Laika and I went on another overnight backpacking trip in the Hunter-Fryingpan wilderness area. Our trip to Collegiate Peaks in July wet my appetite for some astrophotography. I wanted to find a site with a southern view so we could see the core of the Milky Way.
I originally picked Lost Man Lake as our destination. It was about 4 miles north on a trail from Highway 82, just past Independence Pass. The weather was pretty grey and cool most of the hike up, which put a damper on some of the photography, but it helped keep us cool on a relatively strenuous hike.
Lost Man Lake turned out to be settled fairly deeply into a canyon north of a high ridgeline. It was a pretty location, but didn’t have the exposure I was looking for, so we hiked back up and over the saddle to Independence Lake on the south side of the ridge and set up camp for the night.
I learned a lot about trying to photograph the center of our galaxy during this trip. Some of the images came out, though there wasn’t much in the way of foreground to make for interesting pictures. I got up in the middle of the night to see if I could capture a few more shots with the moon illuminating the mountains around me. The landscapes came out fairly interesting, but it definitely wiped out the sky. Plenty of lessons to apply in the future.
