Two Aprils ago, I spent the night atop the cliffs overlooking the Old Chimney trail and Lehtinen’s Bay. I went not very well prepared with no tent and no sleeping mat or bag and spent a very cold night sleeping on a juniper bush and covering myself with my sleeping bag liner. However, I came back with a beautiful panorama of the Milky Way which I wrote a blog post about

I do find that location very soothing, and I have since visited that same location again many times under different light and weather conditions. Among my favourite of those is one where I car camped and then biked down the trail very early in the morning to make it to this location for a sunrise photo-shoot.

Last year, in one of my hikes while coming up the talus and then through the trees leading to the gorge at the Chimney (top left part of the photo), rather than continue the gorge, I decided to go left to an open area to see what the view looks like from the base of those same cliffs. The view did not disappoint.

It was immediately clear to me that this location would be an excellent spot to shoot the Milky Way from. I did some scouting and decided the flat rock in the bottom right corner of the above photo offers the best vantage point, so I made a mental note to come back there sometime the following April (this year) and take some night sky photos.

April proved to be a challenging month to complete this plan. The trail was full of snow, and the skies were overcast for the most part, and it was not until May 16 that a chance presented itself. That weekend the night was moonless, but it had been raining almost everyday that week. The forecast called for clear skies that night, so I decided to take my chances and see how it goes.

The girl in the park office told me the forecast did not look good for that night, and I almost turned back, but since I had driven all the way there, I decided to go to the trail head and bike down the trail to the lake to see what it looked like. The sky was clearing, so I biked back to the car and drove back to the office to get a back country camping permit. The girl was surprised to see me back, but I told her I decided to take my chances.

I made it to the location at around 9 pm and spent about an hour looking for trees that would be suitable for my hammock but could not find anything. Finally I decided to just find another flat rock with something to lean on and just spend the night stargazing while covered with my sleeping bag. It was not a comfortable night, but I was warm despite the temperatures dropping down to almost zero degrees Celsius.

I took many shots during the night, some of them were 2 minute exposures to show the detail in the darker areas. But the wind gusts made that a challenge because the trees looked like smudges. Luckily I left the tripod put, so all my panoramas aligned well, including one I made with a relatively faster shutter speed before it got really dark. I blended that one with with a panorama made with a 20 second exposure I took later in the night when the Milky Way was where I needed it to be for the final image to be balanced. The result did not disappoint, although I would have preferred to take it in April with the Milky Way lower in the sky, because my 14mm lens in portrait mode was barely wide enough for the composition. Anyway, here’s the shot, I think the clouds and air glow only enhanced the beauty of the night sky.

Milky Way Arch Over Lehtinen’s Bay Revisited

At the Sea Lion, Again