AntlerPeak
New member
There are way too many most beautiful things over the years but two come to mind. There is a lean-to sitting in a flower filled meadow below the snowy spires of the Cowlitz Chimneys on Mt Ranier's Wonderland Trail. From it you can look down the meadow into a cirque with a waterfall that seems to go forever. Behind it the trail winds upward to a high col or pass and on the rocks we saw mountain goats climbing with such ease it made our efforts to get up there seem even more futile. The second was on a hike along the Nanny Ridge in the south Cascades I turned a corner and there sitting at eye level a few yards away was a bald eagle. With the camera secured in the dreaded pack I very slowly took it out. The eagle just glared, from twenty feet away and my zoom set at 100 he came close to filling the lens. The problem was lighting, near dusk and having Kodachrome asa 25 in the bloody camera it was difficult to get the meter to get close to proper exposure. Thankfully I had a camera that worked fully manual. One slide of the lot came out. That 11x14 hangs in the living room and it is without a doubt the best wildlife shot I ever got. Moose in Maine, well you can tell with a magnifying glass they are moose. Something like the mountain goats above you can tell if you look hard. We just don't show those, not like the eagle.