Wildflower

Goodbye 2014

Dec 29

2014 is nearly in the books and I, for one, say good riddance. It was a year largely full of other commitments and little photography. I photographed sunrise on New Years Day and promptly broke the zoom ring on one of my lenses. Five months later, I dunked all of my gear in a river. Thankfully, most of the gear survived after a week of drying in a bag of rice but I did end up replacing one zoom lens with a new (used) copy and repairing my New Years Day lens a second time. My photography largely consisted of a week long trip to South Florida’s Gulf Coast during July 4th and a few day trips on either side of that. Despite the challenges of the past year, I have selected ten photos to highlight my year:

1.) The Storm – Sanibel Island, Florida

Storm clouds are probably somewhat fitting given my year. Taken during my week long stay on Sanibel Island, Florida, these storm clouds developed during sunrise towards the end of my trip. Gotta love the short walk from the rented guesthouse to the beach!

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

2.) The Hills Are Alive – Leavenworth, Washington State

One of my regular outings during spring is a trip over the mountains to the Leavenworth area to photograph the balsamroot flower displays. This year, I timed the trip perfectly to explore a new location. An entire hillside of blooming flowers all to myself!

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

3.) Worth the Wait – Glacier Peak Wilderness

My most recent outing which holds some special significance to me. This photo marks my return to Green Mountain in the Glacier Peak Wilderness. This location has largely been inaccessible for the last decade due to flood damage to the primary access road. Green Mountain was one of the first locations that I was taken to by friends once I moved up to Washington State. Once the road was finally repaired, I had to visit this place once again. Just visiting once again would have been enough but the sunset on this day turned out to be pretty spectacular.

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

4.) Sanibel Storm – Sanibel Island, Florida

During my visit to Florida, I got to experience several nights of “heat lightning.” The heat and humidity of the daylight hours turns into lightning offshore during the overnight hours. It was quite mesmerizing standing on the beach watching the constant lightning strikes. Thankfully, I was never in any danger while outside photographing it. I’ve only tried photographing lightning once before so I got plenty of practice!

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

5.) Gotcha – J. N. ‘Ding’ Darling National Wildlife Refuge

I’m not much of a wildlife photographer but love to photograph it given the opportunity. During my trip to Florida, the J. N. ‘Ding’ Darling National Wildlife Refuge was just five minutes away from where we were staying. I only was able to make two trips to the refuge but enjoyed the time.

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

6.) Stranglehold – Big Cypress National Preserve

For our trip to Florida, We actually flew in and out of Fort Lauderdale and doubled back via car to Sanibel Island. Rather than take the quicker I-75, we opted for US-41 which took us through Big Cypress National Preserve. This Strangler Fig caught my eye during our quick stop at Kirby Storter Roadside Park.

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

7.) Aurora Not-at-all-us – Mount Baker

At the end of this past summer, a promising aurora alert was issued after a solar flare and, for once, it coincided with clear skies. I staked it out for two nights but alas, the auroras never came. I was left with a few nice nighttime photos of Mount Baker and a couple newly scouted locations.

8.) Origins – Sanibel Island, Florida

This photo was taken in the pre-dawn minutes the same morning as photo #1. The heat lightning from the previous night was finally dying down but not before a few more strikes during the advancing light of the new day.

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

9.) Supermoon Reflection – Heather Meadows

I swore I would never photograph Mount Shuksan from Picture Lake. The scene is SO tired and has been photographed to death. As it turned out, I stopped by the lake on a whim suggestion by my friend after we had photographed the super moon’s rise at sunset. No one was present and the mist rising off the lake provided the qualities I was seeking to set my photo apart from the thousands (if not millions) of other Picture Lake photos.

10.) Lava Lamp – Baring Mountain

This photo is just one photo from a series taken during a spectacular sunrise this fall. It was actually the culmination of repeated sunrise attempts at this particular location. The vindication was especially satisfying!

More photos from this trip can be found in my blog post here.

So there are my ten photos. I also continued my tradition throughout the year of shooting time lapses with my GoPro camera. Here’s a recap video I put together from my Florida trip:

Florida Gulf Coast – July 2014 from Steve Cole on Vimeo.

Leavenworth 2014

May 05

After a five month photo hiatus, I’ve returned! Spring has returned to the Pacific Northwest and the east slopes of the Cascade range are the first areas to have wildflower displays. I’ve made a trip to the Leavenworth area for the balsamroot blooms an annual occurrence but the timing for this can vary wildly from year to year. Last year, I visited around April 20th and conditions were virtually peak but several years ago, May 15th was the timeframe for peak conditions. This year’s peak blooms probably occurred around April 30th but MANY flowers were in prime conditions during my visit on May 3rd.

The balsamroot flowers in Tumwater Canyon and at Leavenworth Ski Hill (and the adjacent trails) all looked good. I normally would also visit Ollala Canyon near Cashmere but did not this year. A friend of mine did visit the previous weekend and conditions looked to be good out there as well. This year, I wanted to photograph something different. I decided to re-visit a location up Eagle Creek Road that proved to be fruitless last year- East Van Creek. It’s a location I found using Google Earth and looked to have the same type of conditions where the balsamroot flowers normally are found.

I was excited to see that this year, the flowers were out and numerous. A short but steep 300 foot ascent up a slope brought me up to a six acre meadow of balsamroot. To the southwest, Canon Mountain peaked over an intermediate ridge. To my southeast, the summit of Chumstick Mountain was visible. The area retains a natural look despite having been logged at some point in the past. To have this flower meadow all to myself for hours was spectacular. The meadow was pretty much all balsamroot but there were patches of lupine including one white lupine (the second I’ve ever seen in 15 years of wandering in the Cascades).

Return to Mount Saint Helens

Jun 17

Mount Saint Helens was the last stop on my recent trip south to Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Any longtime reader of my blog will know that I have a special reverence for Green Lake in Mount Rainier National Park but Mount Saint Helens is the true reason that I eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest. Back in college, I really became intrigued by the eruption and subsequent recovery of the landscape following the event. I studied geography in college with an emphasis in computer mapping and remote sensing. At that time, no one had done an analysis of the recovery using remote sensing (basically an analysis using satellite imagery) and this really surprised me given the 20 year plus archive of imagery at that time. Anyways, it was this seed that actually encourage my first ever visit to the northwest.

Although I’ve climbed the mountain from the south side several times since moving up here in 1999, my last visit to the blast area was in 1997 or 1998. I was definitely overdue for a return visit! What I decided to do was head to Johnston Ridge for sunset, hang out overnight for some star photography and then shoot sunrise before finally heading home. I still had an entire day to get to Johnston Ridge so I made another trip up the Lewis River drainage to explore a little more. The initial weather was pretty good for stream and waterfall photography with mostly cloudy skies and nice, even light. Far too quickly, however, it changed to mostly and completely sunny skies. On my way up the valley, I stopped off near the Ape Caves and visited the Trail of Two Forests interpretive trail. I almost visited it last year while up in this area but a busload of school kids at the site kept me going. On this day, I had the area to myself.

The trail is a small, 1/4 mile boardwalk trail with several interpretive signs pointing out several volcanic features from a previous lava flow event such as lava tubes, log dams, and tree molds where the base of trees used to be (before being burned by the lava). It was a nice spot to explore and I did manage to come away with this shot of one of the lava tube openings. After completing the trail, I headed further up the Lewis valley making several stops to poke around. The forest floors here are rich with vanilla leaf and I’m a sucker for trying to capture a representative scene of this. Today was no exception…

The bright sun made it painfully obvious that I wouldn’t be photographing much else of what I had hoped to. I turned around and began my drive back to I-5 to make my way to Johnston Ridge. Just before you reach the Volcanic Monument, you pass Weyerhaeuser’s Forest Learning Center perched atop a cliff overlooking the Toutle River valley with the mountain in the distance. It’s free and does have some nice views so it’s worth a stop at least once. Keep in mind they are a commercial logging company so the center is a bit of a “hooray for us” PR piece where they strongly tout their reforestation efforts. While they are impressive, monolithic stands of Noble Firs doesn’t necessary qualify as “recovery” from an ecosystem perspective and takes on a somewhat Children of the Corn appearance (in other words, eerie).

As I approached Coldwater Lake, I was greeted by an intersection with my travel direction blocked by a manned and closed gate. I did not remember this from my last visit so I pulled over to go talk with the Forest Service employee. After setting me straight with directions, I was asking him about my intended plans for the evening. I was informed that, although they do not close a nightly gate, the Johnston Ridge area is closed to the public from 9pm to 7am. So much for my night and sunrise plans! Sunset on this evening was literally minutes before 9pm and that pretty much restricted my options for sunset. From the Visitor Center, I walked west and found one spot with some wildflowers in the foreground. I had some time to work with so I headed east from to see what other options there may be. I didn’t want to go too far east because parts of the ridge would begin to block some parts of the Plains of Abraham. I eventually found another spot with some Indian Paintbrush in bloom and set up my camera as well as my GoPro for a timelapse.

I started my timelapse and sat down to watch sunset. Things were looking good- stringy, wispy clouds were scattered across the sky. About a half hour before sunset, those wispy clouds had been pushed further east and I wasn’t left with much. The light on Mount Saint Helens just smoothly changed from white to yellow to orange to pink without much fanfare. The time of sunset arrived and I technically had just minutes to be back at my truck and leave. I forced myself to stop my timelapse and quickly packed up my gear for the hurry hike back to the parking lot. There was a slight rebound in the light and it killed me that I couldn’t really stop and photograph it (or capture it with my timelapse). At one point on my way back, I had a view down at the parking lot and my truck was the only car in a lot that held hundreds of cars. Today, I would be the last person to leave Johnston Ridge. Before I did, however, I enjoyed the silence a little bit longer. I expected to see a Forest Service employee sweeping the area clear but that didn’t happen. I really wanted to stay but…I left.

But where to go for my night and sunrise plans? Weighing my options, I made my way back to the Castle Lake Viewpoint. I arrived to an empty parking lot (and it would stay empty overnight and through sunrise). Now it was a matter of waiting for it to get dark and for the stars to come out. At 10:30-11pm, it was finally dark enough to start experimenting. Ideally, I was looking to take a photo with the Milky Way arching above the mountain but that looked to be hours away. Several sequences in, I attracted a visitor. Although I never saw it, the yelp from a (presumed) coyote kept sounding off in the darkness off to my right. At one point, the yelps suddenly were off to my left. All right, I admit- this was a bit freaky. About a half hour after my visitor made its vocal appearance, high clouds really started to roll in from the west. Soon enough, I lost any chance to take more star shots. I took that as my cue and hunkered down in my truck for a cat nap.

To my surprise, I got about 4 hours of sleep and woke up at about 3:30am to a crescent moon which had risen. I could see my surroundings better and could also see that those high clouds were still around. To the east, however, was a nice sized clear window. I really was hoping that the sunlight would flood through and reflect off of the cloud ceiling. For ONCE I was ready and in position! Once again, I started my GoPro and waited for the light show. And waited. And waited some more. Still waiting. Oh- it tried! I could see a faint show of color immediately near the horizon but not the explosion I was so eagerly awaiting. I held out hope but no dice. Once it officially was sunrise, I waited just a little longer to make sure I was shut out. I was- but there was a subtle surge of orange color. I set back up and focused on the mountain where the color was a contrast to some brooding clouds behind and to the east of the mountain.

So now it was finally time to head home. Hold on- why did that car stop? As I scanned the slopes below where the car stopped, I finally saw what they were looking at: a herd of elk heading down to the Toutle River valley. Comically, I run and get my camera & telephoto lens and set up again. My telephoto lens at 300mm was still a bit too far but you work with what you have. I was fortunate enough to capture a sequence of some playful sparring between a couple of young elk. Ok, now I’m REALLY leaving! A few hours later I was back in the Puget Sound and back on the grid. My phone was catching up with all its notifications and one of them was a message from a friend from the previous night. The message I didn’t get was an alert to look for the auroras. So- while I was enjoyed cloudy skies, the auroras were out and being photographed by people as far south as Crater Lake in Oregon. Perfect. My luck sometimes….

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:

Less traveled path to Mount Rainier Waterfalls

Jun 20

Mountain forecasts called for showers so it was time for some waterfall photography. Using Bryan Swan’s excellent Northwest Waterfall Survey website, I found an area in Mount Rainier National Park with a high concentration that was new to me. I originally wanted to visit this area last fall but the first snows of the year closed State Route 123 and my access. The area is the north end of the Eastside Trail which begins on the south end at the Stevens Canyon entrance to the park and travels all the way north to Cayuse & Chinook Pass.

Six miles south of Cayuse Pass, a trailhead at Deer Creek allows you to drop down into the valley and begin your hike. The trailhead is more known for being the backside hike up to Owyhigh Lakes but it intersects the Eastside trail at the Deer Creek campground in the valley floor. From the trailhead, the roar of Deer Creek gets louder until you are afforded a great view of Deer Creek Falls. A few more switchbacks down bring you to the Deer Creek campground and the trail intersections.

My original plan was to hike south along the Eastside trail to Stafford Falls and then return to explore the opportunities around the triple confluence of Deer Creek, Chinook Creek, and Kotsuck Creek. Along my way, I passed a couple returning from Ohanapecosh Falls and based on their recommendation, I decided to extend my hike south to there. The forest here is somewhat open but lush. Vanilla Leaf and oval leafed huckleberry dominates the understory. Huge trees are common but not widespread throughout the area.

My first stop south was an area known as the Chinook Creek Cascades, the beginning of which is where a trail bridge crosses the creek. The creek encounters a series of drops through a tight rock formation and the clarity of the water only accentuates the scene. From here, Stafford Falls is another 0.5 mile to the south. It’s not quite visible from the trail but it can be heard when volumes are high (such as on my visit). A short way trail veers off to the left which brings you to an elevated perch. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of Punchbowl Falls in Oregon since it has a nice drop into a large circular bowl before emptying downstream.

Another way trail leads you down to the water’s edge. The rock around the Stafford Falls bowl is solid rock with sheer walls but near the outlet there is a small platform in the rock to take pictures from. After some lunch and additional photos, I made my way south to the Ohanapecosh Falls (another 1.5 miles south from Stafford Falls). The trail continues with lush portions of forest along with some dark stretches with no understory.

The middle portion of the distance gets quiet as the trail is high above Chinook Creek and not quite close enough to Ohanapecosh River but it soon begins to roar as you draw close. The trail crosses the river just above the very top of the two-tier waterfall. The river here is deep, blue, and fast so a slip here would result in serious injury. Despite the spectacular nature of the falls, the Park Service does not have a developed viewpoint for the falls. A clear view of the entire falls can be had but you must travel south of the falls a couple hundred yards (and potentially off trail).

A steady rain greeted me at the falls and by the time I was finished, I was soaked along with my backpack and gear. I began my (uphill) hike back to the trailhead. Although it was late in the afternoon, I made one last stop on my way back. I remember seeing what appeared to be another waterfall off trail before I had reached Stafford Falls. It turned out that my suspicion was correct and a short diversion brought me to it creekside.

From here, I kept my head down and hiked out back to my truck. The 0.4 mile hike UP from the valley floor to the trailhead is a bit cruel at the end of a long day but it doesn’t take too long. Despite the fowl weather, it was a great day of solitude and sights in Mount Rainier National Park. I ended up not visiting some locations I wanted but I know I’ll be back- there’s way too much to explore!

As a side note, there won’t be a post next week as my numerous outings from the past few weeks has also created a pile of domestic duties I need to work on!

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Steve Cole Photography

Pacific Northwest Landscape / Nature Photography

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Goodbye 2014

Leavenworth 2014

Return to Mount Saint Helens

Leavenworth 2013

Less traveled path to Mount Rainier Waterfalls

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