Do you feel lucky?

My answer to this question on Saturday was yes. Low snow levels - about 3000 feet, the level of Snoqualmie pass - and intermittent showers. So potentially enough snow to make things interesting without complicating driving. With snow at marginal temperatures, through, there's a lot of variability, with a high chance of either a depressing rain-out or a snowy nightmare. At 6am, I checked online and saw that road temperatures were above freezing. I decided to go for it! Fortune (God, to be more precise) smiled down on me with a light snowfall in the morning that did not stick on the roads much at all. It melted during the day in the valley where I was hiking (Gold Creek) once it stopped actively snowing, faster than I would have liked, but all in all conditions were pretty close to exactly the way I had envisioned. I had wanted to take some snow pictures with autumn leaves still around, and was able to do so.

Interestingly, the most harrowing part of the trip by far was the drive back, during which I drove through (more like slammed into) some serious rain and hail storms. It's not like the hailstones were big - they seldom are in western Washington - but they and the rain were falling very thickly and at freeway speeds I could barely see through the windshield. I slowed down a bit (but not very much, since I didn't want to be rear-ended by someone having the same problem that I was), clenched my teeth, glared out the window, and battled my way through those gut-wrenching few minutes.

"Enough stories," you say. "Isn't the point of this blog supposed to be pictures?" It is indeed.

We'll start with one of the most interesting of the lot. The leaves you see are vine maple, and I wanted to juxtapose them with the snowy ridge in the background. It was hard to get the leaf stalks positioned in a good way, and it wouldn't look good if I cropped it to a standard size (like 8x10 for instance). Still, it's interesting.

This next one I also really like, or will like once I edit it. It might even be my favorite. I kind of blew out the highlights on the top left, but probably not so much so that I won't be able to recover them from RAW. The snowy ridge stands out well with the vivid colors in the foreground, and the bits of snow on the rocks enhance the effect, I think.

We'll continue, for the time being, on the theme of the snowy ridge. My densely textural/patterny shots don't always turn out terribly well, but I think this one does, possibly because there are still some clear contrasts, and the red leaves stand out pretty well. I also think it would look better if reproduced at a larger size.

A couple other shots of the ridge, with autumn colors still evident on it:

Now onto some shots from other locations along the trail. I like the contrast of the hemlocks' solemnity with the bright yellow leaves. This is also one of the best from the trip.

This one came from the beginning of the trip; I was able to set up my tripod in the shade of a favorably placed tree, allowing me to keep my camera dry! 1/25 sec, the shutter speed I used for this, was the best I could do. I would have liked a quicker speed, but didn't want to push the ISO up any farther than 500. Maybe next time, if I'm ever in a similar situation, I'll just bite the bullet and do it. In post processing, I'd want to bring out the leaf colors a bit.

I like my compositional idea for this last one, but don't think it works because too much of the snow had already melted; what's left is a bit splotchy. The same was true for my other pictures from this point along the trail.