Snowy Range Ramparts

The rugged rocky ramparts of the Snowy Range are incredibly scenic. Granite cliffs, spires, and peaks rising out of clear alpine lakes at the treeline are certainly some of the magic ingredients for a great location and photograph.

I have posted some images in mt last couple of posts of the sunrise I caught on my trip as well as the Milky Way images I was able to get.  I also wanted to show some images of the range and how scenic it is.

I love the high alpine country like this.  The mountains, the signs of glaciers from the last ice age, the little lakes, being right at treeline.  It all adds up to an incredibly fun location to explore.  Even on a short one night trip, I wanted to see what I could.

There were some afternoon clouds that were building up as they usually do in the summer days and I was able to work them into a few compositions as I walked among the rocks and trees along the edge of the mountains.

From a photography standpoint, I also might mention this trip was somewhat of a first for me in that I left my Canon 5D2 at home.  Only having one night, wanting to travel as light as I could, and wanting to get the Milky Way, I took my two Sony cameras.  I had the A7S with three adapter Samyang lenses- 12mm fisheye, 14mm f/2.8, and the 24mm f/1.4. Those are three big lenses being DSLR sized but all are outstanding at night (only used on a tripod).  I also took my tiny NEX6 with kit zoom lens as my walk around hand held camera.

It turned out to be a good kit.  More compact than my DSLR kit but it could still be smaller if Samyang and Sony would make small primes (hint hint).

In any event I was able to explore the peaks and set up several different images throughout the day as I scouted for a sunset location and waited for the Milky Way.


I realize I write this in most any blog post I do on this location but I am always amazed at how scenic this location is and how empty it is.  I easily consider it nicer than Rocky Mountain National Park (don't tell the Colorado folks) but it has zero crowd.

You could see something similar and not as scenic at Bear Lake in RMNP but you would sit in a traffic jam, then have to park in a huge parking lot and be shuttled up in a bus to Bear Lake.  Only to have to see and share it with 900 other people.  Good luck having a quiet mountain experience.


I had the Snowy's almost all to myself, seeing just a handful of other people in a day there.  In fact, this is one of the few folks a saw in the bottom picture here- a lone fly fisherman.

Luckily I was able to frame up a quick shot of him floating out in the cold waters of Mirror Lake.