The Enchanted Valley trail runs up the East Fork Quinault in the Olympic National Park. This is a rain forest valley and the forest is primarily Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock. Along the river bottom there are willows, maples and lots of alders. The image below is a small group that is in the middle of the stream bed … and likely to be washed away with the next big storm.
These are shore pine that are growing just south of Kalaloch along a section of the Olympic National Park beach.
These two shots were taken from the middle of the bridge across the Quinault River, just outside the Olympic National Park (in the Olympic National Forest). The road crosses to provide access to the North Shore Road and the North Fork Quinault trail from the South Shore Road. It isn’t too far from the upper end of Lake Quinault and the whole area is in the Quinault Rain Forest.
I was going through some trip photos from a few years back and found these. They aren’t ‘perfect’ in their focus … which is why you haven’t seen them before. But when I reviewed them, the focus didn’t worry me as much as immediately after taking them. Expectations change with time. With the color image, I especially like the very out of focus mountains in the distance.
This mountain is outside of Haines, Alaska … I know it by Pyramid Mountain … but I’m not sure that is the official name. You can tell why it would have that name locally, regardless of what the maps say. I lived up in Haines one winter in the mid-70’s. I’ve heard that their annual snowfall has taken a big hit since then. The river is the Chilkat and at this point it is starting to be impacted by tidal flow. This was taken September 1st, so shows the low point of snow pack.
I may have emphasized the clouds some, but they were boring before. Just some increase in contrast.