Columbine near Caribou Lake

I thought I had exhausted every possible photo opportunity at Caribou Lake, in Colorado’s Indian Peaks Wilderness. After all, I had spent many days exploring the area, most recently during a four-day backpacking trip in July 2020. When I returned in July 2025, it was only because I needed an intermediate campsite on the way to my true destination, Wheeler Basin. Hiking all the way to Wheeler Basin in one day, starting from the Fourth of July trailhead, would have been an ordeal.

I arrived at Caribou Lake around noon, so I had plenty of time to explore for a sunset photo opp. After completely circumnavigating Caribou Lake and identifying only mediocre possibilities, I started heading back to my campsite to make dinner. As always, I was carrying an 8x monocular. I noticed a tongue of talus protruding into a meadow, perhaps 150 yards off the trail, that I had never bothered to examine. The edges of talus slopes are often a fruitful place to look for clumps of columbines. The monocular revealed a small patch of vegetation growing near the edge of the talus. Columbines? Or thistles?

I left the trail, hiked down a short, steep grassy hillside and across a wetland. The plants were columbines – certainly the most beautiful grouping I’d ever found around Caribou Lake, and among the best I’d ever found in Colorado. Had I simply overlooked these flowers on previous trips? I have often been surprised, and delighted, when repeat visits to a promising location turn up new possibilities for compelling landscape photographs. Or was it an exceptional year for this group of columbines? Repeat visits to the same flower fields has shown that the abundance of blooms varies widely year-to-year.

I shot some study frames, then returned to my nearby campsite to eat an early dinner. After dinner I spent two hours photographing the columbines in ever-changing light. Achieving full depth of field with the focal-length lens I needed for the best composition required focus-bracketing: shooting a series of images with different focus points, from the closest flowers to the distant peaks, each with the same exposure and composition. That, in turn, required perfectly calm conditions as the camera ran through the focus-bracketing sequence. The procedure failed multiple times, but with persistence I was able to complete some focus-bracketing sequences successfully.

I returned at sunrise the next morning for more photographs, then packed up and headed to Wheeler Basin. After two nights in the basin, I returned to Caribou Lake for the final night of my trip and photographed the columbine at sunset and again the following morning. This image, shot the first evening, with soft light bathing the flowers and strong, texturing light revealing the form of Mt. George, Apache Peak, Arikaree Peak, and Navaho Peak, proved to be my favorite.