Fine Art Photography Blog

“It’s god-awful country,” the officer said, recommending that I avoid US 287 across Wyoming from Rawlins to Moran Junction. He was right. I had flown to Connecticut, where I grew up, bought a used car, and was driving it home to California; a member of the local highway patrol wanted to make sure my [paper] temporary plate was legitimate. After our ad hoc meeting, I confirmed that the road to Grand Teton is indeed long, sun parched and wind swept high desert.

Yellowstone itself is an oasis, rising up on the back of the Rocky Mountains to pull moisture out of the air, and teeming with life because of it. Sitting on a now-protected crest of the continental divide, the park is known the world over for its wildlife, although the photo doesn’t show any endangered species. In the surrounding hills and meadows live bison, elk, bighorn sheep, black and grizzly bears, eagles, and more.

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Aptly named, Paradise is an outpost of civilization in southwestern Mount Ranier National Park. More than a mile - 5,400 feet - above nearby sea level, our destination is every bit the sub-alpine wonderland its name implies. A valley of meadows teaming with wildflowers, lakes, and backing up to the foot of a glacier, the place is easy to fall in love with.

Unsurprisingly, Paradise is the most visited section of the Mount Rainier whose boundaries as a national park cover 1/3 the area of Rhode Island. During the summer - which can be short and unpredictable in the high country - Paradise is impossibly crowded. Much like Yosemite. Route 706 from the Nisqually entrance is kept open to the Paradise Lodge through the winter, but requires four wheel drive or chains - sometimes both. Difficult but accessible is a good combination.

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Sitting in the northwestern-most corner of the continental United States, Olympic National Park is a vast swatch of pristine wilderness across the Sound from Seattle. The park itself occupies much but not all of the peninsula, generally surrounded by national forest, rivers, sloughs, and archipelago.

Half the reason I moved to Seattle was these mountains, and as beautiful as they are from a distance, I had been waiting too long to actually hike here.

Crescent Lake

Like Glacier’s Lake McDonald, Crescent Lake is a nearly endless pool bound in by mountains at the edge of a national park. Roadside along US 101, the seemingly endless aquifer is easily accessible to anyone intrepid enough to venture this far.

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Something doesn’t have to be big to be compelling. A friend of mine who didn’t know much or anything about photography tried an old camera I used to have with a mega-zoom lens, and described the wide angle as a “grand view.” We’re taught to think in terms of sea to shining sea, of a big sky that stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, as far as the eye can see. This doesn’t always have to be the case.

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It’s bitterly ironic that the Pacific Northwest is home to one of the world’s remaining pockets of linguistic diversity - the others are in the Amazon, Siberia and Oklahoma - and at the same time home to the quietest place in North America. It should come as no surprise that both are in danger from the Brave New World.

One Square Inch of Silence is a research institution, independent of the National Park Service. Gordon Hempton traveled the country measuring soundscapes and their makeup. His projects don’t quiet with silence; the results of the national survey showed the quietest spot in continental America to be in the Hoh rain forest. Woodpeckers, owls and eagle, bear, caribou, and other wildlife aren’t exactly abundant, but they aren’t rare either. However, in the northwestern corner of the Continental US, with almost no roads into the park, the isolation is extreme. Combined with a usual blanket of fog and deep forest, the entire peninsula feels like a sanctuary from the modern world.

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The Carbon River entrance is an industrial-looking swatch of land; rocks, a low waterline, and occasional clear cuts. Of course, in the end of August, most rivers are flowing pretty low.

Mount Ranier is a giant place; most of it cordoned off from the motorist’s view. There are a small handful of of roads leading into the park, and Carbon River is one of them. It’s probably the most remote - a long, poorly maintained dirt road leading off to Mowich Lake (below).

This is the least known and least trafficked road into a park that sees more than four million yearly visitors. Even on an dark, stormy day parking was overflowing in some places and limited in others; still this is back-country wilderness compared to Sunrise or Paradise.

About two hours from Seattle, this northwestern corner of Mt Ranier is a great weekend getaway.

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I’ve been working for Getty Images as a contractor over the last few months; all contractors are being dismissed due to budget constraints, so I’ve found a new job - still in the IT sector - and managed a few days off to explore Western Washington, my little corner of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, with my new tripod broken out of the box, I came back with less photos than I’d intended.

Directions

North Cascades is a long drive from Seattle, but it doesn’t have to be an ugly one; leave I-5 for route 530 just north of Marysville, avoiding the ride and traffic all the way to Mount Vernon. You’ll pass through what feels like hundreds of miles of forests, farmland, and foothills before joining SR 20 in Rockport and starting your ascent. Unlike most national parks, North Cascades doesn’t have an entrance fee, as it straddles one of three passable routes across the mountains in Washington State.

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