Mt Rainier National Park

I took Monday and Tuesday of this week off to give me a 4 day weekend. We went down to Mt Rainier National Park on Saturday and came home on Tuesday night. Only a 260 mile round-trip….so a close to home vacation.

Mt Rainer is the second highest peak in the lower 48 states in the US. It has 26 named glaciers...more than any other peak in the lower 48. It is only 2.5 hours away from Seattle and its beauty is balanced with its potential to wipe Seattle off the map with an eruption resulting in a massive lahar. A wonderful National Park though.

The first night we stayed at the National Park Inn at Longmire. This is at about 2700’ up the south side of Rainier. This small lodge has been around for a long long time and is nestled in the dense forests of Western Red Cedar, Tamarack and Douglas Fir.

This opening shot is of Rainier through Vine Maple, which was just starting to change to its wonderful red/gold of the fall.



It is defiantly in the moist zone. The low elevation walk we did Saturday evening and then repeated Sunday morning was packed with all sorts of colorful toadstools.



We moved up to Paradise at about 6400’ for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. There is an old lodge at Paradise and numerous trails leading all over the valley and on up to the most common climb to Camp Muir and the summit. We wandered all over the lower parts of the mountain.

This our view as the sun was setting on the Tatoosh mountains.



The weather for most of our days was spectacular. We had mostly blue skies and high 60’s to mid 70’s for the daytime temperatures. The first sunrise we got on Monday presented this…with the open meadow with a few wildflowers left but mostly seedheads and colorful leaves.



Again we spent all day wandering around the mountain on the various trails. Even though it was a moderately warm day we halted at an overlook of the Nisqually valley to have a cup of cocoa.



There have been as many as 11 Black Bears sighted in the Paradise area over the past few weeks. We watched this fellow work the meadow in the image above for over an hour and a half, before he made his way up hill. He was hoovering like winter was upon him.



We made our way over to the South of the summit for a view of Myrtle Falls, a narrow slot canyon that is probably only illuminated briefly in the morning. I had to use a 3 stop split ND filter to hold back the mountain and sky to get this sort of light balance.



We had a fine time….the lodges are not cheap, the food is not cheap but so close to home made it a reasonable 4 day getaway. I wish I was still there.

Images from Nikon D200 and Canon G9.

Hi schwert –
Well done. Beautiful landscape, beautiful photos. I can understand that you like to be still there. I would like to be there too. Great wildlife.
Best..Pius

Very nice.
Your grad ND shot has darkened the treetops.
Might I suggest that you twist the filter holder so the grad cuts diagonally through the shot.
But maybe you did??
Any tips on a good tripod thats very light weight.

I did have a twist to the ND grad, but there was no way to avoid the treetops on the sides of this. I brought the grad edge down following the slope of that hill on the right beyond the waterfall.

This one was tricky but without the grad I could not shoot it at all. I also did not feel confident in PS levels etc to try and balance it later. This would also have been a good candidate for HDR probably which could have avoided the tree darkening.

I have to say I really liked using the ND grad....they have not been out of the case for quite some time. Back in the old film days these were staples of my camera bag....it was great fun to pull them out again.

I use an old Gitzo carbon tripod. I cannot quite remember the model number, but it does not have a center column so it is lighter and more stable too. I actually have two of them one lighter for my smaller cameras and the larger one for the Nikon. The lighter one is from the 12xx series, the larger from the 13xx series.

I bought both of these in the early days of carbon fibre tripods and have not kept up on current offerings. I really like this tripod though. I have an article over at JM's Outdoor-Magazine outlining my support options. I will bring the link over in a bit.

I looked up my tripods. They are:

Gitzo 1228 Mountaineer (1.5kg),
Gitzo 1348 (2.2kg)

The 1228 is perfect for lighter camera bodies (G9 and Nikon 8800), maybe even a bit more than necessary for these. The 1348 is my prefered tripod for my D200. It works great with my longer lenses and heavier camera bodies. I have set both of these up with Arca Swiss ballheads and Really Right Stuff quick releases. The tripods are so light that I have taken pains to equip them so that I can hang my camera bag from the center of them to stabilize and increase their mass.

This is outlined in my tripod article here:

http://outdoors-magazine.com/spip.php?article283

I also use a number of other support options from beanbags to table top tripods. I also have an article on my approach here>

http://outdoors-magazine.com/spip.php?article287

Schwert,
I LOVE the first and last shots - though the others are very nice also. But the balance of color, light and contrast in those two make them really spectacular.
Really a beautiful area of the country to visit.
Steve

Hello Schwert

I like to congratulate you on yet another great and interesting hiking report. Everyone of your reports were fun to read and I get excited when seeing your name with a new date at the bottom of the forum, then one know schwert was out again.....

The last picture is awesome, the theme, the composition and the freezing of the water. Adding comment to the other, I would advise to use a solid ND and to shoot RAW and to bracket three pics at 1 full stop interval. That I will then combine with layers and not hdr software.

I also like the pic above your coffee picture, lovely setting and colors.

Schwert your articles are so interesting and the pics of such a good level that if others enjoy them as much as I do then I like to propose why not placing your great inputs in the member section as hiking reports from Schwert.

If you happy to prepare them like you do, I will be happy to place them in the member section. In fact I can copy them as is if thats OK with you.


Hello Simon Recently I stumbled over a really great tripod. Its carbon and very sturdy. I like the head most, one can move the camera forward and backward plus the turn control is great. That makes for a excellent pano and general tripod..I will place a pic plus model details the weekend.


Best

Siegfried

Thanks Siegfried. You may copy and place these on the forum any way you like. It is awfully fun to be able to capture some of these scenes and put a small story together.

I had not considered just doing a bracket and using layers in PS. I am absolutely no good at all with PS so had not even thought of that option.

I can say that using my old tech split NS's was like a breath of fresh air. These used to be staples in my film days and getting them back into use was as much fun as seeing the final images.

My hiking reports will likely taper off a bit now that fall/winter is upon me, but I still have thousands of images to sort and I bet I can find a few more reports for the forum over the next few months.

Thanks so much for the compliments....mostly I go to have fun, but capturing some good images makes the memories last longer.

Thanks Schwert for replying, I will not promise to put one up soon. I like to have them all in a special menu thats how much I and many more enjoyed your reports...

Best

Siegfried