July Lake

I was on a backpacking trip with my friend Scott doing the Fourth of July Lake loop trail. We spent the day hiking through all the beautiful views of Carson Pass and had begun setting up camp at July Lake. We had just finished our dinners, and we’re sipping tea by the lake. The lake view facing west, towards the setting sun, was nothing but clear skies, not a cloud in sight. There was a canyon behind us, facing east that I had admired when we first arrived, which had lots of clouds that I hoped would light up and be a good photo.

As the sun was descending behind the lake, I kept looking back at the canyon to see if it would light up. When sunset came around, I looked back at the canyon, and sure enough, there was lots of color. I put my cup down, ran and grabbed my camera, and hurried to the edge of the canyon to start taking photos. I spent about 10 minutes there, and every so often I would look back at the lake, and it seemed like a cloud had appeared over the lake. I was a little skeptical at first if we could see it from the lake, for just a couple of minutes ago, there was not a cloud in sight. I asked Scott, “do you think that cloud is visible from the lake?” He replied, “yeah I think so.” So I ran back as fast as I could to the lake, and snapped a couple photos of this before all the color in the sky went away. I only had time for a couple shots. I put so much time and focus into the canyon to the east that I almost missed this opportunity.

When it was all said and done, I didn’t think this shot was going to turn out that well. The mountain on the other side was so tall that I wasn’t able to get as much reflection off the water as I would have liked. When I went to look at the photos, I thought for sure the canyon shot was going to be the winner, but this was by far the better shot.

One of my favorite things about backpacking is being able to see sunsets and sunrises in remote places that not very many people get to see. And the fact that this cloud came out of nowhere to provide a show I didn’t see coming makes this one even more special. It was a last minute afterthought that stole the show, and was my best photo from the trip.