Leon Turnbull Photography

3AM.What a beautiful time of the day. Not! Especially after only 1 hour of sleep. It always seems that whenever I have plans to get up early, I cannot sleep enough that night. Why not? Too excited? Something or other. Under normal circumstances, I would have shut off my alarm if I was having troubles getting to sleep. I have been rather lazy lately, in that way. Why? Old age? Something or other. This time, however, I had to get up. My friend Rob was going to be knocking on my door at 3:30AM. We had made plans the previous day to go on a sunrise hike into the Desolation Wilderness. He was bringing along his daughter and her friend. I guess it was actually a good thing that I made that commitment with Rob. It forced me to get my lazy duff out of bed and out into the great outdoors.

The plan was to hike up to the top of Horsetail Falls in the dark, in order to be at the top for sunrise and shoot the alpenglow light on Pyramid Peak, with hopefully a reflection in one of the alpine lakes up there. I was hoping to get to Ropi Lake, but we just didn’t have enough time. It is a tough hike. I was worried it might be too difficult in the dark, but we made it up to Horsetail Falls in pretty good time. The waterfall was flowing very well for the middle of August. I was a bit surprised at that. But it was dark, so of course we couldn’t take pictures (I like this falls better at sunset, anyway). And anyway, we had to slough it up to the top of the falls as quickly as possible. Horsetail Falls is 800 ft. high, and you basically have to scramble straight up the mountain to the top. It is killer, and took a lot longer than I anticipated. We were about 15 minutes too late. When we finally arrived at the top and came into view of Pyramid Peak, we could see that the first light was already hitting the peak. No time to make it to Ropi Lake. We came to Avalanche Lake first, and could see the peak and reflection in the lake. But I thought Pitt Lake, just a little further ahead, might offer a better photo. Big mistake. At Pitt Lake, you can’t even see Pyramid Peak because there is a ridge blocking the view. We quickly headed back to Avalanche Lake to take our photos. We were a bit late. The extra jaunt up to Pitt Lake cost us too much time. It really bugged me too. I should have studied the topo maps more and realized that ridge would be blocking the view of the peak at Pitt Lake. Well anyway, we still had a very pleasant morning and came away with some decent sunrise shots at Avalanche Lake. Now that I know how long it takes to get up there and where to photograph, I will definitely be back up here someday.