This young buck was not shy, because it has lived its life in the National Park, where there isn’t any hunting allowed … so humans aren’t recognized as ‘the enemy’.
Young Buck
A Surprise Panorama
I was going through and organizing photos from the film days and found that there were a couple of photos that I had taken that could be combined into panoramas. This one was from a hike along Happy Lake Ridge in the Olympic National Park. The view is across the Elwha River valley over to Hurricane Ridge.
The Happy Lake Ridge trail is seldom hiked … even less since the Elwha Road washed out adding miles to access the trailhead. It is a nice loop trail, the upper end dropping down to Boulder Lake and then out through the Boulder Creek Trail and the (undeveloped) Olympic Hot Springs. With the wash out of the road, there are several miles of doubling back to get to the parking lot… but it is still mostly a loop.
The Olympics In Winter
I tried this in black and white, since the colors weren’t a big part of the image. But I ended up liking it better in color. I think it had to do mostly with the separation in the sky. The blue in the sky created more separation than it did when converted to a gray tone. But maybe I was just too lazy to keep working at it.
Snowshoeing
The only easily accessible place for winter sports on the Olympic Peninsula is Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park, south of Port Angeles. For downhill, there isn’t any chair lift, but there is a bunny hill and some challenging routes for those willing and skilled enough to venture out of the official ski area. But there are some good cross-country routes and snowshoe routes. When the weather is clear, it’s spectacular.
Snowy Roadway
This is another shot from a recent trip up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. On my return to the parking lot up the Hurricane Hill road (closed to traffic in winter), the snow picked up from a gentle dusting to a little more serious effort. I liked the way the trees looked with the new snow. But I also liked the way the flakes coming down against the background of the sky made it so that I didn’t have to bother checking for sensor spots.