Tag: Backpacking

Panoramas

Heart Lake, Olympic National Park

I have been working for the last several months at putting together my hiking memiors. The title is “60 Years of Hiking in the Olympics”, and yes, that is how long I’ve been doing hikes and backpacks into the park. Since I always had a camera with me on those trips, I have spent hours going through all the images and selecting ones to include. One of the surprises was when I realized that there were several that I had taken with the idea that I might “paste them together” to create panoramas. That was difficult to do back in the film days … digital processing eventually made it as easy as pushing a button. These images are ones that I had never taken the time to paste together … so were new surprises for me. The one above is of Heart Lake on the approach to the High Divide. Below is the view of the Upper Hoh River valley from the middle of the High Divide, looking southeast. Mt Olympus is just to the right of the image … I had created the panorama of that one earlier, but missed this combination. (These were taken with an early digital camera … but before there was easy to use software to stitch them together.)

And when (if) the book is available as an eBook for easy download, I will provide the link.

The Upper Hoh River Valley, Olympic National Park
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The Upper Dungeness Basin

Home Lake in the Upper Dungeness Basin

These photos were taken from scans of photos that I took back years ago. Fortunately, I had shared prints with a friend and he still had them after my digital files were lost in a change to a new editing/organizing program (after which point I developed a significantly more thorough backup system). The Upper Dungeness Valley is outside of the Olympic National Park in the Buckhorn Wilderness.

View of the west side of the Mt Constance – Warrior Peak group from Upper Dungeness Basin
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Summer Hike

The Climb Out of 7 Lakes Basin

This was taken a few years ago when I was more able to wander around the high country. We were on our way up to the High Divide and then down to Hoh Lake and back. (Note that the pack doesn’t have a sleeping bag or other items strapped to it … a sure give away that this is a day hike.) We were camped down in the basin (which requires a hard to secure reservation for camping) and were enjoying the scenic highcountry without having a heavy pack. The 7 Lakes Basin is a frequent camp location to those hiking the High Divide loop trail, which provides some of the most stunning views of Mt Olympus and the central Olympics.

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Hiking In The Fog

Hiking in the Fog – 1

Going through my hiking photos from years past. I didn’t take nearly as many photos when it was foggy or misty or raining. Since I primarily hiked in the Olympic National Park, that meant that I had my camera in the pack a lot of days. After a while I got a couple of different waterproof (or resistant) cameras … first a Minolta and then a Nikonos. But the Minolta didn’t have a real good lens on it and the Nikonos was a brick. Like real heavy. I was delighted when I found the digital cameras became available in a waterproof, rugged vesion (my favorite was the Nikon AW series). These were all taken the same day, but I’m not sure what camera. It was film, though.

Hiking in the Fog – 2
Hiking in the Fog – 3
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Water Quality in the High Country

Filtering Water from Heart Lake

Back when I was hiking in the ’60’s and ’70’s, we just drank water out of streams and lakes if they seemed like they were ‘safe’. We looked for running water, especially if it had enough of a drop to it to get aerated. We figured the oxygen cleaned it up. I had friends that kept that philosophy up through the ’90’s. I started filtering water much earlier than that … about the first that backpacking filters became available. These photos are both taken at Heart Lake in the upper Sol Duc valley in the Olympic National Park. The photo below shows how the lake got its name.

The Heart Shape of Heart Lake
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