Mountain Creek near Imogene Lake

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Imogene Lake is a popular hiking destination in the Sawtooth Mountains. Up quite high in the mountains, it is one of the largest lakes in the Sawtooth National Forest. On the early June morning that I took this photo, I had planned to catch the sunrise at Stanley Lake and then hike the trail to Hell Roaring and Imogene Lakes. It was a big day, considering it started at 2:30am, and on the way through the mountain pass I hit a deer on the highway. It wasn’t at a high speed, so I was still able to continue, as was the deer. The hike was a 14-miler, with 1500 feet of elevation gain, and took about 8 hours due to the number of stops I made to take photos. As I reached the final mile of trail before the lake, I ran into a lot of snow patches on the trail, and hiking got a bit more difficult! I could hear the roar of this mountain creek all along the trail as I got closer to the lake, and there were half a dozen times that I left the trail to get photos of the creek. I had been reading that flowing water looks ideal in photos at between ½ to 1 second exposure, depending on the speed the water is moving. I tried several things, and this is one of my favorites.