Okanogan Autumn
Last week I took a 3-day trip to the Okanogan, searching for fall colors. I drove through the area in October four years ago, but had little time for photography. The trip last week was my chance to go back. Washington doesn’t have fall colors like the northeastern United States, but if you know where to look, you can still find color amongst the evergreens. Tanya and our dog, Benson, came along, and we stayed at an Airbnb house along the shore of Osoyoos Lake, near the town of Orville and just 3 miles from the Canadian border.
The Okanogan area is a great location to find Washington’s fall colors. Along the Okanogan and Similkameen Rivers, Osoyoos Lake, and many smaller lakes in the area, there are plentiful cottonwood trees which turn yellow and gold. (The featured photo above is of the Similkameen River.) Both west of the Okanogan River valley in the Cascade Mountains foothills and east of the valley in the Okanogan Highlands, there are yellow and orange aspens and tall yellow western larch trees. Sumac and other smaller shrubs provide a splash of red.
Below are several images from the trip. In case you are interested in exactly where these images where shot, I’ll be sharing the locations for some on Photohound. Or drop me an email and I can give you the locations.
November Weekend on the Olympic Coast
Every year I supply photographs for the promotional calendar at my day job (Robinson Noble). I try to come up with photos that match the month. November is a tough month. What kind of scene says “November”? Not only that, over the years, November is a slow photography month for me. It is usually cold and wet, not my favorite conditions for going out on a photo shoot. But, my stock of November shots (at least those worthy of being on a calendar) is getting very low. So several weeks ago, I decided I need to do a photo weekend. I decided to go to the Olympic coast, and so I reserved a 3-bedroom cottage on the beach at Pacific Beach (I needed 3 bedrooms because Tanya’s mom is staying with us for a few weeks and Tanya wanted to also invite her brother and his wife – they also brought their dog, and we brought Nahla).
I was all set for cold, rainy weather – there aren’t rain forests on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula for no reason. Yet, as our luck would have it, it was beautifully sunny all weekend. That doesn’t happen in November along the Washington coast very often. Of course, being a nature photographer, I have to complain about the weather – it’s never perfect, right? The sun made photography in the rain forest difficult because of high contrast, and the lack of clouds didn’t help the sunsets. But I think I did okay anyway, you be the judge. Are any of these photos suitable for a November slot on a calendar?
This is the Lake Quinault Lodge. This was taken in early morning, and though the whole scene was in shade, the sky was quite bright; therefore I controlled that by using HDR on this shot. The featured shot above is of Falls Creek, located just east of the lodge.
Bunch Creek Waterfall, Olympic National Park. By shooting early in the morning, this waterfall was in the shade, so no contrast problems.
Nice layers of color with this stand of trees across the Quinault River – shot in the morning before the sun had reached river level.
Here’s the Quinault River in Olympic National Park (right before the bridge, which you can see under the small patch of fog), just as the sun was starting to reach down to river level. This photo took some extra processing in Lightroom to control the contrast. The sky was very bright and the shadows dark, but with a few tweaks, it came out well I think.
The sun had yet to reach the Bunch Fields, letting me photograph this Olympic National Park scene in complete shadow.
While the shots above were taken in early morning, this was taken in mid-day – no way to keep direct sunlight out. HDR to the rescue! This is along the Maple Grove Nature Trail in Olympic National Park.
Of course, the Olympic coast features beaches as well as rain forests. Here is sunset at the appropriately named Joe Creek in Pacific Beach State Park
And back in Olympic National Park, here is Ruby Beach right before sunset.
I had fun photographing the sun shining through the waves at Ruby Beach.
Without good clouds in the sky to light up the sunset, I tried for this view of the setting sun through a small arch to give some character to the shot.
Autumn in the Palouse
May and June are probably the most popular months for photography in the Palouse. But in preparing my up coming Palouse guide (to be published by Snapp Guides sometime next year), I thought I should visit the area in all seasons. The area is not known for fall colors, but there are a fair number of cottonwood, aspen and other trees to provide color in the area. So Tanya and I headed over to the Palouse in mid-October to see what we could find.
I only had a day and a half to explore and look for fall color. Not really enough time to cover the area, but from my previous explorations, I had a good idea where to look. I found that some of the cottonwoods were in prime color, but others had already lost most their leaves. Most the aspens were looking good, though some had lost a lot of leaves, and many smaller shrubs and scrubby trees had color as well.
Of course, most of the area is covered by agricultural fields and barren of trees. Many of the beautiful golden fields I found in August had been plowed under, and some already replanted with next year’s crop. A few fields were just starting to sprout green wheat seedlings, but overall the main color scheme was brown and dusty yellow.
I made a visit to Steptoe Butte for sunset, it was good as always. However, because of the active plowing of many fields, there was a lot of dust in the area. I’d suggest the view from Steptoe would probably be clearer in the morning on most October days.
Overall, I was happy with what I came home with, and would have liked to spend a few more days there. However, I think the photo opportunities don’t quite rank up there with what is available in May, June, and August. That said, if you want to get something truly unique from the Palouse, October is a great time to go.
The featured photo above is a 3-shot panorama of a scene along State Route 272 east of Colfax. More photos are below. Leave a comment and let me know what you think of autumn in the Palouse.
This cottonwood along Tennessee Flat Road had already lost most of its leaves.
While this cottonwood at a barn along Shawnee Road was in its prime colors.
Here’s the covered bridge near Manning Road, the aspens have lost most their leaves, but the cottonwoods looked good.
The maple trees at the Cordelia Lutheran Church were looking pretty good.
The cottonwoods near this barn on Faught Road were looking colorful as well.
The scrubby trees on the slopes of Steptoe Butte were quite colorful.
I’ll leave you with this tree on Steptoe Butte bathed in the warm glow shortly after sunset.
Cascade Pass
Road access to North Cascades National Park is extremely limited. The North Cascades Highway doesn’t actually travel through the park; rather it travels through the Ross Lake National Recreation Area. The road south from Canada to Hozomeen also only enters Ross Lake National Recreation Area; besides it is currently closed. There is a road from Stehekin that extends a couple of miles into the park, but of course, Stehekin has no road access itself. That leaves the Cascade River Road, which ends at the Cascade Pass trailhead. In my opinion, the view from the end of the road is amazing; the view from Cascade Pass is better (in their description of the trail to Cascade Pass, the Washington Trails Association says “perhaps no other trail in the state delivers as much reward for the effort”). But if you want to go this season, you better hurry. The Park Service announced yesterday the road will close five miles from the trailhead starting tomorrow for a minimum of two weeks. Following that, there is no telling when it might close due to snow.
I had the opportunity to hike to Cascade Pass last week when in the area for work. My business done at noon, I drove up the Cascade River Road and into the park. The trail is 3.6 miles one way and climbs about 1,700 feet. It starts out of the parking lot with 31 switchbacks, climbing through forest with occasional “peek-a-boo” views of the surrounding mountains. But with less than a mile to go, past the last switchback, the trail levels out and comes out of the trees for impressive views of glaciers, fields, mountains, and valleys. Wildlife sightings are common – a fellow hiker reported a bear near the trailhead, though I did not see it.
For continued views, the trail extends from the pass up Sahale Arm. For the atheltic hiker, the trail east down out of the pass continues about 30 miles, all the way to the aforementioned town of Stehekin. And for the truly adventurous, the Ptarmigan Traverse (a high backcountry route) climbs over the mountains south of the pass (some of my photo buddies have done this route and brought back amazing pictures). For me, at least on this day, I chose to travel up the Sahale Arm trail mile or so before turning around to get back to the car before sunset.
The fall colors were amazing, even if slightly past their peak on my hike, as I think you can attest by the accompanying photos. The featured shot above is a 3-shot vertical panorama looking back at Cascade Pass from the Sahale Arm trail. Captions explain the other photos (below).
This is the view looking eastward down from Cascade Pass. The valley eventually reaches Lake Chelan, 30 miles away.
Fading afternoon light on one of the peaks above Cascade Pass.
A view from the pass down to the end of the Cascade River Road.
November
November is often a dreary month in the Pacific Northwest, and I find it hard to get excited about outdoor photography. The fall colors are mostly gone and it rains (a lot) west of the Cascade Mountains. The hope of winter photography is often yet not realized – if there is much snow in the mountains, it is often heavy, wet, and melting under dull gray skies. Okay, things aren’t quite that bad, but November is not my favorite time of year for photography.
That’s why I was pleasantly surprised last week when I tagged along with Tanya to her work conference in Vancouver, Washington and found some good November photography. While Tanya was being educated, I decided to drive down into the Willamette Valley of Oregon to visit a few wineries and take some pictures. It was sunny on and off throughout the day mixed with light rain. Not perfect conditions, but better than the steady downpours we’ve been having lately.
The Willamette Valley south of Portland is chock full of wineries and vineyards, and it can be hard to figure out where to go for photography. So once again I relied on an excellent photography guidebook by Greg Vaughn, this one about Oregon. In his section on the Willamette Valley, he lists several wineries that are particularly photogenic, so I picked out a few of those and plotted a route through the area.
Unfortunately, most of the grape vines had already lost their leaves, but I was able to find enough to take a few colorful late fall photographs. Mid-November is a bit late for color here, and based on what I saw, I’d think late October would be much better. But between the photography and the wine tasting, it was one of my better days photographing in November.
Colorful orchard in the Willamette Valley
Wine grapes at a Willamette Valley vineyard
Colorful scene along a back road in the Willamette Valley
The stairs and colorful maple leaves at the Torii Mor Winery
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