Leon Turnbull Photography

This morning (Saturday), my friend Rob and I went on another very early morning hike. Our goal was to get to Tamarack Lake in the Desolation Wilderness for sunrise. We succeeded in that effort, and that photo will follow shortly, but this is not Tamarack Lake here. This is the Echo Lakes. The hike to Tamarack Lake is about 4.5 miles one way and we started hiking at 5:45AM in the dark. That meant I was up at 4AM (and Rob even earlier, since he had to drive from the Auburn area). It is just about exactly a 1.5 hour hike, and this time, I timed it pretty well for a change, as we arrived at Tamarack Lake right at sunrise. Nonetheless, a bit earlier would have been even a bit better. The hike follows along Lower and Upper Echo Lakes for the first 3 miles or so, then climbs up to Tamarack Lake. At the top of the hill we looked back and saw this amazing glow over the Echo Lakes as the sun was getting herself ready to rise. But the color faded so fast, and we couldn’t get our cameras out in time. If we had been there 5 minutes earlier, the colors would have been much nicer than what you see in this photo. Still, I think I got a pretty decent shot here before the colors faded completely. From here, we continued on another mile to Tamarack Lake, and the clouds you see here became colorful a second time, this time with bright pink and golden colors. We could have taken more shots of that, but instead hurried on to Tamarack Lake to get there for sunrise. We arrived just in time. Stay tuned.