Elk in Winter

Elk in Winter 1

The Olympic Elk (or Roosevelt Elk … Teddy, not FDR) are much easier to see in winter when they are hanging out in the lowlands than in the summer when they wander around much of the Olympic National Park and at some high elevations. The first three shots are of the “Dosewallips herd” … in fact, the first two shots were taken in Dosewallips State Park. Number 3 was taken just across the river in the town of Brinnon … in the school yard. Number 4 is of the Skokomish herd, pictured crossing the North Fork of the Skokomish River at the upper end of Lake Cushman.

Elk in Winter 2
Elk in Winter 3
Elk in Winter 4

Snowshoe Hike

Showshoe Hike 1

I was going through some old photos and came across these images from one of my snowshoe climbs up Mt Rose in the SE corner of the Olympic Mountains. Mt Rose is a steep climb and the top doesn’t provide much of a view, except for a slice of Lake Cushman at its bottom. I enjoyed the quiet of a solo trip to the summit on the newly fallen snow … and then down the ridge line to the saddle between Rose and Mt Ellinor, and cutting back to the midpoint of the summit trail. Very minimal avalanche danger with the trail being in woods and without open chutes. A solo snowshoe summit climb isn’t something I would do these days … but it was fantastic at the time.

Snowshoe Hike 2
Snowshoe Hike 3

Snowy Mountains

Elwha Valley in Winter December 2015

I know many folks are wanting to enjoy the warm weather and here I am showing photos of snowy mountains. I was going through some older photos, doing some sorting and organizing and found these two images that with the new editing feature in Lightroom that just really made these two pop. So I figured I’d share. The top photo was taken while snowshoeing at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I’ve hiked the Elwha Valley many times and always enjoy looking down on it. The image below is the Sierras from the east near Lone Pine, California.

Sierras from the East March 2017

Black and White Patterns

Icicles on Doug Fir

I took these recently … more of my continuing interest in (mostly) high contrast black and white images. The top one also was put into Photoshop to detect the edges. The bottom two are just straight high contrast … taking the contrast slider in LIghtroom and increasing contrast to its maximum.

Blackberry brush run through the chipper
Looking up along the trail

Is this Photo Crooked?

Olympic Ridges in Winter

I did a double-take on this image when I was working on it. I kept trying to make it level and was distracted by the angles of the ridges and the cloud banks … and echoed by the cloud-line in the distances. But the trees show the image is ‘straight’. This is taken from the Hurricane Hill Road just past the Hurricane Ridge Visitor center, a popular snowshoe and cross-crountry ski route.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑