These are more “found images” … out of my archive folder. All were taken from the deck of my apartment where I was living in Olympia. It was a great location for taking sunset photos.
Sunsets
Sunset From Blue Mountain
The summit of Blue Mountain is a short walk above the Deer Park Campground in the Olympic National Park. Many locals will regularly visit to enjoy the spectacular sunsets … the Strait of Juan De Fuca is below to the right of this image.
Constance Pass
This is the view north from Constance Pass, the divide between the Dosewallips valley and (above) the Dungeness River Valley. You can just make out some of Vancouver Island around the Victoria area across the Strait of Juan De Fuca. This area is mostly in the Buckhorn Wilderness area of the Olympic National Forest, not in the Olympic National Park.
Along the ridge near Constance Pass are a couple of rock shelters (shown below). I haven’t been able to track down their origin. However, they must have provided a welcome windbreak during stormy weather.
Mount Rose
Lake Cushman is the reservoir behind the dam on the North Fork Skokomish. There was a natural lake there in the old days, but much smaller. The North Fork Skok is one of my favorite hikes … Staircase Campground is very popular and sits just inside the boundary of the Olympic National Park. The mountain just to the right of center is Mt Rose. The snowy peak behind it is Copper Mountain. The early prospectors looked for copper but didn’t find any worth working. The Olympics are pretty much free of any valuable mineral deposits (mostly marine sedimentary rocks or marine basalt) … which is one reason they remained pristine until they could be protected by the national park system. Below is a close up of Mt Rose.
Mt Rose has a trail to the summit. A steep trail, but at least you get some view from the top. I used it for years as a training hike, year round. In the winter, I would snowshoe to the top, going pretty directly up, since the trail was covered. I would then follow the ridgeline that runs to the right (in this view) and then drop back down to catch the trail at about the 3400 ft level.
Clouds and Mt Stuart
I was on top of the South Summit of Mt Engels when I took these photos. Mt Stuart is the highest non-volcanic peak in Washington State and provides some challenging climbs in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area of the Central Cascades. I prefer not having to carry a lot of ropes and hardware … I took a climbing course long ago, but mostly to know enough to keep myself out of harm’s way.
I’ve always liked the clouds that were coming in. A storm moving through. I was glad it was a day hike.