There aren’t a lot of days when it is bright and sunny in the Olympic National Park … often the clouds are low and drip on a regular basis. This is true even in mid-summer when the lowlands are hot and dry. It is therefore always a pleasure to chance upon clear sunny weather and be hiking into sunlit openings.
Typically, I convert an image into black and white using one of Lightroom’s presets or B&W profiles as a starting place. In this case, I used the local adjustment tool and desaturated the whole image, then switched to erase mode and removed the desaturation from the foliage on the riverbank. The desaturation technique is pretty much a blunt instrument approach: it doesn’t provide the fine tonal adjustments that are available using other techniques. However, this image didn’t require a lot of fine adjustment.
This the the Dosewallips River at the point where the road was washed out several years ago. There is a trail bypassing the washout that runs above through the woods… however, when the river is low the trail along the bank is quicker and doesn’t involve climbing up a hundred feet or so.
Sorry, the title came to me and I couldn’t resist. The last days of a hike, it is always interesting to put on the pack first thing in the morning. The pack typically doesn’t weigh as much as it has on other days (as a result of consuming over a pound of food a day), unless you have been collecting rocks … or unless it has been raining and your gear is wet. Of course, it can be bittersweet, too: sadness at leaving the wild and looking forward to a cold beer and a burger.
Getting ready to hike up the North Fork Dosewallips trail, Olympic National Park from the old car campground. We don’t generally get going very early in the day … we tend to wear out early enough that there isn’t any point in a very early start.
By the way, the privy is visible in the background. However, the park had closed it … a steel cable ran across the door. We assumed it was due to concerns with Covid and the lack of any cleaning maintenance. Sorry silly if that is what it was. No one ever using one of these back country privies has ever had the impression that they are sanitary. Quite the contrary.
Recently took a 5-day backpack trip up into the Olympic National Park. When we got to the Dosewallips River trailhead, there were horses and mules being loaded up. We expected they were going on a pack trip across the park. Later, we talked to them in camp our first night … they were volunteers from the Backcountry Horsemen, taking tools (chainsaws and brush cutters) and fuel in for a volunteer group from the Washington Trails Association working on the N Fork Dosewallips and Graywolf Pass trails.