Loch Vale (The Loch)

Author's Comments

The Loch sits at ten thousand feet in a valley that glaciers carved and then walked away from, leaving behind a textbook U-shape and a lake the color of old jade. I have been up there in July and again in late September, and I will tell you the September trip is the one I think about. The aspens along the lower trail had turned, and Icy Brook ran quieter than it does in midsummer, and when I came around the last bend and the water opened up beneath Taylor Peak the wind had not yet started. That window matters. The reflection on The Loch is a morning gift and it does not last. By nine, sometimes earlier, the alpine wind comes down off the Cathedral Wall and the surface goes to texture. I was on the trail before sunrise. Headlamp through the subalpine forest, the air thin enough that I noticed it on the steeper sections, and then the sky starting to pale as I reached the lake. The granite caught light before the water did. That is the moment to be set up - when the cliffs go warm and the lake is still holding the last of the night, and the contrast between the lit stone above and the dark green below is at its strongest. Keep going if your legs have it in them. Timberline Falls is another half mile up and the valley keeps unfolding. But the lake itself is the photograph, and the photograph is a morning one, and the wind is the clock you are racing.

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