Sometimes you just have to take adventures for yourself. Solo photography trips can be refreshing and a way to reboot. I have taken various solo adventures with my dog to go take photos, but the over night adventures are my favorite.
On this trip, I knew that I had to leave town to go photograph the fall colors, as this was the peak weekend for some of the locations I wanted to go. I was watching a Facebook photography group for weeks, watching peoples’ posts and updates about the status of the peak of the season. This was the weekend.
I started out around 9pm, in my new 4runner that I had purchased hours before, to head to Aspen with my dog, Storm. I thought that maybe I was a bit crazy driving 3.5 hours into the mountains alone, but sometimes you just have to do those crazy things to capture the images you want!
I arrived at the Maroon Bells around 12:30 in the morning, I found my usual location to sleep in my car. It was pretty cold out, around the low 30s. So Storm and I didn’t sleep too well, maybe 2 hours of sleep at best. Around 4:15am I decided to drive up to the main parking lot after hearing a few vehicles pass in the night. We went up there and there was probably a dozen cars or so in the lot. We set out to walk over to the lake to stake out our spot for sunrise. Yes, it was about 4:30am, and we had a few HOURS before the sun was to come up, but the crowds would be arriving too.
Last time I was in Aspen, back at the beginning of August, there was nobody around, it was a bit nerve-racking to go walk out into the darkness with no one around. This time there were others around, but not at the lake quite yet. I think I was so tired I didn’t even think about if there were any bears or mountain lions out there. I was definitely feeling a bit more brave this time around. Storm and I went to claim our spot for the sunrise. It was difficult to really know where to stand since the water in the lake was so low, but with luck I think we had the best spot along the entire lake!