I’ve been meaning to drive out to Leavenworth across Stevens Pass for a while now.  I wanted to wait until spring was really here and the snow was gone.  So a couple of weeks ago a work colleague (Chris Pearson) and I decided to plan a trip.  We thought we’d spend the day on the road, visit some waterfalls around Stevens Pass and then go to Leavenworth.

The day finally came and I picked up Chris this morning at 8am and off we went.  Now throughout the day I took over 550 pictures and have lots to share and a few “interesting” stories to tell.  But I thought I’d start with one of the last pictures I captured in the day.

Before heading out I did some investigation and found some waterfalls we could visit en route.  So our plan was to get some waterfall shots in the morning and then head to Leavenworth in the afternoon.  But Chris and I were talking so much on the way, we missed all the signs and ended up over Steven’s Pass before we realized we’d missed the falls.  We then started to say “We’ll get that shot on the way back”. Every time we drove past a cool sight it was “…on the way back”.

Anyway we visited Leavenworth and had a blast and on the way home we crossed the Pass and went looking for the missed falls.  Our first attempt at finding the road was completely wrong, we thought we found the right turning but we quickly realized we needed to go further from the Pass.  Our second attempt looked much more promising.

I should say here that these waterfalls don’t come with addresses.  You get longitudes and latitudes and driving directions, but I guess we are so used to following the Satellite Navigation system we suck at the directions thing.

So we turned off the main highway, and crossed some train tracks.  The directions said just across from the tracks was a dirt road, but we couldn’t see one, so we turned down a dirt road 200 feet to the right.  After a very bumpy track we parked up and started to walk, looking for the falls.  This involved climbing a couple of huge hills covered with rocks and snow, carrying our tripods and cameras.  After about 20 minutes we decided we were in the wrong place – things were looking bad!  So we headed back to the car.  We drove back to the railway tracks and a huge orange train had arrived and parked up – a women engineer was sunning herself on the train engine and asked if we were going to the falls.  We said yes and she gave us walking directions, pointing out the track we missed before.  After another 20 minutes we convinced ourselves we were again in the wrong place, or the river had dried up (unlikely as this was part of a 100 foot waterfall).  Chris was also getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and we were both frustrated and tired.  Eventually we decided to walk back to the car and call it a day.  Around 100 feet from the car I thought I heard running water, so I persuaded Chris to try one more time.  This time we had to jump a small stream, climb another huge hill (pretty much through a full on forest – no paths here) and we finally found the “Scenic Falls”.

This is a 113 foot waterfall that passed through this really pretty, mossy gorge.  The waterfall had three tiers, the first being the big drop and the other two smaller drops with fast water.  This image is of the last part of the fall.  The water is moving really fast and the noise was amazing.  It was also (for a 75 degree day) really cold standing by the ice cold water coming off the mountain.

Now I should say here that fast running water is pretty hard to capture using still photography.  There are really two primary approaches.  The first is the “ribbon or cotton candy” look, this involves having a slow shutter speed so the water kind-a blurs as it’s moving.  This gives the impression of movement and can look cool.  The second is the “stop motion” look.  This involves using a fast shutter to freeze motion.  I actually tried both approaches for all my waterfall shots and for this one I preferred the Cotton Candy look.  Now this is definitely not to everyone’s taste (even Lisa preferred the stop motion look), but I really loved this shot so it’s the one I’m posting tonight.  Also an old friend in the UK asked for one of these shots, so Mark (Haley), this one is for you mate.

In the coming weeks I’m sure I’ll post a lot more images but this is the first, and currently my favorite.

Lisa made some cookies today and when she wasn’t looking some disappeared!