, so perhaps my attitude will change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to think that I know my way around the Park. I may not know the names of all the mountains, even the ones I’ve hiked beneath many times, but I’d like to think if you mention a lake I’ll know where it is. So when Kristin talked about Ten Lake Park, I nodded as if I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had no clue. So after getting home, I had to look it up in the Foster guide. This will certainly go on the to-do list, most easily accomplished by staying a couple of nights near Verna Lake and getting there by bushwhacking up and over the flank of Mount Craig. It’s certainly too much effort for me to do as a day hike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was a short day: too early of a start for me to make a habit of watching the sunrise, but a pleasant walk in beautiful surroundings, with friendly people. If they want to put up with me again, I’d be happy to meet up with them again on their next trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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