After salvaging a decent sunrise out of a mostly overcast morning in Glacier National Park, my good friend and fellow photographer Luke Tingley and I decided to see if our luck would hold up on a trip to nearby Grinnell Lake. It was raining lightly as we strapped on our packs at the trailhead, but we hoped it might break by the time we hiked the three and a half miles to the lake.

Armed with bear spray to hopefully protect us from any scary encounters, we set off around Swiftcurrent Lake. It was early enough in the morning that we were the only two on the trail. The skies started to clear as we reached Josephine Lake midway through our hike. Things were looking promising until we started to gain altitude the closer we got to the lake. Out came the rain gear again. We reached the edge of the lake around 9:00 AM. We had probably lost about ten degrees from when we set out and the light rain combined with a gusty wind made it quite brisk. We setup our gear anyway and waited to see what would develop. The sun started to break through in a while and danced off the rock walls surrounding the lake. I was busy capturing intimate scenes when Luke hollered that a rainbow had appeared across the lake. He was already setup and shooting by the time I got the right lens on. Luckily I had about a minute to capture this image. And so the luck continued…

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