It has been quite a few months since I have had the opportunity to sit down and post anything of substance. With my Seahawks season mercifully over and our draft position determined, I wanted to take the time to post pictures from my first day out backpacking from way back in April. I decided that the focus of the pictures that I post this time would focus predominantly on the trees, shrubs, plants and flowers that are for the most part gone due to the prescribed burn that got out of control in September of last year.
This first picture is a shot of the area that the prescribed burn was started. Looking to the right you can make out the "Big Meadow" that was the focal point for the fire line. It is the only portion of this picture that still looks as it did in this shot. The fire spread over every inch of this photograph. Hopefully I will be able to get back to this area sometime next year to get a followup shot. It's really quite sad driving through the area now, since it was only about 20 years ago that the original fire took out a lot of the fauna. The area was quite pretty, now it's all just gone.
My favorite picture from the whole hike that involved fauna was actually the first one I took. Walking along the trail, I just happened to look up and saw what looks a lot like a face:
I really liked the rock formation on this small ridgeline that basically looks like a large mushroom:
We came across quite a few different sets of wilflowers along the way:
This small stream had plenty of wildflowers intermingled. This was the hardest picture that I attempted to get in the three days we were out backpacking. In this one I ended up not trying to get the rest of the stream winding up, so it's the one that works the best here. I must have tried 9 different angles and positions trying to line it up just right:
We eventually ran across this small stream, which turned out to be the stream that feeds Ribbon Falls. Even with knowing Ribbon Falls was not flowing, I was amazed that the small area (it was literally only about 10 feet wide and maybe 3 feet deep) we had to cross actually feeds a large waterfall:
I wanted to close with this picture, cuz it was the last one I took that first night. In the picture's foreground is El Cap itself. This was my first real attempt at changing the levels manually on my camera to alter my dusk pictures. The next night had me taking some really awesome pics at sundown, which I hope to post soon:
The fauna on the trail to El Capitan
