[/caption] Reflection of Mt. Bachelor at Sparks Lake, Oregon. This photo was taken from the southern most part of the lake with the contrails and smoke from a controlled wildfire in the right hand corner of the photo. To get this shot I made sure to use my tripod, bubble level and remote switch. I was using my Canon T1i and attached my Sigma 17-70mm lens and set the focal length at 17mm in order to get the most panoramic photo as possible. I was visiting the lake during a weekday and it was past 5:00pm so there were no crowds of people other than a few people fishing near the lake. The lake was glassy and the winds had died down so I was able to get a really good reflection of the mountain and the contrails. If you visit during the afternoon to late afternoon you can expect quite a bit of wind so you will have a harder time getting a good reflection. Early morning and late evening is the best time to experience a glassy lake.
Tag Archives: Mt. Bachelor
Epic snow in the Cascade mountains
[/caption] If you haven’t been watching the snow report, along the Pacific Northwest recently, you probably aren’t aware that Mt. Bachelor received 35 inches of snow yesterday and Mt. Hood received over 4 feet of snow over the last two days. And that’s just in Oregon. Washington state has been reporting historic epic snow falls since they’ve been keeping records. The next 2 weeks is looking like more historical amounts of snow in the Cascade mountains. Now is the time to dust of your snow-shoes or cross-country skis and head up to the snow parks that line the Cascade mountain range. Make sure to bring your snow shovel and don’t forget you GPS and survival gear. This is shaping up to be one of the most amazing winters yet in the Pacific Northwest.
Central Oregon Cascades, OR
[/caption] Over the years I have tried to find the best spot to take a photo of the Three Sisters and Mt. Bachelor in winter. However, I have never been able to get both of them in the same photo. I eventually found one of the best spots to attain these photos with little more than a 2 hour snow-shoe adventure that ends at the summit of Bates Butte. The butte is just a few miles southwest of Sunriver. The butte is right off the road, the elevation gain is only about 600 feet and you have a 360 degree view of the land. I had no idea that any of these buttes offered views like this. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. In fact, you can see Paulina Peak to the east and Mt. Scott, the tip of Mt. Thielsen and Diamond Peak to the south. Once I got home, I starting looking through my Oregon Atlas and Gazetteer and found that there are several buttes in the area that are easy to get to and may offer even better views. To get this shot I was using my Canon Rebel T1i along with my Canon 55-250mm telephoto lens. I also had my UV, warming filter and CIR-PL filter attached. The camera was set in Program/Normal mode and the aperture was at F-7. The ISO was at 100 and the white balance was set at -1.3 due to the bad lighting. The focal length was at 100mm and the shutter was opened for 1/250 second. Since the photo was taken at 12:52pm the lighting was pretty dull. However, I had to wait for the sun to creep around the mountains before I could get a descent shot that included some light against Mt. Bachelor.
Mt. Bachelor and Goose Creek, OR
[/caption] Mt. Bachelor is a perfect lava dome mountain rising 9,060 ft in the Central Oregon Cascades. Its isolation from the the Three Sisters and Broken Top make it somewhat of a mystery to me. You would expect to see this much snow on the mountain in late May or early June. However, I took this photo of its western side in late June. Earlier in the morning I had climbed to the Pine Martin Express from the bottom of the chair lift and was met with more snow that I had anticipated. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of snow so I had to climb with nothing more than shorts and my hiking shoes. It made for a great workout but my legs got pretty sunburned due to the glare of the snow and sunny skies. As I sat at one of the lava fields just below the top of the chairlift, I thought about trying to summit but the snow was getting pretty soft and I wasn’t anywhere prepared for a summit trip. I got this shot while driving west on the Cascades Lakes Highway. There are several creeks that feed in to Sparks lake and I decided to hike along the creek and small meadows in order to get the perfect shot with the glare of the creek reflecting parts of Mt. Bachelor. The creek was so still at this point that I was able to take the shot without hardly any movement of the water. Goose creek is fed by one of South Sister’s glaciers and the water was ice cold. There were several wildflowers along its banks and all along the meadows surrounding Sparks Lake. Too get this shot I didn’t use my tripod since the sun was near its highest point and there were no shadows. I was using my ultra wide-angle lens and had the focal length at its maximum depth at 24mm. I was using my uv filter, warming filter and CIR-PL in order to keep the glare of the sun from washing out the color of the sky as well as the contour of the rocks in the creek. The warming filter helped bring out the rocks and and CIR-PL helped me capture the blueness of the sky without distorting the mountain. I had the white balance at -1 and the ISO at 100. I had the setting at auto so the shutter speed was 1/160 of a second. The F stop was at F8. Since the sun was directly above me I had to make sure and under expose as much as possible without losing the personality of the scene. Without my filters and the low settings, the picture would always come out over exposed. I was amazed with how much snow there was in the Central Cascades, even though it was near the 80 degree mark. Along my journey I met some skiers hiking down from the South Sister. I wasn’t surprised since all of the trails were covered within only yards from the start of each trail mark. I can only hope that this means the Cascades will have plenty of snow well into August.