I had a bit of luck when I arrived at the gate below Rock Spring at maybe 6:55 a.m. and found it partly open. Maybe it hadn't been been shut properly the night before, but there was no ranger around so I scooted through the half-open gate. If I'd arrived five minutes later I'd have missed the glory and brocken specter.
When I got out of the car I was so stoked I didn't even consider how ephemeral the display might be.
You probably need to get there well before the usual gate opening at 7 a.m. to have a more leisurely experience.
Less than three minutes elapsed between this shot and the previous one, and the fog retreated downhill from there, taking the glory with it.
I wasn't in the mood to bike in the fog and wind to check on the trail cams, so I took the opportunity of driving to bring my camera gear and maybe photograph a few wildflowers.
I'd checked windy.com the day before to see if the air at 2,000 feet would be still enough to run a few focus stacks, and it looked like it might be okay. Unfortunately, the mountain turned out to be windier than I'd expected, and I was only able to fire off this one stack before it became impossible.
The Indian pink was bobbing like a prizefighter by the time I got there (it was near one of the trail cams), and it would have been difficult to get even a single-frame image of it under natural light, so I popped a flash at an angle to keep the background clutter to a minimum.
I've walked past this patch of coyote mint (Monardella villosa) several times lately, but this was the first time I had a camera other than my smartphone with me.
* * *
