Wintering at Lake McDonald

I spent most of this winter in Kalispell, Montana which the gateway to Glacier National Park. Our home is less than an hour from Lake McDonald, where most visitors get their first view of the mountains when they visit. This gave me the opportunity to photograph the lake several times over the winter, seeing the area in different conditions and learning how it changes through the season.

Lake McDonald is known for its view of the mountains and for the colorful rocks along its shoreline. It is a popular spot for swimming and boating during the summer and partially freezes over during the winter. The image below was captured before sunrise on a cold (-20°F) January morning. The forecast for sunrise looked good, with some nice clouds, but some thicker clouds to the south blocked the sun from really lighting up the mountains. The lake was completely calm, though, and I really enjoyed the morning view and reflections. There was no sign of ice on the lake at this point, but the cold temperatures would soon lead to some changes.

I returned to Lake McDonald for another sunrise about two weeks later in mid-February. Not surprisingly, the cold temperatures over the previous two weeks froze a large section of the lake near Apgar Village to the point that people were walking around on the ice. Somehow a partially frozen lake still makes me nervous even with people walking on it, since I know that the thick ice ends at some point! There were some patterns in the ice on the lake, and I walked around the shoreline for a while trying to figure out a good way to use them. My favorite is below, where I used a zig-zagging dark area to lead the eye toward one of the mountains at the other end of the lake. The rising sun added a nice pink/purple hue to the scene.

My next trip to the lake was a month later in mid-March. The lake was still frozen near Apgar Village at its southwest end, but the rest of the lake was clear. I drove east along the southern shoreline looking for a good place to photograph at night. The early season Milky Way rises further to the north than at other times of the year, and I was hoping to see a nice band of stars over the mountains. I found a really nice spot that looked in the right direction but would require a tricky scramble down a snow covered hill in the dark. The lake was remarkably calm and snow-capped mountains reflected perfectly in it so I took a quick hand-held image from this spot in the afternoon light.

The next cove over was perfect – there were a couple of parking places, easy access to the shore, and it was somewhat protected from any breezes that might ruin the reflections. I returned to this spot at 3am and started capturing images.

The lake wasn’t quite as calm as it had been during the day, but the longer night time exposures helped to smooth it out. I was just happy to have clear skies and calm winds on a winter night in Montana! I started with my 14mm lens (image above) to get as many of the stars as possible. I had noticed that the sky was strangely bright for an evening with no moon, but didn’t realize until I got home that I had picked up some aurora behind the mountain. For those that want the technical details, this image was taken with a Canon EOS R5 camera and a Rokinon SP 14/2.4 lens at ISO 3200, f/2.8 and a 25 second exposure. I then switched to my Tamron 35mm f/1.4 lens for the image below, which better emphasized the mountains and aurora at the expense of some of the stars. I used a 10 second exposure at f/1.4 with this lens which kept a little more detail in the water and lights.

There were some nice sunsets forecast for the area later in March so I drove into the park on consecutive nights to take advantage. I went back to the same spot that I’d found for my night time images hoping to find some calm water. On my first attempt (below) the breeze was too strong for reflections but there were some fantastic clouds over the mountains. I found a puddle in the rocks and tried using that in a portrait orientation to get some reflections, show the rock colors, and highlight the clouds. I kept the image dark in processing to keep the moody feeling.

The next night was a completely different experience. There was a little bit more of a breeze, so I had to stick to a slightly more sheltered spot next to the lake, but the light on the mountains and clouds was just beautiful. I tried several different compositions, both portrait and landscape. For the image below I was trying to include some of the colorful rocks near the camera along with the mountains and clouds up into the sky. This was before sunset so the color wasn’t strong as it would become a little later.

As the evening progressed the color in the clouds just kept getting more intense. The image at the top of this post was taken before the full color developed and I was still trying to include the foreground rocks. The image below was taken when the color in the clouds was strongest. I zoomed in to fill the frame with the colorful sky and its reflection in the water. While this was the type of image I’d been hoping to capture for much of the past year, I really enjoyed how different the area looked every time I made a visit.