Olympic Anniversary
The Olympic Mountains are visible from many parts of Victoria and show up in the backgrounds of many of my photographs. In the past they been a more immediate part of my surroundings. Thirty years ago, and more, I worked in the area for three summers and much of one winter. A few years later we had our honeymoon on the Olympic Peninsula.
On the weekend we had our 28th wedding anniversary. As it happened my partner was flying into Seattle on her way home from a trip to Finland. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to return to some areas we had not been to together since the honeymoon. And thus, I took the ferry over to Port Angeles and then drove off to SeaTac airport for the pick up, and back to a B&B in Port Townsend. We had stayed in a Bed and Breakfast on our honeymoon, in Port Townsend which is a charming and quite funky tourist town, so it seemed a good thing to do again. The next day, after poking around Port Townsend for a few hours, we headed up to the Olympic Mountains for a walk, and then caught the last ferry home in the evening.
I took a lot of pictures, and you will see more of them on these pages as time goes on. I thought I would start with this shot of one of the lower ridges which touches into the alpine zone here and there. It is one of the amazing things about this park – you can drive from the ferry terminal to the alpine zone in 30 or 40 minutes. It is only 20 miles to 5200 feet (1600 metres) in elevation, right into the alpine. And this time of year is the perfect time to go with the wild flowers out in full force. Lots of people drive up there, and the Hurricane Ridge visitor centre can seem awfully crowded (this this timelapse for the day of our visit). But really, you only need to walk for 15 minutes or half an hour to leave the crowd behind and share the paths with only a few walkers. We had perfect weather for our trip – not a cloud in the sky and not a lot of haze or mist either. It was a very nice time, and even though my spouse was jet lagged, it was easy to forget the tiredness in these surroundings.
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100mm/f2.8 macro lens, f2.8, 1/800th, +/- 2.0 E.V.
burnt embers 
Congratulations on your anniversary! And nice image, too. I love the Olympic peninsula.
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Yeah, me too. People from the island need to make better use of it. Easier to get to than the BC mainland for many of us, and many spectacular places to explore.
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Happy Anniversary you two! I love the great layers you’ve accentuated with this shot, and the HDR does a great job of highlighting the entire range of light here!
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Thanks Toad! It was a lovely interlude – a few hours in the mountains that normally serve normally as a backdrop. The HDR was very well suited to this subject as it was impossible (for me, anyway) to get a good balance to the exposure any other way.
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I Love the grand and majestic landscapes, and this photograph makes a good stab at it. Nice light.
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Thanks Joseph – this was in the early evening, one of the last shots I took before we got back to the car and headed down to the ferry line up.
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Sure is pretty!
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Thanks David – it sure is. Nice that a big chunk of landscape like this has been enclosed in the national park. One person we had talked to just returned from a ridge where they had seen a mountain goat with kids. I would have liked to have seen that too. Some other time.
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That is pretty spectacular country you’re less tha an hour away from. I love the Mountains and my wife, the water. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more landscapes here in the future.
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You will see more landscapes coming up soon. But, I had my macro with me too – is it perverse to go into this kind of stunning landscape and then point one’s lens at small things on the ground? If so, I am guilty, as you will see.
Technically, the ferry ride adds 90 minutes to the journey, so 2 to 3 hours to get into these mountains from Victoria. Not bad at all. And, if one wants to instead, then a two hour drive west and you are at Cape Flattery, the most NW corner of the lower 48, and keeper of some fantastic shorelines. Worth a visit. In one day you could see the mountains and she could see some of the most wonderful beaches.
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Sounds like a well-diserved break and change of scene for you both. Here in Victoria we are so used to seing the Olympics as a magnificent distant mountain range its a bit anticlimactic to see it close up, just another rocky hillside with conifers.
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Hi Val. These ridges are lower in elevation – the ones that are between the snow capped peaks and water. I have some “real” mountain shots coming up in the next few days, so you won’t be disappointed.
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