The Enchantment Lakes plateau in Washington’s Alpine Lake Wilderness, located at an elevation of over 2,100 meters, is famous for its larch trees whose needles turn bright gold in early fall, beautiful lakes, and extremely jagged peaks in all directions. Getting there requires traveling 19 kilometers up a relentlessly steep trail that gains 1,800 meters. In early fall, snowstorms can occur.
While there, a severe snowstorm did occur, keeping us inside our tent for 36 hours, waiting for the storm to subside, as it brought with it temperatures well below freezing and high winds. On our final morning there, the storm finally broke, treating us to a glorious sunrise. It was still quite windy, with blowing and drifting snow. Our boots were really not designed for the cold temperatures we were experiencing, so we had to stay fairly close to our camp, frequently returning to our tent after taking some photos to get our feet warmed up – necessary to prevent frostbite.
Our camp was located near Rune Lake, which gave us a great overlook to the east down the Snow Creek valley. The break in the storm provided the opportunity to capture the sunrise with some of the key elements that make the Enchantments so special: golden larch trees, rocks left by the glaciers that carved this mountain paradise, and the special treat of having fresh snow. The cold and the wind provided challenges to capturing this image, especially given that I was using ISO25 Kodachrome film to ensure low noise and crisp detail.
This required that I use a tripod and wide-angle lens, balancing the f-stop needed to have adequate depth of field and a shutter speed that was adequate to stop motion due to the wind, waiting briefly for lulls in the wind between gusts. The final image was produced by scanning the original slide with a Canon EOS R6 Mark II and refining the digital file in Photoshop.
