[/caption] Even early March offers some epic snow conditions in the Cascade mountains. You will find more bare spots along parts of the spiny and craggy mountain tops but there is still plenty of snow to go around even the most experienced mountains climber. During the winter months, the entire mountain of Mt. Hood is completely covered in snow with no bare rock visible but around early March the warmer temperatures and gravity begins to loosen the grips of old man winter clinging to the volcanic rock. This shot was taken around 11:30am and the sun was at about a 90 degree angle just to the right of the photo. The higher rocks were still creating a shadow but the sun was quickly creeping higher in the sky and the shade was disappearing fast. The elevation of the trees in the foreground are at about 3600 feet but there was plenty of fresh powder on the floor of the forest. I took this shot with my Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens and set the focal length at 160 in order to include most of the mountains as well as plenty of the blue sky and parts of the lush green forest in order to create a really nice photo. I wasn’t using a tripod so I had a hard time increasing the focal length past 250mm without showing camera shake or blur. I also attached my CIR-PL, which didn’t help with the blur problem when zooming in too close. I did make sure to turn on the IS in order to help eliminate any camera shake.