Glacier National Park, sometimes known as the Crown of the Continent offers stunning views and awesome wildlife viewing for visitors willing to make the trek out to Northern Montana near the town of Kalispell. One of the most spectacular sights at Glacier is Hidden Lake. From the parking lot t Logan Pass, Hidden Lake is a moderate 3 mile round trip hike. It is an incredible sight at any time but under the right conditions can be truly spectacular.
This panoramic wall art quality print of Hidden Lake took a number of years to capture. When I first started going to Glacier National Park, I, like many others new to the park was simply in awe of the sights all around. I had no idea where to go and when to go there to photograph the best sights and moments. For the first few trips to Glacier I was just happy to head up to Logan Pass, hike up to Hidden Lake and snap some shots any time of day.
One evening I was at Hidden Lake for sunset and noticed the surrounding mountains glowing as the sun set. Bear Hat Mountain reflecting in the calm waters of Hidden Lake. I quickly setup the camera and snapped a few nice photos. They were worthy of hanging on a wall but a single shot was not enough to capture the beauty of the full landscape. It was definitely a view that required a panoramic shot to really do it justice. At the time, however, I didn’t realize just how tough it would be for everything to come together to get a near perfect shot.
In order to capture this panoramic photo, the following things needed to happen:
- There had to be light cloud cover for the sun to hit the mountains and light them up.
- There could be no forest fire smoke to cloud the air, block the views or otherwise ruin the photo.
- The wind down at Hidden Lake needed to be perfectly calm in order to get Bear Hat Mountain to reflect in the water.
- There could be no snow, rain or other precipitation coming down to obscure the view of disturb the water.
- The trail had to be open. This is obvious but when grizzly bears frequent the area, the trail can be shut down for days at a time.
When this short was taken, my home base out there was in East Glacier near the East Glacier Lodge. That means every trip to Logan Pass and Hidden Lake involved more than two hours of driving up and back. The drive back was of course always in the dark as was at least part of the hike back from Hidden Lake to the Logan pass parking lot. Every day I would watch the weather forecasts for Glacier. There are a variety of weather forecasts for different parts of the park but not one for Logan Pass or Hidden Lake. I’d look at all of them and if the hourly forecast overall called for winds under 10mph (ideally much lower), clear to partly cloudy skies and no precipitation then I’d hop in the car, drive up to Logan Pass and make the trek out to Hidden Lake.
While Hidden Lake is probably the most spectacular sight up around Logan Pass though it is certainly not the only wall art worthy sight. There are bighorn sheep, mountain goats that frequent the area. There are lots of wildflowers in the summer and beautiful landscapes all over. Focusing on one thing has never been my strong point so I’d carry an arsenal or camera gear up to Hidden Lake every time “just in case”. There would be at least two cameras and a big Induro carbon tripod, a ball head and a pano head for the tripod and a collection of lenses that ran from 50mm up to a 150-600mm Tamron lens in case the mountain goats were around. All this gear makes for a REALLY heavy load but as I’ve always said, a camera is the best piece of exercise equipment I’ve ever gotten!
As I hiked up, I stopped a few times as wildflowers grabbed by attention. A few mountain goats crossed the trail and there were a few bighorn rams off in the distance. Fortunately I’d started the hike early enough to allow time for a few intermediate stops on the way to Hidden Lake. When you go to the Hidden Lake overlook, the wooden platform is a nice place to view the lake and take some photos. If you continue down the path past the overlook you’ll get some different views. This shot was taken a bit past the overlook, maybe a third of the way down to the lake level past the wooden platform at the overlook.
When I found the perfect spot, the tripod was setup, the tripod head mounted and the Canon 5D MK II with a 70-200mm lens mounted to the head. Everything was leveled and the edges of the scene mapped out so as to know where to shoot the first frame of the pano, how many rows to shoot and where to stop on the left right side of the view.
At sunrise, the color on the mountains starts to appear at the top and drips down from the peaks as the sun rises. At sunset the reverse is true. At the sun started to set, shadows on the lower portions of the mountains started to appear while the peaks got brighter. As the sunlight crept up the mountains, the tops of the mountains started to glow and the camera started firing. I probably snapped 20 complete panoramic images and around 32 gigs of shots between the time the shadows started to show on the bottom of the mountains and the last drip of color vanished from the mountain peaks as the sun went down. As the glowing area at the top of the mountain peaks shrinks as the sun drops in the sky, the intensity of the glow increases. Taking multiple shots provides the option to scroll through the finished stitched images and pick the best version. Which one is best, that’s for you to decide.
Like many other national park wall art photos, this one was years in the making and took around 40 trips to Hidden Lake to actually shoot. While I wouldn’t call this one perfect, the winds were calm and facilitated reflections of Bear Hat Mountain in Hidden Lake, the western forest fire smoke was minimal, the cloud cover was light and there were more mountain goats wandering around that people for this sunrise panoramic photo at Hidden Lake at Glacier National Park in Montana.
This panoramic photo looks great as a wall art piece on anything from metal to matte canvas or a famed matte print depending on your preference, lighting and decor. If you want a cool jigsaw puzzle for a Glacier National Park fan, this makes a great scene. Shower curtains and tote bags look great too!
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