The photo above is looking south up the Graywolf Valley into the heart of the Olympic National Park. Both images were taken from about the same location, near Deer Park at about 5000 feet elevation. These were taken using my Nikon F6 … Nikon’s last film camera … using Kodak Tri-X.
The mountain in the distance is a part of the Mt Jupiter ridge (but not the summit), which runs between the Dosewallips and Duckabush rivers in the Olympic Mountains. I was hiking up the Dosewallips when I caught this opening through the trees giving a view of the high country. The higher ridges were already showing some signs of snowfall.
These two images weren’t taken exactly from the same spot at the same time. But it was close. The huge difference in air quality is only apparent, with the direction relative to the sun being the primary difference between the two. The top photo looks across the Strait of Juan de Fuca (note the fog bank) and into the hazy distant view of Vancouver Island. Below looks south towards the Upper Graywolf valley and the Olympic Mountains. Backlighting the haze really makes it stand out.
We took turns shooting this subalpine fir …
and other one close by…
Another view from the top of Blue Mountain, this one looking west towards Hurricane Ridge and Mt Angeles (you can see the roadcut running from the right middle of the image across to the left skyline … Hurricane RIdge is just at that point. This is Olympic National Park. Mount Angeles (Port Angeles is at the bottom of the road) is between the two tallest groups of trees. Tree, Mountain, Tree is a pretty typical (and probably trite) photo motif that my friend and I joke about. But it still works.