Teanaway Summer, Part 2: Stafford Creek

On the second day of my recent camping trip, I visited the Stafford Creek trail, best known for leading to Navajo Pass. I made it about five miles up the trail, not quite to Navajo Pass - I ran out of time! Besides, I would have arrived at the pass right at solar noon anyway, not having a chance to photograph the views in good lighting. I have better luck when I can photograph views closer to trailheads; this gives me more flexibility as far as timing.

There was plenty to do, however, along the rest of the trail. So much so, in fact, that on this hike - as well as the Esmerelda Basin hike that I wrote about earlier - I jotted down ideas in my journal that I would return to on my hike back. I knew that if I did everything I thought of on my way up, I'd hardly make any progress on the trail.

We'll begin things with a closeup of scarlet gilia. F/5.

Below is pink wintergreen (Pyrola asarifolia), a small forest-floor plant that is easy to miss. Like coralroot on an earlier hike, I only noticed the wintergreen when I had stopped to look at something else. I used F/3.8 to isolate the in-focus areas as much as possible. I put the camera directly on the ground to get a slightly upward-looking perspective of the flowers, which I think makes the image more compelling and gives a better view of the styles etc.

Also, I took the image of the wintergreen while I was laboring under a migraine headache. Not bad!

Below is a small flower I found growing on the forest floor in a few places early on in the hike. F/5, mostly to bring out the out-of-focus leaf shapes ever so slightly.

Below is a rose, probably Nootka rose. I liked the way this flower was "hiding" behind some of its leaves. F/3.3 to blur the foreground leaves.

The flower below is one I haven't identified yet; the umbel inflorescence would suggest something from the carrot or buckwheat families as a possibility. F/4.5 to isolate the foreground.

Finally, two landscapes. The one below is of a Douglas-fir trunk in the foreground and a Ponderosa pine trunk in the background. As you can probably tell from the perspective distortion, I used my wide-angle lens. I usually don't care for shots that have a lot of obvious perspective distortion, but I think it works in this case, bringing attention to the size and height of the Douglas fir. F/14.

And another lichen image. F/22 to get everything in focus.