We were out at Finn River Farm (in Chimacum, Washington, about 10 miles south of Port Townsend) getting some dinner and were waiting outside. It was the first weekend in November and we were very lucky to get a sunny day. Even luckier was to be treated to this natural light show. The other folks that were around didn’t seem to have even noticed. This solar halo occurs when the sunlight is reflected by ice crystals high in the atmosphere.
The top image is looking across the valley of the Elwha to the north end of the Bailey Range … central section of the Olympic National Park. The image below is looking farther south to the central section of the Bailey Range. Besides the beauty of the clouds and weather with the interplay with the ridges, the unsettled weather keeps the crowds down.
More of my favorite images with mist, trees and ridges. These are in the Quinault Rain Forest of the Olympic National Park.
Lake 22 (TwentyTwo) is located just west of Mt Pilchuck, west of Everett, WA. in the Central Cascade foothills. The area was part of one of the very first ecological studies, in the 1949 book Pilchuck, The Life of a Mountain by Harry Higman and Earl J. Larrison. (Working my way through college in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, I mowed the lawn and did gardening at Harry Higmans’s widow’s house.) The book is a classic and I’m happy to have a first edition print of it in my library.
This is also the site of my very first backpack trip (August 1962) … and we ended up soaking wet. The image below shows the lake surface a few minutes later from the image above, when it began to pour on us … just a brief summer shower. This time we were prepared and didn’t end up soaked. There is no overnight camping permitted at the lake anymore due to excessive usage and to protect the environment around the lake.
I expect that partial rainbows are much more common than full rainbows. We get both kinds pretty often here in Port Townsend … one of the advantages of our frequently rainy weather (and there aren’t many). But I saw several in a couple of days the last week or so. The rain plus broken clouds did the trick.
