June Flowers

wild geranium

 It's the end of June and on Kodiak the wild flower season is just hitting its peak.  The wild flowers actually seem a little late this year, but I am amazed at how quickly the wildflowers pop up.  Areas that were covered with snow a week ago are now a riot of wildflowers.  The quickest one to appear is the snow bed marigold (not pictured). My favorite is the pixie eye primrose.  Where the pixie eye primroses bloom the grass is not even green yet - but the little pink splashes are all over.

Last week we also seemed to have hit the 'peak green' summer milestone.  Kodiak is now at its greenest, and living up to its nickname of the 'Emerald Isle'.

Patrick

pixie eye primrose

yellow anemone

dwarf dogwood

white anemone

Alpine Sunshine

 

Fog rolls in from the left and dissipates as it flows through the pass

Here on Kodiak our run of foggy weather continues.  But on Friday while still foggy in town it did seem brighter.  So I took the dogs to the pass for a walk/ski and found broken clouds.  And then we hiked up into the alpine and found glorious sunshine.  Up on top you could see the fog that covered town and the airport flowing like a river into the pass.  As it flowed through the pass it dissipated into nothing.  So it was sunny on the west side of the pass and foggy on the east where town is located.

I took pictures of flowers (post to follow) and the dogs chased plovers.  The plovers are nesting and would torment the dogs by acting wounded.  The dogs would chase and then the plovers would fly away after having drawn the doggies away from the nesting area.  The dogs had no chance of catching the plover, but continued to be fooled over and over again.

Patrick

Red and Rey getting duped by 'wounded' plover

Fog on the Mountain

 

I also tried to capture the foggy look on the mountain.  I love hiking up in the fog.  All the trees loom up out of the fog.  But, like in the spruce trees at Abercrombie, it is sort of hard to capture the feeling in a picture. On the mountain I tried to put grass and wildflowers in the foreground and then have the trees fading into the fog.

Way up in the alpine there is still pretty good snow, and on the snow the foggy horizon blurs with the white snow.  It is all a big white out.  I tried getting my doggy's in the fog with the snow.  But it did not work very well.  I think white out on snow with fog is practically impossible to capture in a picture!

Patrick

Foggy Walks and wide angles

 

It's been foggy lately - not a lot of rain but just cool, cool fog.  I know it is not a popular opinion but I kind of like it! On my walks I have been trying to take pictures of the fog.  It is actually kind of hard to do.  Too much fog and it just looks all blurry and grey - like the lens of the camera fogged up or something.  I've found it best to but something close that is all crystal clear and then have things show the fog in the background.

The top 6 pictures were my first walk and it was really foggy that day.  I was using a camera with a focal length of 40 which is not very wide angle at all.  So for a wide angle view I had to take multiple pictures and stitch them together into panoramics back home.  I wanted the wide angle view to get the 'wide' open trees look.  

So on my next walk (bottom pictures) I took my camera along with a focal length of 21.  Now that is wide angle!  Except when I got to the park it was not foggy.  The fog cleared off for just a bit. So I took wide angle pictures of trees with no fog to soften things.  I don't use a wide angle lens all that often, and it was fun to practice with it. And next time when I go for fog in the trees I will be ready with the wide angle lens.  And it is foggy today!

Patrick

Summer Snow on Pyramid

 

On Sunday Nora and I went skiing on Pyramid. We skied the North Bowl and the thin strip connecting the top and bottom of the bowl was still intact. But it was definitely the last day you could ski the whole bowl in one shot. 

Nora had not been up the mountain to go skiing since early May (click here). That's a month and a half ago, and funnily enough the skiing was better on Sunday than it was in early May.  Back in May it had just snowed and the snow was super slow.  On Sunday we had perfect summer corn snow - super fast skiing! Also the run we skied was just as long as the one we did back in May. But the big difference was that back in May we skied towards the car; whereas, on Sunday we skied way down into the North Bowl and then had to hike all the way back up before we hiked down towards the car.  So a great deal more hiking! 

But, sadly enough, Pyramid is almost done for the year.  As you can see in the top photo there is still plenty of snow in the Kodiak backcountry, but, at this point of the year, you got to hike further and further to find your snow.

Patrick

The lower part of the North Bowl

My second Spring Beauty try - I got it right this time!

Spring Beauties in focus and out of focus