[/caption] The higher you climb near the summit of Mt. Hood, the darker the sky becomes. I slowly realized this as I trudged my way up the west side of the mountain. I began my snow-shoe journey from the parking lot of Timberline lodge and I was able to make it just below the hogs back when I started cramping and realized that I was getting pretty dehydrated. I was forced to turn back but not until I got some pretty amazing photos of Mt. Hood completely covered and crusted over with wind blown snow. It was pretty amazing to see the blue sky turn more and more dark blue as you increase in elevation. I spent most of my time adjusting the ISO and white balance in order to eliminate the photo from being under exposed or completely dark. The sky was epic and almost cast the mountain as a moon scape looking out into outer space. I was using my Canon T1i and attached my Canon 55-250mm telephoto lens. I wasn’t using a tripod and since I extended the focal length at 250mm, in order to get some really close up shots of the summit, I had to make sure that I kept a steady hand and allow enough light so the photo wouldn’t come out blurry or shaky. I was able to set the ISO at 100 but had to set the white balance at 0. The camera was in normal/program mode and the aperture was set at F-8 and the shutter speed at 1/500 second. I did attach my CIR-PL in order to saturate the sky and eliminate too much glare caused by the snow.