Cascades

Lunar Light

Jul 25

Last week, forecast sites on the internet were projecting some active auroras, even for northern Washington State. A promising forecast and clear skies only convinced me more to head out so I went to someplace REALLY good. I’ve known about this area up the Baker Lake drainage for over a year and I’ve been waiting for conditions and opportunity to come together. The night before my visit, I discovered another spot to set up using Google Earth which was not far away from my original ID’d location. As it turned out, the location turned out to be a great spot. All I needed to do was wait for darkness and for the auroras to show up.

The sun set but a transitioning 3/4 moon kept the landscape somewhat illuminated. This was great for my general night landscape photos since I do like to have some amount of detail in my foregrounds at night. I kept watch in my folding chair, swatting away mosquitoes (which were a bit aggressive while it was still light) throughout the night. The moon stayed up until 1:30am. Again, this was great for my general shots of Mount Baker or Mount Shuksan but for the auroras I was hoping to see. After the moon had set, the Milky Way and even more stars came out- but not the auroras. It was now about 2am and if the auroras were to appear, it would have happened by this point. I rattled a couple more frames off before I decided to call it a night and head home. I was pretty crushed that they did not appear but, on the other hand, I found an even better location to photograph them. I guess next time I’ll be REALLY ready!..

Elusive Mount Hood

Jun 11

I spent a lot of time driving around Mount Hood on my recent trip but not a lot of time actually SEEING it. This first photo came about during my attempt to reach the Top Spur trail head. The winter snowpack still were lingering so I was turned around by snow about a half mile from the trail head. At the point of my turnaround, however, the road is located very near the spine of a ridgeline. I bushwhacked up to the top of the ridge to take a look around. Once on the ridge, I didn’t find a viewpoint of Mount Hood like I had hoped. Actually, the forest here was creepy with no understory and lots of dead limbs on the lower sections of each tree. I was all packed up and ready to head back down when the sun broke free from the persistent clouds and presented me with beautiful god rays. As fast as I could, I got all my gear out of my backpack just in time for the sun faded away before I could snap even one picture. I figured that if it happened once, it would happen again. I waited patiently and, sure enough, another outburst of god rays appeared. This time I was ready! I stayed around long enough for a third episode of god rays before feeling satisfied that I had captured the moment.

Earlier in the day, I poked around Lolo Pass Road and encountered some really dynamic conditions. Valley clouds were lifting quickly up and across the road from time to time. This was also occurring throughout the Sandy River valley. Perfect conditions for a timelapse! Here it is:

On the last full day of my time down around Mount Hood, the weather looked like it might be breaking up as sunset drew closer. I saw the summit for the first time on my trip from near the Mount Hood Meadows Ski Area. I decided to hang out and retreated to the Bennett Pass Snow Park. I shot this peek-a-boo of Mount Hood from there:

I had set up my GoPro for another timelapse and everything was going great until the clouds walled up and swallowed Mount Hood once again. Time to relocate! Here’s my abbreviated timelapse:

Hoping to take advantage of the lee side effect, I headed north on Highway 35 and turned off on Brooks Meadow Road (FS Road 44). A few years ago, I stumbled across an old clearcut that offered a great view of Mount Hood. I arrived but still had no mountain. Nonetheless, it was quiet and peaceful so I watched sunset while my GoPro snapped off another timelapse. The mountain never appeared but the clouds sure put on an entertaining show:

I packed up and headed back down to Hood River to make my way back to my motel. While I was driving through Parkdale, I looked up at my rear view mirror and, despite the darkness, there was Mount Hood clear as could be! I immediately pulled over and pulled out my camera and telephoto lens. This was happening during “blue hour” (the hour immediately after sunset) so while I could still see the mountain, it wasn’t possible to use autofocus. Using my Liveview setting, I dialed in focus as best as I could and then began taking several shots. After 15 minutes or so, sporadic clouds began popping up between my location and the mountain. This was a great way to end my day.

Leavenworth 2013

Apr 25

Spring sometimes comes on like a lion and that seems to be the case this year. We’re still getting some late season snowfall in the mountains but the melt is definitely on. The east slopes of the Cascades are the first areas to produce wildflowers and in 2009, I learned that the Leavenworth / Cashmere area are home to an explosion of arrowleaf balsamroot. I’ve tried visiting every year since then around the middle of May; last year I was a week or so too late so this year I gambled on being a week early. As it turned out, I threaded the needle perfectly.

In Leavenworth, head over to the old ski hill. The slopes hold various flowers as does the wooded cross country ski trail that parallels Titus Road. On the south side of town, Mountain Home Road steeply gains a ridge (seemingly a lateral moraine) and traverses out along it towards the southwest. The roadside holds a variety of wildflowers and offers views down towards Leavenworth as well as the entrance to Icicle Creek Canyon. On this day, the only wildflowers were about 1 mile up the road right next to it. The day was blustery, making photos of flowers quite difficult. Every now and then, the wind would finally die down and provide a fleeting moment to click the shutter.

After a while, I decided to go with the flow and I tried out my newly purchased B+W 10 stop neutral density filter. It’s basically a light reducing filter (almost like a welder’s mask!) which will dramatically lengthen your exposure times. I bought it for another purpose but I figured if I can’t beat ’em, join ’em! I doubled up the filter with my B+W thin mount circular polarizer and was taking exposures out to 20 seconds at F16 and ISO-100. I was concerned about the filter creeping into the corners of my frame (I’m using it on my APS-C 12-24mm lens) and it does do that at the widest end. The intrusion disappears at 15mm so that was a relief.

The next stop on our whirlwind tour was Eagle Creek Road, about 2 miles outside of Leavenworth to the northeast. The first 5 miles or so are paved until the junction with Forest Service roads 7500 and 7502. Just a quarter mile up road 7500 is a nice view up valley and a small grouping of balsamroot. Well- not this year because we were a little early. They might be there if you go in another 2 weeks! We also made a quick trip up 7502 to check out spur road 7531 but nothing was going on up there either. Pretty forest up that way, though!

One place I do know that has a great display of balsamroot is located up Ollala Canyon Road near Dryden. Sadly, the blooms are located on private land so any photography should be done roadside. About halfway up the valley and on the opposite side of the canyon is a nice location of balsamroot growing in a former wildfire burn area. The slope immediately above the road can also yield a nice combination of balsamroot and lupine (but not this trip). The jewel of Ollala Canyon is at the head of the canyon, just before the end of the county road. A couple of rounded hillsides (one with a lone tree on the top) is filled with balsamroot and turn the slopes a wonderful shade of yellow.

This year my timing was spot on and we spent a fair amount of time there. At one point, my friend pointed to the top of the ridge and almost a dozen deer appeared and proceeded to graze along the upper slopes. As awesome as it was here, I wanted to explore a couple of other canyons in the Cashmere area. The first canyon (via Hay Canyon Road) was nice near the mouth of the canyon but didn’t have much else despite being reminiscent of oak-chaparral woodlands found in southern California. A quick bust so we made our way to the next canyon over to the east which is served by Nahahum Canyon Road. This canyon is much broader than Ollala and very scenic. Most slopes seem to be good habitat for balsamroot and, indeed, several slopes had small patches of yellow. Nahahum Canyon is also largely private property and is actively signed as such.

Almost all the way up the canyon we found one small slope and draw that had a mixed display of balsamroot and lupine. You could tell that the flowers were *just* a bit past prime but still pretty and photogenic. Except for the occasional car driving the road or cow moo, it was very quiet and peaceful up there. The day was finally getting late so we finally headed back to Leavenworth for a little dinner. We still had time to dart back up Mountain Home Road for sunset. The thick clouds from a front dropping rain over the crest wiped out our sunset but that was ok. It’s nice to come out ahead sometimes!

Of course, I also had my trusty GoPro with me for some timelapses. Here’s a composite of four different ones from the day:

Good Friday

Mar 31

I shot sunrise over the Cascade Mountains from Everett on Good Friday and a good Friday it turned out to be! I had been thinking about it for a few days but the cloud cover had been a little too thick towards the east. This day, however, had a good balance and really put on a show:

I also set up my trusty GoPro to record a time lapse while I was shooting. That also turned out pretty neat!

Snow Day

Mar 25

Spring is officially here- but I managed to make it through the entire winter without enjoying a single day on the ski slopes. I had to go at least once so I made it happen on Friday. Not a whole lot to say about this; a beautiful day up at Mount Baker with partly sunny skies and about 4″ of new snow to start the day. After my break for lunch, I spent some time photographing Mount Shuksan before the clouds swallowed it whole. The afternoon brought the snowy weather back and eventually the expansive views completely disappeared. The ski area shut down at about 4pm and before I headed home, I stopped off at Hannigan Pass Road. I hoped to check out a particular spot overlooking the North Fork Nooksack River where Mount Shuksan is visible. The mountain wasn’t visible but I did experience a crazy snow squall that passed through my location despite the presence of sunshine. Very cool experience! A great day and just what I needed..

I also put together a little snowboarding video from my day on the slopes which you can view here:

The Fourth Time

Mar 13

I am a glutton for punishment, and this winter has more than proven this to be true. I returned to Artist Point near Mount Baker for the fourth time this winter hoping for great light and interesting conditions. I had no reason to think that things would go any different than two of my previous three outings. The weather forecasts projected 63% cloud cover around the time of sunset thanks to an advancing storm front. The best light and drama happens during these transitional times such as this; I just threw my hands up and said why not?

As you might imagine, the snowshoe trip out to the ridge gets pretty routine after three previous trips in such a relatively short period. The snow was a weird conglomeration of rain altered, fresh snow, and hoar frost. We made decent time on the hike and arrived at the end of the ridge about 3 hours before sunset. While Mount Shuksan largely enjoyed sunny skies, Mount Baker had a persistent cloud layer hugging its northeast flanks. In addition to taking photos, I wanted to continue to experiment with the time lapse features of my GoPro Hero 3. Upon arrival, I set up GoPro on my panning Ikea kitchen time and set off a 20 minute timelapse of Mount Shuksan:

After this one finished, I set up for another time lapse, this time focused on Mount Baker. I wanted to shoot this for a similar amount of time (20-30 minutes) but I had to cut it short because some snowshoers appeared from nowhere below my vantage point. Lucky for me, they were out of frame and I was able to stop recording before they appeared. The clouds were starting to drift through the area more and more. This was my sign to switch over to my SLR.

During the middle part of the afternoon, I focused on the Mount Baker area since the clouds were more dynamic. The sun was directly overhead and that proved to be a bit problematic. The sunlight was bleeding into the upper portion of my frame despite the fact that I was using my telephoto’s lens hood. To overcome this issue, I decided to use my 0.6 graduated ND filter. This is hardly an exact science so there were a series of trial and error shots to finally get the hang of compensating for the light bleed. We had heard some rockfall coming of the backside of the Shuksan Arm at one point in the afternoon. Needless to say, a large boom from the direction of Mount Shuksan had both of us swinging our cameras around. All that we could capture was a billowing cloud of snow rising up from the Lower Curtis Glacier area.

As the afternoon got later, the weather was following the projected forecasts rather closely. Stronger cloud bands were now lingering around Mount Shuksan, often obscuring the summit period for brief periods of time. Mount Baker would prove to be more elusive the rest of the afternoon and brief glimpses of the summit or one of it’s flanks was the norm. We were still blessed with a rather large open “window” in the sky to the right of Mount Baker so the changing light of sunset did reach Mount Shuksan. The slopes where we were located had widespread amounts of hoar frost and I really wanted to capture this in some manner and I tried to do this with a curvy slope just below our spot on the ridge. In order to get the composition, I had to include the sun directly in the frame. I realized there would be some lens flare in the photos but it turned out to be a bit more than I would have liked.

In the minutes leading up to the actual time of sunset, we lost good light and color on Mount Shuksan and just plain lost Mount Baker. The last good light left was interacting with clouds hovering between Lasiocarpa Ridge and Skyline Divide. As most sunsets go, however, the light slowly faded away and the cold gray of night was taking over. In fact, just minutes after official sunset, clouds began QUICKLY overtaking our ridge. It was a little startling, actually. I didn’t want to be hiking back along the ridge by braille and thankfully this didn’t happen. I had a couple night photos in mind prior to our trip and the clouds put the kibosh on those plans. Still- after three mostly failed attempts, this day felt pretty good!

Texture

Feb 23

President’s Day found me one mile up the Surprise Creek drainage near Stevens Pass. I’ve been up this valley once before, but that was during the summer. I’ve wanted to return but I hadn’t really considered returning in winter. I’m not sure why- it actually enjoys pretty easy year round access due to its proximity to the small “rail yard” near the mouth of the BNSF Cascade Tunnel’s west end. For some reason I expected to be alone as if this was my brilliant idea and mine alone. The six other cars present proved me wrong.

Fresh snow and no rain still make for a pretty good outing so away I went. My lone previous visit during the summertime only provided me with a rough familiarity of the hike. As a pleasant surprise, the trail was very well marked due to a stamped down snowshoe trail. The valley is largely within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and has some pretty big trees to admire along the way. After a mile of travel, the trail begins to skirt the run outs of several avalanche prone side slopes. I don’t think the first couple run outs are that hazardous but beyond this point, the exposure steadily increases. This outing was also an opportunity to try out some time lapse possibilities with my newly purchased GoPro Hero 3 Black camera. The first large clearing (where two opposing avalanche run out meet in the valley bottom) had lots of interesting mounds and textures and was a perfect place to stop and explore.

Someone was a genius and figured out that you can easily modify an Ikea kitchen timer to become a panning base for time lapses (here’s the link) so I set up my GoPro to capture a 30 minute / 180 degree time lapse. The settings I used on my GoPro were the 7mp (wide) resolution and 2 second shot interval. I also used the ProTune option and tweaked the white balance using their CineForm Studio processing software. I have to admit that I’m pretty happy with the results:

While my GoPro was doing its thing, I wandered around the clearing to study the various landforms. It was untracked and pristine, and the large boulders buried underneath the snowpack created a variety of pillowy mounds fanning out around a huge boulder.

Skies were very flat and gray so sunlight was not going to help bring bring out the detail of the snow’s surface. I already knew that the shots I was taking would require Nik’s Silver Efex 2 plugin for conversion to black and white. It seems a bit silly to convert a photo of basically a black & white landscape into a black and white photo but plugins like Nik (or Topaz’s Black & White Effects) just seem to extract the fine detail out of the snow’s surface. I was a bit frustrated during my attempts to capture what I was “seeing”; the overall stillness and serenity of my surroundings, however, tempered those frustrations. After my GoPro time lapse had completed, I packed up and headed further up the trail. Soon enough, I recognized a few signs to let me know that I had traveled at least as far as my lone summertime visit. I spied a couple potential photos but judged the set up for them to be too hazardous. The lateness of the afternoon was also catching up with me so it was time to turn around.

There’s a nice, tall waterfall just around the corner from the trail head that I wanted to visit but ended up bagging it. Some other time (maybe even this winter). Upon reviewing my photos from the trip, I was most drawn to the photos which showcased the texture that fresh snow possess. These certainly weren’t the shots I was expecting to find during my outing but they were a nice challenge to capture. Winter is turning the corner and these kinds of opportunities are winding down and that does sadden me a little. Snow has such a magical quality to it and its ability to completely transform the land is amazing. I’m already looking forward to my next opportunity, whenever and wherever it may be.

New Years Sunset

Jan 03

Lately I’ve a a run of photographic bad luck. Before Christmas, I visited Mount Rainier National Park and came away with no photos. I followed that up this past weekend with a hike up to Artist Point for sunset. Forecasts called for clearing skies an hour before sunset so dramatic skies could be in play. I was welcomed by wind and near whiteout conditions at Artist Point. Adding insult to injury, the skies did begin to clear out but that happened well after I had turned around and made it back to my truck. I couldn’t get shut out a third time, could I? To test that theory, I returned to Artist Point on New Years Day where the forecast was for “mostly clear” skies. On my way there, I couldn’t help but stop along Highway 9 to photograph the Twin Sisters Mountains. As I have learned, clear skies and sunshine may not be great for color photographs but they can be great for black & white photos.

I arrived at the Heather Meadows parking lot at the Mount Baker Ski Area and skies weren’t clear. To be more specific, they were “mostly overcast” and actually trending towards cloudy. Where the hell did this come from?? A bad omen but I still had a couple hours til sunset so anything could happen. Doning my snowshoes and a sense of deja vu, I headed yet again up towards Artist Point. It looked like many other people had the same idea (watching sunset from Artist Point) because I noticed just as much uphill traffic as people heading down. After a couple more days of sun and no new snowfall, the snowshoe routes were packed down a bit more and quicker. Even with the 30+ pounds of crap in my backpack, I made good time and reached the Artist Point parking lot in 1 hour 15 minutes (roughly 1.3 miles and ~1,000 feet of gain). The route up to Artist Point is, for the most part, benign but I am constantly shaking my head in disbelief as I watch people hike the direct route up towards Huntoon Point through the most dangerous terrain possible. The ridge between Huntoon Point and Artist Point gets SEVERELY wind loaded. Now throw in the switchbacks of the summertime road and you now have terrain traps. You’re asking for trouble by crossing this zone. In fact, in 2003 three people were caught in a slab avalanche which ultimately killing one of them. This is why I always head straight towards the parking lot, taking the short, steep headwall just left of the Blueberry Chutes or contouring around the headwall and doubling back at the first chance.

Anyways, at Artist Point, I admired the view south down the Swift Creek valley towards Baker Lake but also lamented the change in the weather. It was now completely overcast everywhere except towards the far south. My dreams for a colorful sunset were dashed. I still had time to kill before sunset so I headed out towards Huntoon Point. Along the way, I scoped out the various trees encased in ice just like the trees in the Finnish Lapland. Eventually, I topped out on Huntoon Point’s 5,247 foot summit. Despite skies which still weren’t clearing out, I was determined to take at least some photos. I began my hike back towards Artist Point but stopped along the way to photograph the gigantic ice trees. One grove in particular hand a number of interestingly shaped limbs which I used to frame Mount Baker in the distance.

The only color to be seen was over 50 miles to the south/southeast and so I made the judgement call to head back to my original viewpoint over the Swift Creek drainage where I figured I could come up with some sort of composition. I passed another couple enjoying the views with some hot beverage and set up my camera to begin shooting. After a while, the couple near me headed back to their car and the clouds above Mount Baker had the faint hint of reflected color. More time went by and the color began to slowly build up. I couldn’t believe it- the color turned a fiery, vibrant red! I was cold to the point of my teeth almost chattering but I quickly attacked the developing scene in front of me. This metamorphosis of color lasted about 15 minutes. It faded away and I felt extremely lucky to have witnessed it. I should know better, especially since I have been witness to these types of displays before. None the less, it always leaves me in awe when it does happen.

Awe doesn’t keep you warm so it was time to go! It was already dark enough to don my headlamp for the hike out. My hike out was peaceful except for the crunch of snow beneath my snowshoes. Across the Bagley Lakes basin, I could make out the headlamps of two skiers making an ascent of Mount Herman for some night time turns. This was a fabulous way to start the new year!

Top Ten Photos of 2012

Dec 22

It’s the end of 2012 and time to look back upon the previous year and pick out some favorite photos. They primarily are personal favorites but some of my choices were well received but others who viewed them. As for the year itself, I branched out a little bit, both geographically and subject-wise. I was able to pursue wildlife photography a little more with trips to Boundary Bay in British Columbia for the Snowy Owl irruption and my first ever trip to Yellowstone National Park.

1.) Big Four Mountain – South Fork Stillaguamish River Valley

Taken from a spring outing, I was hoping to capture some avalanches coming down the impressive 4,000 foot high north face of Big Four Mountain. This conversion to black & white using Nik’s Silver Efex 2 worked well.