But nowhere is this more apparent than on the Lake Twenty-Two and Heather Lake trails. In some ways, these trails are almost the same trail. They are right next to each other, are a similar length, gain a similar amount of elevation, and terminate at similar lakes beneath the same mountain (Mount Pilchuck). The approaches to these lakes, however, are quite different. The Heather Lake trail, as I've narrated before, passes through areas that were heavily logged; those forests are dark and uniform. Only the final stretch of trail passes through old growth. The Lake Twenty-Two trail, as I discovered yesterday, is almost entirely in old-growth forest. The greater diversity of plant species and tree ages is painfully apparent.
Some say that this makes the Lake Twenty-Two trail a better hike. Overall, this is probably correct, although since the lakes aren't exactly the same, it's still fruitful to visit both trails. Moreover, it's an interesting way to compare an old-growth forest with a second-growth forest in almost identical conditions.
The lake itself, in the process of freezing over and with snowy cliffs behind it, posed quite a photographic challenge. I didn't want to just do a straight shot of the lake and the mountain behind it; while this is often a strong first instinct when approaching a lake like this, it can result in an image that's flat and, ultimately, not particularly interesting. I wanted some sort of a subject to compare with the lake; a foreground. The background cliffs, however, were so splotchy and high-contrast that many of the subjects I looked at would have been lost in that contrast - either that or the background cliffs would have been an indiscriminate mess of light and dark splotches.
My brother pointed out some interesting ice formations on the shore. Could I use those? I thought about it, but if I were to get my camera low enough to get a compelling perspective and include a satisfactory amount of the cliffs, the lake ice would be lost as a prominent subject. But then I noticed a few places on the shore where the ice had broken, revealing an inches-thick cross-section of the lake ice. Since I now had a subject that had vertical depth, I could get my camera low to the ground for a good perspective and not lose the subject.
This particular shot called for the "heavy artillery": my mini-tripod and my ultra-wide lens. I used f/22 because I wanted both the foreground ice and the background cliffs to be in focus.
This second image comes from near the trailhead. A little stream was coming down the slope right next to the trail, and I wanted to juxtapose that against its forest surroundings (without actually having the trail in the composition). To do that, I had to, once again, get the tripod down rather low. I used f/22 to keep everything in focus; in retrospect, I probably should have tried this image with selective focus as well, but I still like the result.
The hike isn't all in forest; there's a short stretch of switchbacks through some rockier, more open slopes. I found these - they seem to be the withered remains of some sort of flower, but I'm not exactly sure what species. They were on a shrub. Since I was very close to these, I was able to use f/6.3, to get more of the foreground flower in focus, and still keep the background blurred.
The aforementioned rocky slopes have some nice views, too. The image below looks out over the valley of the South Fork Stillaguamish River. For this particular image, I used a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky and the sunlit portion of the image.
Finally, on the upper reaches of those open slopes grow some bigleaf maples. When their leaves, as well as those of surrounding shrubs, have fallen, their mossy trunks and branches really stand out.
Finally, the forest. I didn't get many forest images, because forest pictures are difficult to do well, as I've written about before. This one is only so-so, but it's pleasant enough, with trees of different ages in the foreground, and a stream in the background.
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