Posts Tagged Heather Meadows
April 13, 2011 – Mt. Baker Ski Area
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on April 13, 2011
Mt. Baker Ski Area
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2439
Turns out it’s still ski season here in Washington, which is awesome. Although no, this picture isn’t THAT recent, it’s from earlier this year, end of January I think. Remember how I said that I headed up to Mt. Baker that one particular day to take advantage of the sunshine? It’s still true! And this is from then!
The terrain you’re looking at (which is part of the Mt. Shuksan massif) is all out of bounds, probably inside the National Park boundary (and I’ve mentioned all this before.) Nice little slide right there on that little hummock. It’s not clear if those people you see in the picture caused it or not. I have an earlier picture two of them are standing on the top of the ridge above it, and the third guy is well below it on the next hummock down. By analyzing the ski trails, it looks like there’s a decent chance that he did start it. But, all three of them look pretty relaxed, which is definitely *not* how I’d look if either me or my buddy just narrowly avoided being buried in a slide that I/he/she had triggered way in the backcountry. So, I’m going to just say it’s “unclear” and leave it at that.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/500s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 250mm.
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January 31, 2011 – Mt. Baker Ski Area
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on January 31, 2011
Mt. Baker Ski Area
Monday, January 31, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2399
Welcome back, everyone! Through an unusual turn in the weather this last weekend, we actually got some sunshine around these parts, at least in the northern half of western Washington. I mean, sure, it’s not unheard of for us to see the sun in the winter here in the Pacific Northwest, but to get a day of wall-to-wall blue skies, well that doesn’t happen too often, at least not west of the Cascade crest. So, I decided to take full advantage of it by heading up to Mt. Baker for the day. For those of you not familiar, the Mt. Baker ski area is notable for primarily two reasons. First, it holds the world record for snowfall in one season. That should give you the (correct) impression that they get a lot of storms rolling through, and most of the storms drop a LOT of precipitation. Second, the scenery up there – when you can see it – is UNBELIEVABLE. Seriously, there are few places on this earth that can match the quality of the views up there. It’s truly unreal. The second point there is what made it perfect for yesterday.
The skiing yesterday could probably best be described as “decent, but not great”. We had some fairly warm weather late last week, and a cold front that blew through early in the weekend. As a result, it was fairly icy. But it was great for pictures, which is really the main reason I wanted to head up there. I’ve only just begun going through the shots I got (I really only dipped my toes in just enough to find a picture to use for today), so I’m sure you’ll be seeing plenty of them over the coming weeks, months, and potentially years. So, get comfortable!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 24mm.
Popularity: 14%
September 7, 2010 – Mt. Baker Ski Area
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on September 7, 2010
Mt. Baker Ski Area
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1736
Hey everybody, welcome back! Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend if you live in a place such that this last weekend was a long one. Alternatively, I hope you enjoyed your regular-length weekend followed by your fairly typical Monday! My traffic dropped fairly precipitously over the weekend, so I’m guessing that means that most of you were indeed not around a computer. Either that, or you had very little confidence that I’d actually be posting anything. Or, most likely, both.
The weather around here was crap this weekend, which cancelled my plans to go backpacking near Glacier Peak. I still hope to make it back to that trail, but this weekend wasn’t looking like the right time. Instead, Julie and I headed over to the desert, where the forecast (which was correct) said it would be 70 and sunny. I didn’t really realize it until this weekend, but holy crap! There’s some absolutely GORGEOUS terrain over there! I definitely need to get out there and explore it more. You can probably tell that today’s picture is absolutely not from the desert, and if that’s what you were thinking, you’re correct. I’m still following my rule that I won’t go through my new pics until at least a couple days since I’ve taken them. Which means, I’ll start looking through them tonight or tomorrow.
So, since I couldn’t look through the weekend’s pictures last night, I ended up instead looking back through some old pictures that I’ve still got on my hard drive. (Eventually I archive them off to DVDs, but I’ve got a few years of pics that I haven’t done that with…) I’m still slowly trudging my way through my old pictures, digging out any that are even remotely interesting. I’ve mentioned this several times. But, last night, I went even further back than that, and revisited a bunch of pics that I had already dug through and grabbed everything that I thought was worthwhile. But, I suppose I was in a different kind of mood or something, because in 4 or 5 months worth of images, I found 23 that I had previously passed over that are at least worthy of putting in Rate Dave’s Photos (which is a pretty low bar, honestly.) This being one of them. Not all of them are any good of course, but some of them are good enough to toss up here. (Well.. okay, yeah, still a pretty low bar. Shut up.)
This was taken at Mt. Baker Ski Area, which is in the northern part of Washington State. I’ve only skiied there once (the day I took this picture), although I have also snowshoed there, and I’ve been up there a whole bunch of times in the summer (it’s inside Heather Meadows Recreation Area). This was I believe on closing weekend a few years back, so mid to late April. Checking the timestamp on the image says yes, April 27. So, almost into May. Now you can see one of the things that frustrates me: why do they have to close these mountains so early?! They clearly still had plenty of snow. I suppose you could argue that by then, most folks have already hung their skis up for the season, so it becomes more and more difficult to keep running the lifts profitably, but whatever, I’m not concerned with the bottom line, I just want to ride a line to the bottom! Sigh, oh well.
It’s worth noting as well that Mt. Baker Ski Area holds the world record for snowfall in a single season. I believe it’s not just the world record for ski areas, but for any point where snowfall is measured. That could be wrong, but I think it’s right. Anyway, the record was set in the 1998-1999 season, when they had 1,140 inches of snow fall. (That’s **95 FEET** of snow, or 29 meters!!) That was a La Nina year (you know, the opposite of El Nino). Oh, did I mention that La Nina is also scheduled to make an appearance this season? Yes. Yes it is. Excellent.
I should also note that this picture was NOT from the record breaking season. This was just from a more typical season, where they average 647 inches. Still not too shabby, kinda makes you wonder why I’ve only skiied there once, huh? Oh, right, it’s more than a three hour drive. That would do it.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/500s, f/11.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 17%
March 9, 2010 – Mt. Shuksan
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 9, 2010
Mt. Shuksan
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=631
I don’t like this picture. I mean, I *really* don’t like this picture. The foreground is all muddled up with a shapeless mess of green stuff, and not only does it not nicely frame the mountain in the background, it actually partially blocks it. I really really don’t like this picture. But for some unknown reason, it seems that everyone else does. At the time I’m writing this, it’s got 53 votes, with an astronomical average of 8.96!! What?!? I mean, I can understand the odd high vote here and there, but normally by the time a mediocre picture gets 53 votes, sanity has prevailed and the average rating has fallen to a more reasonable level. But not with this one.
Am I wrong here?? What do you people see in this picture that I’m missing? There’s got to be something, right? Anyone??
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 22mm.
Popularity: 11%
January 21, 2010 – Mt. Shuksan
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on January 21, 2010
Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Thursday, January 21, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=619
Today brings us back to Mt. Shuksan, and the Heather Meadows Recreation Area in northwestern Washington state. This was taken from the usual viewpoint, but it’s a bit of a different setup than you usually see. It’s of course hard to argue with the usual shot, because if you can time it right when the lake is mirror-smooth, it’s such a classic image. But I still like this setup too. I’m actually a bit disappointed in the quality of this image though. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try to use a small aperture and keep the mountain totally in focus, or if I should open it wide and really focus on the tree. So instead I went to this annoying in-between state, where it looks like it’s supposed to be in focus, but it’s just not quite there. And then I over sharpened it a bit to compensate. Sigh. Oh well, good enough for a Thursday. And, actually, at the time I probably THOUGHT I was getting it perfectly in focus. This was back when I was still using my Rebel XT, which had a tiny little screen, so it probably looked razor sharp at the time, just not on the big screen. That’s one of the big reasons I upgraded this summer to the T1i, to get the nice big high-res screen. It definitely doesn’t *eliminate* moments like that, but it definitely does make them less frequent. (That’s not meant as a dig on the XT though, it was still a fantastic camera, and I was really happy with it for the entire 3 years that I used it.)
Okay, see you all tomorrow…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 70mm.
Popularity: 7%
October 27, 2009 – Picture Lake
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 27, 2009
Picture Lake
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=201
Hey everyone. In the past I’ve posted a couple of pictures of the view of Mt. Shuksan with Picture Lake. This is also Picture Lake, but seen from the other side. In fact, if you know where to look, you can see where I took those pictures, on that opposite shore.
I just realized now as I’m writing this that this isn’t the picture I intended to post today. Meh, whatever.
Notes: Canon PowerShot S230 (Point and Shoot). 1/500s, f/2.8.
Popularity: 5%
October 21, 2009 – Mt. Baker
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 21, 2009
Mt. Baker from Heather Meadows
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=628
Hey everyone. You may have noticed that my Picture of the Day efforts this week were a big fat fail. I’ve been sick the last couple days, and absurdly busy. But, I didn’t want to let it slip three days in a row, so here’s a pic for today.
This is Mt. Baker, in northern Washington State. It’s a big volcanic peak, just like Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, and several others that stretch along the Pacific crest from California to British Columbia. Not much else to say here, and I’ve got to get back to work. Enjoy!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/400s, f5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 22 mm.
Popularity: 4%
October 16, 2009 – Heather Meadows
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 16, 2009
Artist Ridge trail - Heather Meadows
Friday, October 16, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=623
This is the 100th Picture of the Day! Pretty incredible, right? I figured I would have lost interest a LONG time ago. But no, 100 pictures, in 100 days (more or less, not counting weekends…) So far, I’m still doing just fine on the picture supply too. (Sure, I’ve posted a couple duds this week, and will no doubt do so again quite a few times in the future, but hey, without the crappy ones, how would you recognize the good ones??)
I started this knowing that there would certainly come a day when I would just run out of usable pictures. Obviously reusing them is an option, one that I haven’t ruled out, but it feels kind of wrong. Of course, I can push that day back by continuing to take more pictures, but if I add fewer than 5 to the pile every week, that doesn’t solve the root problem. Overall this summer I did a decent job keeping the pile about the same size. But this winter may be tough. It’s a lot harder to get out in the winter, and even when I can, the weather tends to suck (out here anyway.) We’ll see how it goes I guess. As it is, I think I’ve got at least another hundred in me, give or take a couple.
Here’s how the stats are looking: I’ve got 361 fans on Facebook. The majority of those arrived via the Facebook ads that I was buying for awhile (I bought ads for about a week, but that was awhile ago…) I’m not actually sure how many of those folks actually ever see any of the pictures though, they’re certainly quiet on the comment/like threads. On http://picture-of-the-day.com, I’ve got 17 more people who check the RSS feed every day. That’s pretty cool. I know one of them is Will Cothen. Because Will Cothen is cool. Will Cothen also just had a baby. Congrats Will Cothen!
Anyway, here’s today’s picture. It’s from Heather Meadows, near Mt. Baker, just outside the boundary of North Cascades National Park, in Washington state. I’ve posted a couple pictures from there before. In the winter, this spot would be under about 20 feet of snow, solidly in the backcountry of the ski area at Mt. Baker. In fact, even as late as July it’s still usually buried several feet deep. But it’s got some nice colors come late September. Lots of blueberries too, good stuff. It’s a great day trip, heading up there. It takes about 3 or 3 and a half hours to drive up there, but there’s a number of little trails that you can knock off with just an afternoon (this photo is from one of the short ones – the Artist Ridge trail). There are of course longer trails too, some of which cross the boundary into the national park, some of which head toward Mt. Baker itself. Somehow I always seem to end up there at least once a year, which is nothing to complain about.
That’s it for today, have a great weekend, and enjoy the next 100 pictures!
Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/320s, f7.1, ISO 200, focal length: 31mm.
Popularity: 3%
July 31, 2009 – Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 31, 2009
Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Friday, July 31, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1
Once again, I’ve got to send out a big welcome to all of today’s new subscribers. We’re up to 224 now, so welcome, welcome, welcome!
When we passed 100, I told number 100 that she could pick out today’s picture, so this is the one she chose. It’s pretty similar to another picture from a month or so ago, but it’s still worth talking about.
This is Mt. Shuksan and (the very aptly named) Picture Lake. It’s in the Heather Meadows Recreation Area, just outside of North Cascades National Park in Washington State. It’s somewhat interesting to note that I’m standing about a quarter of a mile from what serves as the parking lot for the Mt. Baker ski area in the winter. This place gets A LOT of snow in the winter. In fact, Mt. Baker holds the world record for snowfall in one season, with 1,140 inches (29 meters, 95 feet) of snow in the 1998-99 season. As you can imagine, that amount of snow takes quite awhile to melt each year, so it’s well into the summer (sometimes into late August) until this area is snow-free.
It’s pretty simple to get a fantastic picture from this spot. Just about any time of day is great, but I’ve found that the ideal time is around 4 or 5 pm. The sun at that point is shining directly on the mountain, and the daytime breezes are usually starting to settle, so you start to get a really nice mirror-like reflection. (Not as much so in this picture as in several others I have, but hey, this was the one that was picked. What am I going to do, pick my own picture or something? Pshaw.)
Quickly worth noting: the other picture that I mentioned I’ve already posted was taken about 4 or 5 years later (almost to the day). I figured it would be worth heading back up there since I had much better equipment than I had the first time around, and the weather conditions were working out to be almost identical. Okay, now that that’s been said…
One of the themes I’ve touched on several times in the past was that you don’t need a big fancy camera to get some fantastic pictures. Don’t get me wrong, having a big fancy camera is awesome, and no, you can’t have mine. There are definitely pictures you can get with that type of camera that you can’t get otherwise. But just because you don’t have one doesn’t mean you can’t still get fantastic pictures. This was taken back in 2002. At that time, I usually carried two cameras with me: my old 35mm fully-manual SLR, and my **2 megapixel** pocket point-and-shoot. The idea was, since it was so much easier to take pictures with the point and shoot, and since I didn’t have the limitation of only a set number of pictures on a roll, I’d take most of my pictures with that one. Then, if there was a picture that I thought I’d potentially want to enlarge later, I’d bust out the 35mm.
This picture was actually the first big step I took toward fully adopting digital, and tossing the 35mm in a box in the basement. I took this scene with both cameras, and found that I ACTUALLY LIKED THE DIGITAL ONE BETTER. As in, the picture from the stupid little pocket sized camera with only 2 megapixels and the little tiny lens gave me a result that I felt was at least as good as that from the SLR. I enlarged both of them up to 12×18, and they both looked fantastic. This went against everything I had thought I “knew” about digital up to that point. It was a really earth-shattering moment for me. Since then, of course, I’ve gone through a whole smattering of cameras: a 3.2 megapixel (Canon), a 5 megapixel (Canon), an 8 megapixel (Fuji), a 7 megapixel (Canon), another 8 megapixel (SLR – Canon), and.. I’m losing interest in the list. Whatever. There were a lot of them. That’s the point. But after taking this picture and seeing the results, I only ever busted out the 35mm SLR a couple more times, but even then I knew that it was over between us.
So, don’t use your lack of expensive equipment as an excuse. Just take pictures. The concepts are all the same no matter what you’re using. The most important things are the composition and the exposure, and even those can be tweaked easily after the fact if you’re shooting digital. There, how’s that for inspirational? 
Don’t get used to it, I’ll be grumpy again next week.
Have a great weekend! And tell your friends!! (Also, for the new folks: You can also follow the picture of the day at http://davefry.net/potd – the quality of the images themselves is much higher over there, since they don’t have to go through Facebook’s shrink-it-down-for-web-viewing cycle.)
Map: http://bit.ly/425qlY
Notes: Canon PowerShot S200 (Point and Shoot). Details unavailable.
Popularity: 5%
June 17, 2009 – Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 17, 2009
Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
June 17, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=617
I’ve been meaning to get this one out of the way for quite awhile. This is Mt. Shuksan and (the very appropriately named) Picture Lake. It’s up near Mt. Baker, in the Heather Meadows Recreation Area, which sits on the boundary of North Cascades National Park. The parking lot(s) for the Mt. Baker ski area are very close by, if that means anything to you.
Similarly to how the view of the Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake outside of Aspen is *the* prototypical Colorado view, this is *the* view for Washington State. (Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch – the real Washington State view is probably the view of the Seattle skyline from Kerry Park, or something involving Mt. Rainier or the Pike Place Market. But that makes this Picture Of The Day entry less interesting, so shut up.)
Heather Meadows is a great place to go hiking or even just to drive in to visit, since you can drive very high up, basically to the top of the ridge between Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker, so the views even from the road are jaw-dropping incredible. However, it takes a LONG time for the snow to melt. (Mt. Baker Ski Area holds the *world record* for snowfall in one season – not just among ski areas, but among any location where snowfall is measured – 1.140 inches, or 95 feet. So it’s usually well into August before the hiking trails are clear. (And of course, by October it starts building right back up.)
This picture was taken in the late afternoon, probably 5 pm or so, in early September. Right around then is when the lake calms down enough to allow the mirror-smooth reflection, and the sun is shining right on the mountain, bringing out all the detail. It’s fairly predictable, actually, and I’ve got almost this same exact picture from about 5 years earlier that I took with my previous-generation camera. (Now that I have my “new” (at the time, it’s since been replaced) digital SLR, I went back to take it again.) But, it’s a fantastic view, and you see it pop up here and there in interesting places.
One such interesting place, as it turns out, was on a t-shirt in a gift shop in FRISCO, COLORADO!! Here’s a picture of it:
http://www.davefry.net/journal/2006-12/12-31/12-31-39-tshirtclose.jpg
(Apparently, Colorado is the only state that’s licensed to have mountains, so any mountain scene must therefore be contained somewhere within.)
So, if you find yourself in the Seattle area, and have an afternoon to kill with a super-nice drive, I’d say head up to Heather Meadows. Well worth the time.
Map: http://tinyurl.com/nnloon
It’s worth panning around the map to look at Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 18mm.
Popularity: 8%