Saturday, July 17, 2010

Ghost Trees


Here's a vacation photo, taken at Clear Lake near Mount Hood in Oregon. Clear Lake is supposed to have beautiful views of Mt. Hood reflected in the still water (do a Google image search to see what it looks like). The weather was kind of iffy going into the hike, but we continued on, hoping it would clear. As it turned out, it got progressively worse as we hiked along the 1.5 mile trail to the lake. It was quite foggy and rainy, although the trees stopped most of the rain, resulting in a damp mist along the trail.

Arriving at the lake, we found the fog so thick that you could only see about three feet out into the lake. We were a little disappointed at first, but soon realized that while we were missing the mountain views, we were seeing some pretty stunning scenes. Sitting on the edge of a small mountain lake looking at vague shadowy outlines of trees through the mist is beautiful in it's own way. It was very peaceful and quiet, and while we occasionally heard other hikers walking around the lake, we couldn't see anyone more than ten feet from us.

The foggy, rainy weather was only along the south side of Mt. Hood. Due to the microclimates in mountainous areas, the rest of our trip around the mountain was sunny and clear.

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