But for me, it was more about the epic landscape. Straddling the Utah boarder in northwest Colorado , the Yampa and Green Rivers have carved incredible 2,500′ canyons through the red sandstone.
Sticking with my inability to stay still last winter, I set out for my first camping trip of the year in early March. Since I had already hit up Bryce and Zion National Parks in the prior few months, I decided to go the easy route and try to chase some epic shots that had escaped me in the past.
There is something special about the desert when it’s blanketed with a fresh coat of snow – the brilliant white exhibiting an extreme contrast with the orange, reds, and yellows of the desert.
Fast-forward couple of years through the rise of over tourism being experienced world-wide, I hadn’t dared to go back. Right after that first trip, visitation numbers to the park began to increase significantly from 3.1 million in 2014 to 4.5 million visitors in 2017.
When I’m backpacking, I usually enjoy doing little-to-no work once I’ve reached and set up camp. Because of this, there were times during my once-in-a-lifetime High Sierra trip where I didn’t even go out and shoot during the golden hours, usually using the excuse of being too tired to wander around.
Hiking under the moonlight, I knew we had made quick work of the 3-miles of switchbacks traversing up the west side of Mount Whitney, but I was in serious disbelief as we topped out at Trail Crest well before sunrise.
Standing only 84.6 miles from Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, which is the lowest point in North America (-282 feet), Mt Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet – a whopping 14,787 foot difference!
The High Sierra Trail continued for a bit through the same, dried up forest we encountered the previous day, but as we approached treeline, the landscape gave way to familiar soaring alpine habitats with trickling creeks, grassy tussocks, soggy meadows, and occasional tarns.
Waking up on our fifth morning, we were already a day ahead of schedule and still technically had that Guitar Lake rest day built-in, so we decided to break up that section with a night at Crabtree Ranger Station before continuing on the Guitar Lake.