blue Rocks Boulder Field Hike And Photography

It was more about taking a relaxing hiking trip than it was about giving the my camera's shutter a serious workout.  you can easily get great photos of the Blue Rocks Boulder Field are numerous. Here' my story and the photos of the Blue Rocks photography.

The boulder fields stretch nearly 1 mile long and spans about 15 acres of land. It ranges from several dozen feet to a few hundred feet in width at its widest sections.

The hikes to both  the Pulpit and the Pinnacle lookout vistas through the heavily wooded forest are gorgeous. This first photo in this post is of my most frequent hiking partner, my sister, posing on a sundrenched slab at the Pulpit. The fall colors were maybe just a week before their full color peak.

We started the Pulpit Trail hike with a quick view of the boulder slide form the road that crosses it near the bottom.

From the bottom the slide of boulders looks like it goes on forever as it curves slightly to the right.

The rocks in this glacial slide are much larger than those found at the nearby Hickory Run in Pennsylvania, but tougher to scramble across due to there irregular sizes and angular shapes.

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Hiking The Trails at Blue Rocks Campground

We hiked the Pulpit Trail out and back our first day and the Pinnacle Trail out and back our 2nd day. You can see from the map below that both trails originate at the Blue Rocks Campground.

Both of these Blue Rocks trails connect with the Appalachian Trail (AT). For adventurist hikers with good fitness levels you can hike both in one day by making it a loop hike by using the section of the AT that connects the two.

Pulpit Trail Photos

In addition to photographing the scenic vistas of these mountains you can always find close-up subjects for making interesting images.

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From the viewpoint of the boulder field on the Pulpit Trail it's hard to appreciate its length.

The massive glaciers of the Ice Age didn't quite reach this exact spot, they stopped just a mile north.

The massive rock experienced severe, constant cycles of freezing and thawing (freeze-thaw and frost-heaving) between 15,000 and 20,00 years ago, which cracked the bedrock of Blue Mountain and slowly pushed the massive slabs downslope.

In the Pulpit Trail photo below I chose to compose the photo using a vertical  orientation. I wanted to include the rock slab in the foreground, the nearby fall foliage, and the distant valley , and the sky to create a strong sense of depth in the image.

Pinnacle Trail Photos

Including someone in your landscape photo adds scale and gives you more of an appreciation of the vastness.

Don't forget to shoot some abstract type of photos as you explore the area for interesting subjects. In the photo below I was intrigued by the stark contrast between the weather-bleached dead tree and the pallet of fall colors surrounding it.

Video of Blue Rocks Boulder Field

Here's a little bonus for those of you who would like to see a video of the boulders from the bottom. The video was shot by the Wandering Woodsman.

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