Every year as spring starts, I start paying close attention to the weather in Eastern Washington, because Milky Way season starts in my part of the world! This year, I spotted a time at the very end of March, with clear weather, and was pleasantly surprised to have the aurora make an appearance! I got in a great night of shooting at Quincy Lakes with lots of cool images to share.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and the rain is absolutely pouring as I drive down the freeway in my bright red 4Runner. Often you can just wait for a few minutes and it will stop, but on this day, it seems like the rain is just going and going and going. I’m relieved when I finally get off the freeway and onto the side streets, and as I pull into Lord Hill Regional Park, I ask myself: why the hell am I going for a hike in this weather?

Wintertime around here can be a bit of a mixed bag. Unless you want to get into the snow, not a ton of trails are accessible. I normally don’t mind getting into the snow, but sometimes it’s nice to just have your feet on solid ground. So, I found myself driving down to Poo Poo Point back in January with the intent of doing just that. On the day I went, thanks to a weather inversion, there was a thick layer of clouds at the bottom, but I was betting that Poo Poo would be above the clouds, so I thought a sunset hike would be nice. I was right!

I love photographing in the snow, and I love how a blanket of snow simplifies a scene. This year, we had a great opportunity right as the kids were starting winter break. It had just snowed, and the weather was supposed to be clear and cold, but we wanted to avoid the crowds. So, off to the Mountain Loop Highway we went.

My wife and I are always looking for ways to get our kids outside. They love going on hikes, but they are still little, so they can’t go too far or too steep just yet. They don’t mind long car rides though, so this fall, we grabbed a last-minute hotel reservation in Winthrop and headed over to Hart’s Pass for a family larch march!

Imagine a hike that ticks all the boxes for you - what do you picture? For me, such a hike would need to have some great views of course, but also interesting and varied terrain, lots of places to explore, great fall colors, beautiful lakes, and lots of ripe blueberries. Yellow Aster Butte (or YAB as I like to call it) is a hike that ticks all of these boxes for me and is one of my all-time favorites in the Cascades.

Every once in a while, I do a hike that’s so great, I have to go back and do it again the same season. Copper Pass is one of those hikes. I visited twice this season, once in September and again in October, and was instantly in love with the place. There’s so much to see, with views in every direction and spectacular fall colors, and hardly a soul around. Peaks surround you as you go, many others are visible in the distance, and there’s a huge variety of places to explore.

In late August, I saw an interesting weather window in the forecast for a hike up to the Artist Point area near Mt. Baker. I’ve been to Artist Point a million times, but on this day I decided to give the Ptarmigan Ridge trail a try for a hike, and start my day on some lakes in the vicinity for sunrise. So, a 1:30am wakeup it was, and after what seemed like an eternity I arrived at the parking lot to find it completely fogged in. I was determined to make the most of it, so I shot anyways and came back with some cool results!

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. And maybe again. That was the situation for me with Trappers Peak in North Cascades National Park, and this year I finally summited on my 3rd attempt. Trappers is a bit of a hidden gem in the North Cascades. Lots of people are pretty content to drive past it, but Trappers is interesting in its own right as it is on the wet, west side of the park, and as such the landscape here looks quite different.

One of the best ways to beat the crowds at Mt. Rainier to visit an out of the way area, like Mowich Lake. Mowich provides access to several unique and interesting hikes that offer a different view of the mountain. I’ve done several, but never the most popular one in the area - Spray Park. I finally rectified that problem this year, and was treated to some beautiful flowers and views of The Mountain!

There is a special part of the North Cascades that’s tucked away between Mt. Baker and the Canadian border, bordered to the south along SR 542. Dominating this area is a feature called the High Divide, which is a long ridge running east-west roughly parallel to 542. I’ve explored a variety of trails in this area, but today I want to share Excelsior Peak with you on the west end.

Despite the name, Easy Pass isn’t easy. In reading about the history of the name, I found one author suggesting that it was named because it was the easiest way across the Ragged Ridge area. I suppose that might be true, but I also like to think that maybe someone named it just to sandbag everyone who came after! I visited Easy Pass back in July, which was amazingly my first visit in all these years, and it was a stunner!

Mt. Rainier National Park is a spectacular place that features a variety of different viewpoints of the mountain. One of these more popular viewpoints is Tipsoo Lake, on the extreme eastern part of the park. Tipsoo is a place I’ve tried to shoot probably a dozen times in the last many years. Timed right, the view is spectacular, especially at sunset. But each time I’ve tried in the past, I’ve gotten fogged in, and left with little more than a view of the trees in the fog. Thankfully, that changed back in early July and I was treated to a wonderful sunset and a great view of the Milky Way!

Valley of Fire is about an hour northeast of Las Vegas, and features really interesting Navajo sandstone with sandy slot canyons and some pretty interesting views. When we visited, we decided to make a loop hike starting at the Fire Wave. From there, we took the Seven Wonders Trail clockwise through the northern part of the park, passing through Pink Canyon first, then Kaolin slot canyon before rejoining the White Domes Loop trail, where we passed through White Domes slot canyon. The park is very photogenic and highly recommended.

Seattle’s winters can be really dreary, so this winter, we went to Zion National Park in Utah. Amazingly enough, neither my wife or I had ever been to any of the Utah National Parks. I know that’s some type of crime for a landscape photographer, but we only had two days to spend in Zion proper, so we packed a lot of stuff in, including a visit to the beautiful east side of the park, a hike up Angel’s Landing, and a guided trip up the Narrows.

Ruby Beach is one of the more remote road-accessible beaches in Olympic National Park. The highlight of Ruby Beach is the view of Abbey Island, with a tide pool that can create some amazing reflections, especially at sunset. Besides Abbey Island, this area has several interesting sea stacks, tide pools, sandy beaches, rocky beaches, and more to keep everyone entertained. I think it is one of the more photogenic beaches in the park.

I spent a day last week with my friend Jon out on the Olympic peninsula. We started at the Hoh Rainforest, which is a truly amazing place and very deserving of its world-class status. Although we only had a few hours, we managed to make the most of it exploring some of the trails in the area. The intense green color of the moss and vegetation is really remarkable, and the enormous trees really help cement the ancient feel of this place.

A week or so back, the girls were out of town and it was just my two year old son and I for the weekend, so the two of us went outside together to soak in a little nature! We opted to head to a place close to home - Lord Hill Regional Park. The park is mostly forested with a variety of trails for hikers, cyclist, and equestrians. We made a day out of exploring the woods and talking about the trees and things we saw.

This year has been an exceptionally good year for fall color in the Pacific Northwest. Lots of reds and brilliant yellows, and the leaves have stuck around even through a bunch of days of rain and wind. The changing colors and the colder temperatures make fall my favorite time of year, and so I set off for a few hours the other day to explore.

Late September and October is my favorite time to hike in the Pacific Northwest. This year, we got some early snow and I got up to the North Cascades on one of my favorite hikes, the Maple Pass Loop. The new snow on top of the fall colors and colorful larches was unbelievable! I set out not intending to do the full loop, but wound up doing it anyway because the conditions were so good!