Picnic at Sprague Lake

It's been 8 weeks since Katie broke her leg while indoor rock climbing on a bouldering wall. That injury in combination with packing to get ready to move into a new house has been the two things keeping me from hiking without her or going on some other photo adventure. Today's "hike" was just a walk around a lake and a picnic, nothing truly spectacular, but we haven't been up to Rocky in a while and wanted to attempt to get back to our normal weekends filled with outdoor adventures. It didn't give us the same sense of enjoyment that a normal hike would have, but we figured that going into it which is why our main objective was to have lunch on the lake.

Being out in nature is just one part of the hiking experience, the other part is being in an area that isn't so easily accessible. Considering slight unevenness in the ground affected her stability, I don't think we'll be doing anything inaccessible for a while, but this hike strengthened those balancing muscles a little so that next time it should be easier. We knew it wouldn't be like other hikes and getting back into hiking post-injury has to start somewhere. We took it slow, had lunch on a bench in the middle of the walk, and enjoyed the cold mountain air.

Katie bought me a new lens for Christmas, the Canon RF 35mm f/1.8. Since I've been busy with packing I haven't used it yet, so this was the perfect thing to try it out on. I've needed a middle-of-the-road lens for a while now since my hiking lenses are a 16mm (way too wide) and a 50mm (too zoomed in for landscapes). The 35mm is perfect and this hike was a great test of it. The 35mm will also double as a macro lens which has a 1/2 reproduction size at minimum focusing distance (which is incredibly short). Although this isn't the right season for macro photography, I found a few things on the trail to give the macro a try and it worked fantastic. I can't wait for wildflower season to really get the most out of this lens.