February 2018 Adventure - Snow?

If you’ve been following the blog at all, you know we came across some very interesting weather our last day and a half in the Redwoods.  Who would have figured that we’d see snow of all things?  We knew we were going to have a variety of landscapes to photograph, and that the weather was going to be constantly changing, but snow?

We’d had rain off-and-on the whole night, and in the morning, more of the same.  I’d planned contingencies for rain, given that the forecast was uncertain as we were planning the trip.  Oregon definitely had rain the whole time during the trip, we just didn’t know if the front would make it that far south - it did.  So after our usual morning routine we set out to drive the length of Bald Hills Road inside the park.  

We drove up the steep switch-backs that gets you up to the higher elevations and passed by the Lady Bird Johnson Grove - one of our possible visiting sites.  A few minutes later we hit fog.  “Was there fog at the grove?” I asked Ann, “The trees could be cool in the fog.”  Unsure, we backtracked, but no, the fog line was above the grove.  So we turned around again and headed down Bald Hills Road.

For awhile it wasn’t much - more of the forested land that we’re used to, except for fog.  

But not too far down the road, things opened up a bit and we found the rolling, open hills I was expecting based on my pre-trip research.  Very quickly I found a location that I thought was interesting so I pulled over.  Ann wasn’t so sure about the spot, so I tromped out into a field with my camera to check things out.  I made a shot hand-held, but then walked  a bit farther past a rock outcropping and saw an incredible cluster of trees a bit further down the hill.

So I hurried back to Beast and told Ann, “We’re staying.  You’ve got to see these trees down past the rocks.  It’s down hill, but it’s not to bad a hike.”  So off we went.

On the way, I set up my tripod to make a more careful photograph of the one I had initially made.  The fog that had rolled in should have been an indicator of the way the weather was going to constantly change that day.  But in blissful ignorance, I was happy to have the fog and the character it adds.

From here, I won’t bore you by repeating the details of what happened next.  Read the “Dedication” blog post for that.  Ann said it best, “The sleet, the squalls, and just freezing your ass off!”  (It’s such a great line, I had to quote it again.)

But here is pretty much the same image after that first squall.  It did change things.

After recovering from the second squall, we continued down the road until we hit the next interesting location. 

And that became our day - driving up and down the length of Bald Hills Road inside the park, stopping to photograph whatever caught our eye, and sitting out the squalls in the comfort of Beast, that is if we were smart enough to get back before it really hit.  

Interestingly, all we had to do was to stay at a location for a few minutes and the conditions would change.  One minute it would be fairly open with a soft diffuse sun almost making its way through the clouds.

Then a few minutes later you’d be socked in with fog, and then the clouds would move and the sun would brighten up the fog like a giant soft box. 

And then a few minutes later, the drops would start coming down, you’d look off to the northwest and see a wall of grey coming your way.  When you saw that, it was time to pack up and turn tail!

The variety of cloud conditions was stunning.  The only problem was you didn’t have much time to make a photograph once you saw it because the conditions would change in a matter of moments and, periodically, turn ugly for the next 10 - 20 minutes.  It would snow, melt, then snow again.  Over and over.

As the afternoon wore on, it seemed like the snow squalls were getting longer and longer, and the nicer in-between times shorter and shorter.  As one particularly long squall hit, we decided to head over to an area we’d checked out earlier.  By the time we got there the squall had stopped, so we hopped out and started photographing the most snow we’d gotten that day.

The snow had done what I hoped it would do, give better definition to the landscape and reveal the incredible articulation of branches, despite the diffuse overhead light.  I couldn’t help but think of the subject in both black and white,  

and in color. 

But even by the time I was making this latter image, the sleet and snow was coming down again and it was time to pack up.  

We took our time heading back, hoping to stop at a couple of locations we’d scouted earlier.  But the weather kept pounding and didn’t seem like it would stop.  So we kept on going back towards the campground, taking our time.

As we lowered in elevation, it seemed like the precipitation was stopping, so we pulled into the Lady Bird Johnson Grove again.  This time there was fog.  Given the ever-changing weather we’d had that day, we decided to just don our rain jackets and hike the grove for pleasure.  

One could regret the fact that you don’t have your cameras with you in such a beautiful environment in fog conditions, but you can also thoroughly enjoy the beauty in front of you and accept the experience for what it was - a wonder.  We embraced it as the latter.  Rain didn’t come during our hike, and we were able to simply enjoy the beauty.  And to decide that we were going to return again in the morning!

That night we once more had on-again off-again rain, and weren’t sure what the morning would be like.  But by the time we were driving out of the campground, it seemed that the weather had settled down and we would stay dry.  We could even see patches of blue way off in the distance.

We didn’t know what to expect, though we were hoping for fog.  As we made it up the switchbacks it became apparent that it would be something very different.  Something much more rare than fog - Snow!

As is evident from the iPhone photograph I took as we made our way across the footbridge into the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, we were the first ones there that morning. 

It was, quite simply, amazing.  It took me a while before I started making images I felt at least hint at what it was like, but to capture the presence of the place in snow may be impossible. 

What we were hoping from the fog - to separate the foreground elements from the chaos of the background elements - was given to us with the snow, except differently.  Instead of separating the chaos of the forest by diffusing detail in the distance, the snow on horizontal surfaces articulated each of the elements  the eye reads as distinct in a way it can’t when everything is green.

So I tried to work with that on images that reveal the broader forest, 

as well as with more intimate details. 

Even so, it is difficult to make sense of the cacophony of vegetation in a forest, even a redwood forest with its massive trees to help break things up. 

Still, I tried.  As the morning wore on, the sun started breaking through the clouds and the tree canopy, again posing that most frustrating of photographic dilemmas - how to deal with sunlight in a forest.

So as the morning wore on, I started concentrating on more intimate scenes, trying to capture a feeling for the place that way. 

Again, the snow was so helpful to separating elements in the image.

By the time we’d neared the end of the loop, folks other than photographers (several of whom passed us after we’d been there a bit) started walking by on the trail.  Then families, several with children who were so excited by the snow.  It was magical.

And of course I had to make one final image of the day.  A snow-less trunk that has centuries of stories to tell.

And that was it.  We’d spent longer than we thought we would photographing that morning.  It was a long drive home and we got home much later than we’d hoped.  But we couldn’t have hoped for a better photo adventure!