[/caption] Picture perfect day after a huge snow storm dropped several inches of snow at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. While resting near one of their chair lifts I decided to take a few photos of the snow flocked trees standing over the massive cliffs looking down at me. I framed the powder in the foreground and tried to create the best panoramic view possible. I ended up having to tilt my camera and tripod at about a 70 degree angle to get this shot. I was lucky that the clouds had passed over and was able to get this photo with only a few clouds. I actually took about 50 different photos from this same spot as well as several more in different locations but this one stands out really well.
Tag Archives: snow-shoeing in Oregon
Snow capped Mt. Washington, OR
[/caption] One of my best snow-shoe adventures was when I visited Big Lake, which is just a short hike from the Ski Hoodoo parking lot. Big lake is actually frozen in winter so you could take your chances and x-country ski or snow-shoe over the lake since I saw several snow-mobile tracks x-crossing the frozen lake. However, during my visit it was rather warm and the edges of the lake weren’t frozen but I was able to cross over the lake in some areas. The trek around the lake is pretty easy and you get some unbelievable views of Mt. Washington. There are also areas where you can try to climb towards the snowy banks of the mountain. However, I ended up turning around after about an hour, of trudging up its steeps banks, since I was more interested in visiting the lake. I actually underestimated the magnitude of the uphill trek and expected to get above the treeline rather quickly but was sorely mistaken in the difficulty. If you had all day and have some luck with sunny skies you will have a great opportunity to see Three Fingered Jack towards the north. I would also think that if you could snow-shoe up one of the many lava cones you would get a descent glimpse of the Three Sisters in the south and Mt. Jefferson in the north. I hope to visit Big Lake and Mt. Washington this winter and will post some photos if I get any of these views.
Snow covered forest in winter
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There is nothing more awesome than snow-shoeing deep in the forest just after a huge snow storm blankets the forest. I took this shot as well as many others while I was snow-shoeing within the Mt. Hood Wilderness. I had just finished photographing Mt. Hood when I decided to blaze through the trees and see what kind of pictures I could get. I was fortunate to have been visiting the day after it had snowed. I was trying to capture the perfect photo as I positioned my camera in every angle I could. This shot was taken at about 11:45am and I was pointing towards the sun. This created some reflections off the trees and made them look somewhat blueish as this can happen when you’re taking pictures in the snow. I was also shooting at about an 80 degree angle so this makes the light have to bend at a pretty steep angle which can also completely change the lighting and the perspective of the shot. I made almost no changes to the saturation or brightness in photoshop. This is pretty much a raw photo with me mostly just cropping parts of the edges out since I was using my wide angle lens and the edges were dark due to the use of my filters and lens hood. I was using my Canon T1i along with my Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens. I had the focal length at 13mm in order to get as much of the trees in the frame. I attached my warming and CIR-PL filters in order to calm down the overexposure of the bright sunlit skies as well as eliminate any shadows that may appear from the trees. The camera mode was in Program/Normal so the aperture was at F-4 and the shutter speed at 1/40 second. I wasn’t using my tripod so I did increase the white balance to +0.7 so I could still keep the ISO at 100. I was lucky enough to avoid any sun glare, especially since I was looking almost directly in the sun and the aperture was at F-4. Using the trees to block parts of the sun and having filters helped avoid this