The Cascade Mountains

After a week's worth of rain, we finally got some sunshine and I headed east to the small town of Sultan, just east of Monroe. While we've been getting rain, the mountains have been getting the season's first dusting of snow. This makes images of the Cascades much more interesting.

Once in Sultan, there is a turn to the right on Mann Road that crosses the Skykomish river. Since this part of the state is covered in trees, rivers make one of the few places to see a visita. So I drove across the river and parked then walked back out on the bridge to make some photos. This give a foreground of the nice blue water and the splash of color from the trees along the banks.

There were several fishing boats in the river, occasionally speeding up or down stream. These I have removed from the scene. I decided to leave the lone person in the image above to provide a human scale.

With the sun more or less on the right (the south), the sky is strongly polarized and I am able to get some dramatic contrasts. Adding in the small bits of low-lying clouds and we get some very nice images.

Even though it is now about 2:30 in the afternoon, the sky is already taking on the beginnings of the late afternoon look from the low sun angle. It is interesting to see how the snow abruptly cuts off at an altitude that is the same all across the mountains. As winter comes on, this line will steadily get lower and lower. I expect at some point there'll be at least a little snow all the way to sea level. We are not immune to such things here.

Were it not for being on a bridge with the cars and trucks, I could have stayed here all afternoon. But, alas, I had to move on.