Colchuck Lake

Author's Comments

Four miles up and twenty-two hundred feet of climb, and then the trees thin and the lake appears all at once. The color does not photograph the way it looks. I have tried. The turquoise of glacial meltwater sits in a register that digital sensors render as either too saturated or too cool, and the only way I have found to do it any justice is to stop trying and let the granite do the work instead. Dragontail rises directly from the far shore. In late September the larches on its lower flanks turn gold for about ten days, and that is the window I plan around. Earlier in summer the light is harder and the lake is more crowded with day hikers who arrived in the same pre-dawn wave you did. By late September the trailhead parking is still full by six but the energy has shifted - cooler air, fewer voices, the season turning. The photograph most people come for is the wide reflection from the northeast shore, peaks doubled in still water. It is worth making and it requires absolute calm, which usually means the first hour after sunrise before the thermals start moving across the surface. After that the wind picks up and the mirror is gone until evening. I prefer to walk further around the lake than most people do. The boulder field on the west side takes effort to cross and it puts you in a position where the peaks stack differently and the foreground has scale. Golden hour up here does not last long. The peaks block the sun earlier than you expect, and the light goes from warm to cold to gone in about twenty minutes. Be ready before you think you need to be.

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