Mt Steel is just south of O’Neil Pass. Lt. O’Neil established the first route across the south Olympics from Hoodsport to the Quinault in the 1890’s. The pass separates the Duckabush Valley from the East Fork Quinault Valley (The Enchanted Valley). It’s a beautiful remote area of the Olympic National Park. The image below is the same view but in a portrait mode.
Hart Lake is in the Upper Duckabush River area of the Olympic National Park. It’s quite remote, keeping the number of visitors down well below the number that visit the more accessible areas of the park (i.e. The High Divide). The image above shows the outflow of the small lake and the view across the Duckabush Valley to Mt Steel. The image below shows the view north from about the same location. I thought the clouds were wonderful.
Mare’s Tail (Cirrus uncinus) clouds are fairly common and are usually formed as warm, dry air rises. They can sometimes be an indicator of a cold front moving into the area … but when you see one isolated cloud, they don’t provide any forecasting power. When I saw this one, I was in the middle of the Olympic National Park and a long ways from any trailhead. We were very pleased when the next few days stayed sunny and dry.
The early morning in the Olympic Rainforest can provide views of mist and trees and ridges … my favorites. The best part is that in the Olympics (if you’re lucky), these morning mists can burn off by mid-morning and you can have a clear sunny day. This is the North Fork Quinault river … the river is over by the other bank at this point. It did turn out to be a sunny day, after about 10:30 AM or so.
These two images are taken from the same location as my last post … different days, different years, different cameras. These are taken with my first digital camera (an Olympus E10). The images are much softer … a lot less detail. I like the softness that gives the images, even though it does create limits to your editing (such as the strange edges on the clouds on the image above).
Again, these are taken from the bridge over the Quinault River just outside the Olympic National Park boundary.
