Colorado Trail ‘21 - Molas Lake
Last summer, I thru-hiked the Colorado Trail and brought along my 35mm film camera, an Olympus OM-1, and 22 rolls of film (all Kodak films, Portra, Ektar, some Ektachrome). Since then, I’ve been slowly going through it all, scanning the film and trying to decide what I want to do with my favorite shots of the bunch.
Here’s a few shots from a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 which I exposed in the miles surrounding Molas Lake. I’d shipped my final resupply box to the campground there, and actually ended up unexpectedly getting a free shower there when I picked up the box! Apparently, the mother of another thru-hiker had come through a few days before and left like $50 to pay for showers for unsuspecting thru-hikers who stopped by. Some lovely and much appreciated trail magic :)
This was actually the only roll of this type of film that I packed for the trail. The negatives are labeled “Kodak GC 400” on the edges, what I understand as a little view in to the lineage of this film stock from earlier “Kodak Gold” branding. The film has a warmer characteristic, and I got some lovely results in a variety of weather and light settings, from blue sky golden hour sunsets to overcast mid-afternoon, to ominous stormy skies. That warmer color profile often gives me a feeling of nostalgia for the photos we took on the family camera growing up, since we likely used similar Kodak Gold films back then.
A lot of the other hikers I’d been around had planned their last stop for Silverton. A few miles before the Molas Lake campground, the trail passed over the Silverton - Durango rail line and hikers could flag down the train to get a ride into town (and pay for the ride when they get on). That sounded fun, but I didn’t have enough time for a big diversion like that, so I was glad that I’d just shipped a box to the campground, which was right off the trail.
The view from Molas Lake was gorgeous, and the blue sky weather gave a lovely sunset. I camped a bit outside the campground behind some trees with a nice view of the mountains.
Chasing a rainstorm going up over a pass the day after my Molas Lake resupply. I joked with some other hikers just on the other side of this pass that they could thank me for the fact that the rain hadn’t yet hit us as I’d done the “sunshine dance” for us all - I put on my rain gear before it started raining, which usually means the rain won’t ever materialize and you’ll just hike in your steamy rain gear. Once you take off the gear and stash it back into your bag, though, that’s when it’ll surely start to rain.
Looking back at these photos leaves me feeling nostalgic for the trail. I felt so alive in my body while long-distance hiking in a way I’ve never quite been able to catch anywhere else. Feeling the rain come and go, the temperature shifts, hiking 30 miles bathing in the dry hot sun then going over a pass into another biome’s inescapable sogginess for another 30 miles - I was living in the world like the animal I am, not just teleporting between climate-controlled blandness. Sure, the 70-and-sunny perfect sunsets are photogenic and beautiful in themselves, but I found myself time and again more enraptured by the rain, the wind, the frightening lightning, and that soft smell of sagebrush baking under a relentless sun.