When I first arrived, the valley was shrouded in mist; as I hiked, however, it gradually lifted, leading to some interesting interplay of clouds and light. The photo below, looking up the Baker River valley, was a bit tricky, because as it was, the contrast was much too high. I ended up needing to use a graduated neutral density filter. This ran the risk of making the top of the foreground tree trunk too dark; as it was, however, I don't think the gradient is so great as to be distracting. An aperture of f/22 was sufficient to keep everything sharp. I cranked the ISO down so that I could get a longer shutter speed and hence blur the water's movement; I don't think it really made a difference, though.
As mentioned earlier, the trail passes through alder groves of varying age. The shot below is, I think, one of my best alder-grove-themed shots, because the closeness of the foreground trunk and the leaves in front of it create a feeling of depth that my other similar photos haven't had. I stopped down all the way to f/32 to keep everything in focus. Thankfully, there was no breeze at this point, so a shutter speed of 2 seconds was not even an issue. There was a layer of low clouds/fog above the hillside in the background, and I originally tried to incorporate into the composition, but there was no way to avoid overexposing it.
Predictably, I was very happy to find some blooming fireweed plants further down the trail. The river and mountain views only sweetened the deal - like adding almonds to chocolate, or adding corn on the cob to a steak dinner. To continue the morning's theme of wide depths of field, I stopped down to f/20 to take this. I would have considered stopping down further, but the plants were swaying lazily in a breeze, and my shutter speed was only 1/25 of a second at ISO 500. Anything longer would have blurred the shot.
Well, it has to do with a hide-and-seek game I played with a certain large mammal. It began while I was hiking, as I do, and I approached a quite brushy alder grove with lots of ripe thimbleberries. "This would be just the place for a bear to be hanging out," I thought. Sure enough, I heard a loud twig snap in the brush. I moved to the side and craned my neck to try to see what had made it, but I saw nothing. Then I heard another twig snap, and a few thumps. Assuming that a bear had made these noises, I called out to the animal (as you're supposed to do), and backed up a few hundred feet.
I waited for about twenty minutes, and then thought, "Surely the bear's gone by now, if that even was a bear." I took a few steps and heard a very loud twig snap (much nearer than the last one), and this time saw a bush shake violently. Again, I called out, and backed up quite aways, subsequently hiking much farther back down the trail than I had the last time.
Annoyed that this series of "encounters" was wasting all my good morning light, I sat and sulked for a while, debating what to do. I drank some water, reviewed the pictures I had taken, packed up all my stuff, and waited. Just as I was relaxing and my guard was down, I turned to my left: BEAR! About twenty or thirty feet away on the trail. Startled almost out of my wits, I stood up slowly and said, "Hey bear, I'm leaving!" while backing up. The bear poked its head up, looked at me for about a second, and then dashed into the bushes.
By this point, all the good morning light was gone, and I had plenty of other tasks to accomplish that day, so I hiked back to the trailhead, stopping to let the next hiking party know where I had seen the bear. (I also sang to myself the whole way back, as many hiking guides recommend; I'm going to have to think of another way to make noise, though, because I got myself out of breath singing while climbing a short hill.) For the bureaucrats among you, I did stop at the park office and file a report.
But I'll be back to this trail, and, Lord willing, make it to the end! It's great!
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