This was it; this is the end of the time I had in Colorado. It's so crazy to think that I'd been away from Oregon for so long and it was nearly time to leave. To be honest, I had very mixed feelings about this transition. Though I would never choose to stay, I was going to miss Colorado. I did though, have one last hoorah left. It had been on my list for quite some time and with only one day left to adventure, I knew I had to hike the Flat Top Trail.
The first part of the hike was relitivly univentful, but when I was near to the top of the ridge, things got awesome really quick. As if it was planned, right as I came over a hill, I became away of a few climbers that were about to complete an impressive climb called the Dragontail. I worked my way as close to the edge as I could get and watched and photographed them summit thier climb and celibrate their sucess. I later went over and congratulated them, and we traded information so I coud share the photos with them. With much more to see, I pushed on to make my way to the end of the hike.
Feeling pretty good once I made it, I decided to keep going and push myself further, so I next chose to summit Hallett Peak. I scrambled across the rocks and tundra and slowly made my way to the top. At this point, this was the highest I'd ever climbed, just shy of 13,000 feet above sea level. I was shooting all that I could with the incredible 360 views when I started to notice that the clouds were moving fast and they were coming straight towards me. I couldn't believe it, in my excitment, I put myself in a siguation that could have turned for the worst. If those clouds held weather they wanted to drop or even lighting I would have been in real trouble, but I was lucky. The clouds were merely clouds, but I was not going to stick around and test my luck, so I started the long trek back to the trailhead.
Though the hike was incredibly fufilling, I wasnt ready to say goodbye to RMNP, so I just started driving around stopping at all the usual spots remembering all the amazing memories this place held. Slowly I made my way through the park until I was on top of the Trail Ridge Road and then I was heading down to the west side. I had no plan; I just wanted to soak it all in stopping whenever it felt right (which was a lot). It was at one of those stops when it felt like fate again, there before me was a mother Moose and her little calf. Knowing full well of the danger of agrovating the mother, I kept a considerable distance and a few trees as well inbetween us and let the zoom lens do all the work. After the Moose were through modeling, they made their way into the woods and I contined on.
After cresting Trailridge Road, I pulled over to a lookout and decided that this was where I would watch the last of the light fade away for the only sunset I'd watched in RMNP. There I met a few other photographers looking to get the smae sunset, so we kept each other company as we patiently waited for the light to get good, and it truly did! The sun ended up setting almost perfectly between two peaks as clounds flowed in and out of the area. For all the ways to say godbye to such a speacial place, the way the day ended up playing out was perfect.
Photography Date: 6-11-17
Writing Date: 8-20-18
