Picture Post: Moraine Park

 Moraine Park, in pictures. 

This is a frustrating picture post for me, though it's a pristine memory. It was completely spur of the moment--my brother and I flung ourselves out of the car with nothing more than a vague inclination of where and when JK would return to pick us up, and headed out with one hydration pack between us--an no camera. We had our phones, but I didn't even have my Moment lens. So, even though I have a lot of pictures in this post, the quality is not great. However, it was also nice being caught without my good camera--I just kind of sunk into the experience and enjoyed it. It's preserved in my brain, mostly. 

Unlike many of my other pictures from this trip, the haze you see isn't smoke--it's rain, fog, sleet, and snow. It started off just foggy, then rained lightly, before switching to sleet and snow. It was quite the adventure, and while it blocked some of the huge majestic views, there's something ethereal about being there in the fog, knowing all you need to do is part the veil and step through.

This was the view we kept driving past, enticing me to come hike.

This was the start of the hike, when the fog was just starting to come in from higher elevations, and my brother and I decided to impulse hike. We actually followed the rest of the road from here, rather than setting out on this trail, and hiked along the marked trail that peeks in and out of the tree line, far away from the road or people.

Once you are off the road and onto the trail, the stream meanders alongside you.

Looking back at the tree line we had been ducking in and out of.

 

Looking forward to the rest of the tree line trail, heading towards looming giants encased in fog.

Again with the obligatory dead tree picture, or as my niece puts it, photographing a symbol of your mortality.

One of my favorite pictures from this hike, because this is what the view was often like. Lacy pines gently framing the mountain and meadow landscape.

I'll take one brother, on the rocks.

This picture always makes me smile. It's not my normal hiking gear--I generally wear less bulky layers, but again, I was not planning to hike just then and I was coming down from an actual blizzard around 12,000 ft. I ended up being somewhat glad of it, though, because this was about when it started to sleet and snow.

That pine in the right corner is where we had just been standing on those rocks.

My brother thought this looked like a fish; I thought it looked like one of the sand worms from Dune.

I have so many versions of this picture.

Towards the end of the hike, you cross over the stream and head into the trailhead parking lot. From there, the Moraine Park campgrounds are easily accessible, and we were mostly walking through the campgrounds and alongside the road.

My brother got down to the water level, as he does.

This was the most stunning feature of this entire hike, but it's one that pictures can't capture. The trees at the back of the picture was where we were hiking, and all those dots in the middle are elk. The entire hike, they were bugling. We hiked a massive oval loop around the meadow, listening to them and the sleet and nothing else.