It was August, the peak summer for Montana. I had been staying at some friends house in Bigfork and enjoying my time there. Now it was time to go back home to Idaho. But for some reason I felt like I needed to go up to a hiking area near there, before hitting the road. I packed my bags, and headed out!

The drive up to the trailhead for this location takes about 30-45 minutes and it climbs and climbs. But you sure are glad to not be hiking all that elevation once you make it up! I packed my pack and started the hike.

It was a pleasant afternoon, not too hot. And I made quick headway and bumped over the pass. Then I seen a peak I wanted to hike! So I went off trail and up the ridgline, making my way with my eyes and using the topo map on my phone. Soon I was climbing above an alpine lake to my right! And to my left looking out over the Flathead Valley! I continued up the ridge and summited a couple smaller rises, then made my way to the main one.

Looking down in front of me was another lake. I loved the shape of it!! The afternoon sun was now hot so I hid in the shade in a small rock enclave after doing some writing. The suns rays moved and it became evening. Beautiful shadows and streams of light fell on the ridges and lake below! I wanted to capture a nice foreground and found some small flowers to do so. I took multiple images focusing on different distances for each shot.

This technique is called “focus stacking” and it is primarily an advanced landscape and macro photography technique. You merge all the sharp parts of the images together to make one fully sharp image. This particular one was very hard as the lines in the flowers didn’t match right and I had to zoom way in in photoshop to fix it.

Anyhow I spent the evening up there with only two bottles of water, much to my chagrin. I wasn’t planning on staying that long. But I decided to stay for sunset. The sun began shining through a spot in the valley which was way cool! Then later the sun was a fiery red ball dropping out of sight as a lightning storm built up then moved over the valley and north of me over the mountains. I love watching the weather from a high vantage! However, it was really hard to accurately capture the light and beauty I seen that day. I spent a lot of time with God up there that evening. Just me and Him hanging out. Then I hiked out in the dark, with only my cell phone as a light. And drove all the way to Libby, exhausted but happy.