2.1 Seconds at Madison Falls
Olympic Peninsula Travelog #14
Elwha Valley - Sun, 5 Sep 2021. 10:05am.
Today is our third day of this trip to Washington's Olympic Peninsula and our second day in Olympic National Park. You can gather from the number 14 in the subtitle above that the days area just packed.
As yesterday's hikes left us drained we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit this morning. By that I mean I snoozed my 6:45am alarm until at least 7:30. After dressing and eating breakfast in the room we got rolling around 9. But that's the benefit of staying so close to the action, even if it is at a small, old, bare-bones hotel at a premium price. We're paying for location, location, location. It was only a 30 minute drive to the trailhead for our first hike today, Madison Falls.
Madison Falls is a pretty simple hike. It's so simple I'll just start with the picture (above/left) and go from there. It's a short hike, maybe 1/4 mile, and there's just one thing: Madison Falls.
Perhaps because the hike was so simple, trivial even, everyone else we saw there merely "ticked the box". They walked in, snapped a photo or two, and left. That misses the full enjoyment of what's here. Hawk and I spent 30 minutes here.
What did we do for half an hour? Well, for one, the falls is stinkin' gorgeous, so why rush it? "In beauty I walk" is a metaphor. In beauty we can stand still, too. 🙃
We enjoyed the solitude left to us by all the people who rushed out as quickly as they rushed in.
I also spent time photographing the scene. Far from the people snapping a frame or two and leaving I set up my tripod in a few different positions and worked with my neutral density filter. (I've written before about photography with an ND filter at Bassi Falls and Elk Creek Falls.) It allowed me to get great motion-blur shots of the water. In the photo I'm showing here the exposure time was 2.1 seconds. (You wondered why that was in the title, didn't you?)
Another thing you may notice in the photo is that the weather today isn't great. The forecast has clouds all day with chances of rain in the afternoon. While that's not the best weather for many kinds of outdoors activities it actually suits waterfalls like this pretty well. As you can see in the picture the falls is in a deep canyon. The gloomy, wet weather amplifies the rain-forest atmosphere. The undergrowth gleams and glistens in the damp air. This is classic Pacific Northwest.
With this made-for-waterfalls weather it's a good thing our agenda for today is pretty much all waterfall hikes. I just hope the rain holds off!
Up next: Hiking the Elwha Valley Washout
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/111359.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
Elwha Valley - Sun, 5 Sep 2021. 10:05am.
Today is our third day of this trip to Washington's Olympic Peninsula and our second day in Olympic National Park. You can gather from the number 14 in the subtitle above that the days area just packed.
As yesterday's hikes left us drained we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit this morning. By that I mean I snoozed my 6:45am alarm until at least 7:30. After dressing and eating breakfast in the room we got rolling around 9. But that's the benefit of staying so close to the action, even if it is at a small, old, bare-bones hotel at a premium price. We're paying for location, location, location. It was only a 30 minute drive to the trailhead for our first hike today, Madison Falls.
Madison Falls is a pretty simple hike. It's so simple I'll just start with the picture (above/left) and go from there. It's a short hike, maybe 1/4 mile, and there's just one thing: Madison Falls.
Perhaps because the hike was so simple, trivial even, everyone else we saw there merely "ticked the box". They walked in, snapped a photo or two, and left. That misses the full enjoyment of what's here. Hawk and I spent 30 minutes here.
What did we do for half an hour? Well, for one, the falls is stinkin' gorgeous, so why rush it? "In beauty I walk" is a metaphor. In beauty we can stand still, too. 🙃
We enjoyed the solitude left to us by all the people who rushed out as quickly as they rushed in.
I also spent time photographing the scene. Far from the people snapping a frame or two and leaving I set up my tripod in a few different positions and worked with my neutral density filter. (I've written before about photography with an ND filter at Bassi Falls and Elk Creek Falls.) It allowed me to get great motion-blur shots of the water. In the photo I'm showing here the exposure time was 2.1 seconds. (You wondered why that was in the title, didn't you?)
Another thing you may notice in the photo is that the weather today isn't great. The forecast has clouds all day with chances of rain in the afternoon. While that's not the best weather for many kinds of outdoors activities it actually suits waterfalls like this pretty well. As you can see in the picture the falls is in a deep canyon. The gloomy, wet weather amplifies the rain-forest atmosphere. The undergrowth gleams and glistens in the damp air. This is classic Pacific Northwest.
With this made-for-waterfalls weather it's a good thing our agenda for today is pretty much all waterfall hikes. I just hope the rain holds off!
Up next: Hiking the Elwha Valley Washout
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/111359.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]