More images from the fall colors along the Dosewallips River trail in the Olympic National Forest. The maples here usually are covered in moss. I try to get images where the moss is backlit and causing a green halo around the trunks and limbs. It’s hard to get that to stand out and get the rest of the image properly exposed. Post-production in LIghtroom helps, but it still isn’t perfect, in my opinion. The image below I’m happier with.
More images from our hike along the Dosewallips River trail in the Olympic National Forest. I was a little surprised by the sunburst in the image below. The shape of sunbursts is primarily determined by the shuttle type and style. This was not what I expected, but it’s interesting.
This trail section is past where the road was washed out years ago. Supposedly, the intent is to reroute the road to avoid damaging salmon habitat. It would be an expensive project, however, and I’m now doubtful that the money will be available anytime soon.
We took advantage of a pleasant, sunny day in mid-October to go for a hike to see some autumn colors along the Dosewallips River Trail. See detail above and a shot by Wendy Rose below of me taking this shot.
There’s a wide range of trails in the Olympic National Park. Some are well maintained (see below), and some and not so well maintained (like this one). The above image shows the ‘trail’ running above the Elwha Basin to the Elwha Snowfinger and Dodwell-Rixon Pass … one access point for one of the classic backcountry traverses of the Olympics (the Bailey Range Traverse). While I would have liked the basin trail to be well maintained … while we were hiking it … if all the trails were wide and well-maintained, there would be much larger numbers of people hiking them. There are few areas where one can still experience the solitude of nature … lack of trail maintenance protects this solitude. Trail maintenance just needs to be fully funded … there are millions of dollars of maintenance that is backlogged. The trail below is a section of the trail to the Enchanted Valley … another extremely popular destination.
On the trail to Sol Duc Falls (see previous post), we had to walk across many little streams that were running down to the river. This was one that caught my eye. It was raining, which made the ferns shine … and the stream had water running in it (it dries up in the middle of summer). I’m not sure what has opened up the area around the stream. Mostly this area of the Olympic National Park is a dense stand of huge old trees.