May 2018 Adventure - The Santiam River

Ann wanted to get out for Mother’s Day, so who was I to deny her a trip?  But as seems to be the case this year, our initial best-laid plans were foiled.  I was hoping to give her an adventure photographing sand dunes, which she has been asking about for a while now.  Fortunately (well, unfortunately), I checked the State Parks website to find out that the sand dunes have been closed for the snowy plover nesting season.  Given they’re an endangered species, I forgave them for ruining my plans; but I still had to figure out a place to go.  We settled on the Santiam River near Opal Creek.  

On the way up we stopped at Albany for a late lunch/early dinner at a great Hungarian Restaurant (thanks yet again Yelp!).  Which put our arrival at the Shady Cove Campground around 5:00.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), most of the sites were already occupied and we didn’t particularly care for the couple that remained open.  So we decided to try our luck on the logging road turn-offs we’d passed on the way in.  Sure enough, we found a nice little spot much closer to the Three Pools area we wanted to photograph the next morning.

Camping off by yourself has its advantages in so many ways.  There’s a lot less noise (and I don’t consider the sound of the near-by Santiam River “noise”) and often the view from your window can’t be beat.

We got up early the next morning but didn’t push for a sunrise shooting, having learned that you don’t get that lovely pre-dawn light in secluded valleys that you get on the coast or in the desert.  Still, we beat the sun and it didn’t take me long to find my first image - I saw it while still on the trail down to the river.

There are pretty much two faces to this part of the Three Pools Day Use Area.  Up river looks into the rock formations along and in the river.  Down river gives you an open view.  Much like Opal Creek, which is not far from here and feeds the Santiam River, the water is incredibly clear and seems to take on the color of the environment.

It didn’t take long before the sun found its way through a notch in the valley.  I was torn between photographing up-stream to capture the sun highlighting portions of the rock formations or looking down-stream to capture the reflected colors from the trees.  I chose upstream.

While the early morning light was fascinating over the falls, I could kick myself for spending too long photographing upstream because by the time I turned around to photograph downstream, the first-rays-of-light burst of color had faded.  

A bit frustrated, I looked downward and noticed that small patches of sunlight were striking the water and making interesting impressions on the rocks below.

After a few minutes of that, I turned upstream again.  By then, the sun was blaring off the upper rocks, but still only glancing off the lower falls area, so that’s where I focused my efforts.  

Perhaps the most frustrating technical aspect of the morning was finding a good shutter speed for the water.  It’s a problem we’ve had before, experienced at Bryce Creek and other waterfall areas, where the spring melt pushes so much water down the streams that rapids become torrents of water that are extremely difficult to capture effectively - and that offer few options for shutter speeds.  Still, after quite a bit of trial and error, I found a shutter speed that at least gave some semblance of the energy contained in the water and that didn’t come out as a shapeless white blob.

Moments later, the sun rose over the tree line and flooded the area with light.  The struggle then became how to make images in brilliantly lit conditions - not an easy task.  So I started focusing on details.

One image I made for my mother.  It was Mother’s Day weekend, so it was appropriate.  I noticed a dogwood tree, which mom loved, rather far away so I did my best to make something of it.  Good for the memories it evokes, and often that’s all a photograph needs.

Frustrated at the results of my landscape efforts, I turned my focus downward.  In fact, I’d been periodically looking and photographing downward since I first noticed the rays of light on the water, and eventually that became my main focus for the morning.  I’ll leave you with just one image because that stint of experimenting is worth its own post. 

The sun was up and becoming harsh, so Ann and I called it quits for the morning.  We scouted out the other areas (some accessible, others only if you’re willing to get wet - which is why this place is packed in the summer months) and then decided to head back to the main road and take a hike to Henline Falls.  Unfortunately, the very small parking lot for that hike was already full.  A bit further down the road, yet another trail head was packed.  We regrouped, and decided to see what it was like at Opal Creek - packed!  We then headed back just in case the early folks at Henline Falls were done - nope.  

So we pulled over at an information center and did what one does when plotting next steps - brew a fresh pot of coffee.  Sometimes waiting and observing is the best “action” you can take (wu-wei anyone?).  It was in this case because the flood of cars that passed us going up river convinced us that maybe it was time to call it good and move onward.  Toss out our plans.  In any event, instead of the forecasted overcast skies and soft light conditions that are great for photography, we were looking at clear blue skies and with it incredibly harsh light, and rapidly rising temperatures.  Not quite our preferences for photography conditions.  

So we pulled out the maps and decided to take back roads across the mountains to Detroit Lake and then decide where to go from there.  That took us back towards the Shady Cove Campground, eventually heading up Cedar Creek.  We kept looking left towards the creek for possible photo locations, occasionally slowing down to try to figure out if there was a way down to the water’s edge.  Then at one point, I looked over to say something to Ann and saw a water fall right there to our right!

Fortunately, there was an area to pull over at and we got the gear out.  

We were faced with the same difficulties here as we had at the Santiam River during the latter part of the morning - incredibly bright sunlight and a raging torrent of water.  I suspect by late season this would be a lovely little falls, but on this afternoon it was a bear to photograph.

Still, there were some trees that filtered the light and very occasionally, a cloud would pass by to lessen the contrast a bit.  Also, I just decided to go with what the light gave me and realized that if you wanted any kind of texture in the water, you could get it while creating these mysterious deep shadows in the rocks, which were not entirely black and formless.  So I figured out a way to work with what I was given.

This is a rather small waterfall, with not much of a pool, which means not a lot of vantage points for composing images.  But Ann and I worked it for quite some time.  

That gave me time to focus in on details.

And to wait for a sun spot to work its way across the pool to highlight a rock.

Given the difficult conditions and that this was an accidental find, I think Ann and I did a decent job of it.  This is definitely a place to return to in the fall.

Pretty much having exhausted our composition skills with this small falls, we headed down the road.  It was a beautiful drive in the mountains.

Fortunately, we had our GPS system as well as a Forest Service Service Road map to keep us on course as we worked our way through the maze of logging roads gradually climbing the mountains south of the Opal Creek Wilderness.  Unfortunately, they were mountains and it’s only May.  We hit snow.

With another 500 - 1,000 feet of elevation left to climb, and another 4 miles before we hit the point where we would start descending.  We stopped to think about whether we should continue.  While we have 4WD, we didn’t have our shovel or MaxTrax with us in the event we got stuck.  Nor our winter chains.  Plus there was only one set of tire tracks in the snow - and they stopped after a few hundred feet.  Nobody had been up this road for awhile. 

Staying safe on adventures is about exercising good judgement at key times, and we weren’t prepared for these conditions.  So we turned around, deciding to call it a day and head home.

Still, not a bad adventure for winging it!