First Trip to Mt. Rainier

So I'm having trouble putting into words just how amazingly beautiful my trip on Sunday was to Mt. Rainier (the Sunrise side). We got there early, but not too early, since this was my first real trip to the mountain ever (yeah, I know, a couple from Louisiana couldn't even believe that I'd never been up there before given that I've lived in Washington my whole life). The clouds were still obscuring the mountain but as we got out on the trail they began to part and then there she was, this huge wonderfully gorgeous snow capped gem of the cascades!!

Mt. Rainier from the Silver Forest trail at Sunrise

Needless to say I had to take many moments to just put down the camera (not an easy task either) to just stare and soak up the mountain and how amazing it was. It was truly a perfect day in every respect, and to just bask in the warmth of the sun and be surrounded and wrapped up in everything around me was just heaven!

As the day wore on the haze overcame a lot of the best colors of the mountain, so I was very glad I got my butt out of bed so early to drive up there, it was incredible and I am now completely hooked on Rainier, I need to go back, NOW!!

Oh, also, this was my first time shooting entirely in RAW format on my camera, so I'm excited to check it out and see what I got that doesn't show up in just the standard jpg format, as well as going to be doing some HDR stuff with it all. So much to do, feels like so little time till the snow will cut off this newfound heaven...

The trail that kicked my...

Yeah, so...again with the bugs, only this time with a really difficult trail as part of the package deal. I went hiking up Mt. Dickerman with a bunch of friends to see the sunset, and while we didn't get a great sunset, we got cool clouds, time to commune with the mountains, and lots of cool stuff to see.

headed up the trail, spotted this awesome dead tree

Del Campo Peak from the trail

Sunset over Big Four Mountain

Beautiful pastel colors over a portion of Big Four

It was a lot of fun, and though I am unbelievably sore at the moment, both from the trip and the pack I was wearing, and the lack of sleep afterward, I am glad that I did it, if nothing else than the fact that I got to escape once again to my mountain solitude :)

To paraphrase a favorite quote: "The bugs were angry that day my friend..." Went up with a bunch of good friends to Hurricane Ridge out on the Olympic Peninsula for a day trip and what turned out to be the most intense and beautiful sunset we could have ever hoped for.

The Olympic Mountains from Hurricane Hill summit

The clouds broke apart as we drove up the winding road, making our way to the Visitor Center (where a deer was taking shelter from the bugs and heat under a tree) and made our way onward to the trailhead for Hurricane Hill. What started out as a few mosquitos quickly began to blossom into swarms, and though coated with copious amounts of bugspray, it didn't deter them much, and the breeze was insufficient to force them away. At one point, Erika donned her raingear to cover up, and I was running up and down the hill taking shots and then running back to take shots from a spot I'd run from to get away from the bugs. Rakesh's solution was to douse himself in even more bugspray, and this seemed to work well until the very end when the sun was setting and nothing was detering those little bastards!!

All in all, the bugs made this hell for a hike, but because of that we made really good time both up and down, saw some deer rapidly trying to escape the mosquito hordes, and Ptarmigans bathing in dirt to keep them off. And of course, the sunset in the end was practically to die for, so it all worked out, and a few dozen bug bites later... I am still glad we went! More photos to follow later when I've had time to sort them all!

Sunset of Gold and Blood

So I'm sitting in bed, reading a good book, relaxing to some tunes, when the phone rings, it's my friend Rachel, who I used to work with and haven't talked to in weeks and don't see very often since she lives in Federal Way.

Anyway, she says "look outside, NOW!" and I go outside and holy crap!!! I manage to stutter out "I'll call you back" and hang up and grab my camera to take these images, all within the space of 10 minutes. None of these have been touched other than to resize, this is straight out of the camera.

My first view off the patio, "Oh...dear...god!"

Red Appears a few minutes later

Detail of the clouds, love the streaking!!

Needless to say, yeah, I was blown away, I've lived here in this apartment for 4 years now, and have yet to see this, ever, I can't even remember ever seeing this any time I've lived here, just amazing! So hope this was as much a new sight for you as it was for me, it's times like this that I love where I live, even if the commute sucks :)

A couple photos from the last post.

Wow, my first blog entry, ok, yeah, this is going to take some getting used to!

So today, what prompted me to create a blog, was reading through my friend Erika's blog posts from the past, and realizing it must be nice to look back and see where you were before as you look forward and look at the present. So here I am!

Today I went on a site visit to take boring pictures of an intersection where our firm has some improvements going in. While I was there, I came upon 3 full grown and quite large Garter Snakes hanging out in a drainage culvert/ditch. So I immediately had to grab my other lens out of the car and go shooting. I got off maybe 3 shots before I recieved the dreaded "low battery" error! "Oh crap" I thought, since I had yet to recharge my batteries from the whale watching trip on Sunday!

So I stared at the snakes in disapointment, but decided it was ok, and headed back to the car. On the off chance that my memory is foggier than I remembered (analyze that statement for a minute, how would one know if their memory is foggy?) I popped out the battery and swapped the spare one in. Full charge!?! Turns out that the boat was so dang cold that the battery charge dropped while I was on the boat, but recouperated after getting it back into the room temperature of the apartment!

So off I went, to shoot more, and I got some pretty decent shots, the snakes were in various stages of shedding, and though I couldn't get to close or get them to coil up and pose for me, I feel like I finally got to take decent pictures of these pretty snakes. After that I let them be and hope that they manage to make they're getaway before the construction crews show up to rip out that ditch in a few weeks :(