Mt. Rainier, Up Close and Personal

It's a love affair; I admit it.

I have a favorite spot up in the Cascade Range where I get the view above of Mt. Rainier. It’s about 18 miles from home, and 15 of those miles are rutted, stony, washboard rough.

So it’s a bit of work to get up there, and it takes longer than you would thinkg—blah, blah blah, just excuses so I finally got in the Jeep and headed to my spot yesterday.

There were considerable clouds, but it’s common for the clouds to ease off an hour or two before sunset. Not always, but last night was perfect—some low clouds hugging the base of the mountain, and a ‘hat’ (lenticular cloud) above the mountain. It was so beautiful; I have no fancy words for—the photo is nice, but standing there, with the mountain still 16 miles away, well, it’s a very good use of my time. ;)

I didn't take a huge number of shots; it was all there from the start. The photograph above was taken after about 15 minutes had gone by, with the Zeiss 100mm Otus. The clouds were at their minimum (they started to build again pretty quickly as the air cooled).

But.

I took some handheld panoramas, which I will share in my next post. Here’s a photo taken with the 50mm lens which shows the interesting character of the sky above the mountain.

I also brought my drone. Here’s a shot from about 4500 feet (I was standing at about 3000 feet of elevation, and the drone will do 500 meters max).

I also took a self-portrait with the drone:

That black dot in front of the Jeep is me.