Another shot of trees in clouds. This one is when a dense patch of cloud/fog blew through while we were walking back on the Hurricane Hill trail (Olympic National Park, Hurricane Ridge area). Not sure if it works as well on a monitor, but the print is nice. … certainly is ‘high key’ though.
This is the ridge that is just west of the North Fork Skokomish just north of the Staircase Ranger Station in the Olympic National Park. There’s something about misty ridges that attract and hold my attention. I’m not sure why that is … mystery? memories of when those clouds started raining on me?
It is something that comes with the coastal areas in the Pacific Northwest, though.
The weather was changing and there was a lot of mist in the air as I was taking the ferry into Seattle. In the distance, you could see Mt Rainier, but it wasn’t a strong enough picture element to create a focus point. The bridge in the distance is the West Seattle bridge crossing over the Duwamish River… on the left is Harbor Island and some of the cranes used for loading ships (freight and cruise).
(Shot on Tri-X film)
These photos are from a long ago hike. One of the toughest days I have had backpacking … the “off trail” traverse from Appleton Pass to Cat Basin in the Olympic National Park. As we struggled across the side hill, the clouds came in and our visibility dropped. While we were on the sidehill, there was no real chance of losing our way, since we could just keep the uphill side to our right, until we ran into the Cat Basin Trail that comes in from the High Divide. We were tired and set up camp in a small flat spot above the trail. We were sorta miserable and thought the spot was one of the worse we had camped in. But in the morning, the cloud was gone and we were looking directly down into Cat Basin and a herd of a hundred or so Olympic Elk. It went from one of the worse camps we had to one of the best … in a few hours.
The North Fork Skokomish valley is one of my favorite locations in Olympic National Park. It used to be the closest to my home, when I lived in Olympia. It’s a little farther away now, but I still try to make several trips per year. It’s a low snow year when you can drive up to the Staircase Trailhead in December (unlike this year).
