On our way back home from adventuring in Utah, my friend Matt and I were hoping to get one more night of astrophotography under our belts, but the weather wasn’t looking good. We decided we’d try our luck at camping in Poudre Canyon as that was en route and a very special place to me. It was in this canyon that I went rafting for the very first time when I was 12. On that same trip, I summited my first mountain, Comanche Peak.
As we entered the canyon, we were a little surprised on how much snow there still was…this for sure would make camping interesting tonight. Didn’t really matter as all of the forest service campgrounds were still closed for the season. We were starting to get a little discouraged when we found one solitary open campground. We were just getting ready to start thinking about hotels and breweries down river in Fort Collins, but there is little in life I wouldn’t trade for a night camping in a tent next to a river in the mountains.
We had a fire and a nice meal and then called it a night so that we could get up to experience one more sunrise on this trip. We headed back up the canyon a few miles to check out a spot we had seen the night before. Matt went one way and I went another. I had just gotten the Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 100 f/2 lens for my Nikon D850 and I had been wanting to test it out for my landscape work. Since I didn’t really get to use it Moab, I didn’t even bring another lens with me that morning.
I worked some long exposures of the river and concentrated on composing the flow in interesting ways around the rocks. I sat on a pile of boulders and really just watched and listened and waited for the light to drift into the canyon. Sunrise probably happened 10 or 15 minutes ago, but it would be a little bit before it started making its way down the steep canyon walls. I skipped a few almost flat rocks across the large eddy near where I was sitting. And then I looked up to see where the light was and I saw light fragments begin to wash over an ancient Juniper that appeared to be twisting its branches to get closer to the light. Ancient. Way older than I could even guess because of where it was growing. I loved the way the rocks it was growing out of were still hiding beneath the light, but the trunk and branches were contrasted so beautifully against the lichen-covered, light-drenched canyon wall. Perfect.
I didn’t really shoot very much that morning- it was more about being in such a special and beautiful place, but I did capture three images that are very meaningful and document my time in Poudre Canyon that April morning.
The Cache la Poudre river at sunrise in April 2021.
Driftwood detail in Cache la Poudre canyon.