The Quiet Picture

Awesome! It’s snowing, so the snow cover will be pretty again.

I wanted do a long hike that would take me to some areas where snowshoes are required, while about half of the hike would be on a road where snowshoes would be more of a hinder. I’ve never liked carrying the snowshoes in hand for any longer stretches, so I decided to do something about it now. I rummaged through my sparepart drawer and found a shoulder strap which was just perfect for the snowshoe bag. As long as I’m hiking lightly (small backpack with only the camera, no tripod), it’s possible to sling the snowshoes at the back so they’re not hindering hand movement while walking. Problem solved.

Part of the trail goes under the power lines. They were making their buzzing bad-weather sound and it was a bit creepy to walk under them, with this constant reminder of the high voltage just above my head. For a moment I imagined that the power line was affecting my heart rate, but of course it was all that heavy walking through the snow with snowshoes on my feet that got my heart racing… a good workout for sure!

Sometimes when I’m on an excursion, I come back with pictures which share a common theme. It can be the subject matter or the style of photography, but you can see this thread quite clearly. The weather plays a big role on what kind of pictures I end up with, but other than that I haven’t considered myself to have a pre-conceived idea of what to do, with a few exceptions here and there (like the moonlight pictures earlier!). But when I looked at today’s crop of pictures, I started to wonder if the idea is there in the back of my mind anyway. I try to go out with an open mind so I can grab any opportunity that I come across, but I probably gravitate towards the kind of pictures I subconsciously decided I would do. It was very evident today, I took quite a lot of pictures (considering that the conditions weren’t the best possible), but when I saw them on the screen I ruthlessly deleted most of them and remaining pictures all follow the same theme – tree trunks in snow. Very simple, borderline abstract, and perfectly suited for the day. Subconscious pre-conception, adaptation to the conditions, or co-incidence? Not that it really matters… only the pictures do!

I had such a blast on Friday’s moonlight walk that I just had to do it again, even if the moon wasn’t quite full any more last night. I learned that the margins are very small when it comes to moonlight, and the moon phase is just one of the factors. There was a lot less light to go around last night, which meant that I had to make a lot of compromises with my exposures. When you’re shooting wide open and the longest shutter speed you can use is 20 secs (even that is too long, actually), the only thing left to change is the ISO and I really hate using a high ISO because the noise will be too evident in these low-light exposures.

So what had happened during just one day?

• Moon phase – 100% vs 97% full.
• Altitude of the moon – moonrise on Friday at 17:44, last night 19:28. When you’re out shooting at 22:00, it means that the moon is much lower in the sky.
• Clouds – it was clear skies on Friday, but now there was a little bit of high cloud which diffused the light.

This meant that I had no chance of taking pictures with such bright foregrounds as I did on Friday. At first I was a bit disappointed but looking at the pictures now, I think they worked out ok anyway. In a way they are more “natural” when the foreground doesn’t look like it’s the middle of the day. So maybe the light last night wasn’t any better or worse than on Friday – just different. But I can say one thing for sure, these late evening walks in the moonlight are just awesome, why didn’t I start doing them for a long time ago?

Thanks to the solar eruptions earlier this week, there was a fair chance of seeing some aurora. I was looking at the aurora forecast all evening yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t look like we would get any northern lights this far south. But since it was a full moon night and the snow cover was looking good, I decided to go for a walk anyway – if I didn’t see any aurora, I would still have all the stars and the moonlight on the snow. It was -20 degrees centigrade so I dressed up warmly, grabbed the snowshoes and set out. Walking through the snow, I was almost sweating under all the layers… even when I stopped to take some pictures, the cold didn’t bother me until I had been out for over an hour and spent more time on stopping and shooting than walking. But still, it was the camera battery that gave out first and I turned back home.

It is just amazing to be walking in the forest at night and not need a flashlight to see where you’re going. I’ve gotta do this again tonight!

Easter is a classic time for a skiing (or snowshoeing) trip in the mountains. The sunny fifth season days really are the best up in the mountains so I have a tradition to do a trip every year, normally I pick any sunny Saturday in March or very early April but with Easter giving us extra days off, it’s perfect.

There’s plenty of daylight at this time of the year so I was in no hurry to get to Messlingen. Just as well because the road from Hede to Messlingen was in a bad shape, no mud pits as yet where the car would get stuck (give it a week or two and those mud pits will be there), but so wet that my car quickly changed colour from green to mud. So glad I just washed it…

The trip plan I had for the day was to take the trail that passes behind my cabin and follow it up to the alpine tundra. I hiked up there last year but the weather was horrible, it was a downright snowstorm so not a chance to see any scenery. This is now going to be my “home away from home” so I was curious to see what it really looked like!

When I got up to the forest line, I found a perfect place for a break. Or rather, everybody and their dog had found the place before me so I just followed the tracks, but luckily when I got there the crowds had already left. It’s a small valley-like depression that provides protection from the wind and because it faces south, it’s just perfect. In Swedish they’re called “snögrop”, snow pits. It means that you tramp the snow to form a seating place where you can enjoy your coffee in the warm sunshine with beautiful scenery around you, awesome! Except of course I wanted to maximise the scenery part of this deal so I made my snögrop higher up on the slope, which means that I didn’t get full protection from the wind which means that it wasn’t quite as pleasant to sit there as it would’ve been otherwise but nevermind… it was awesome!

Before I was completely freezing from sitting down in the wind, I got back up on the trail. The alpine tundra was just as magnificent as I had imaged it with wide open spaces with snow and mountains as far as the eye could reach. And then when I followed the trail up to the Öster-Stoljan peak, it only got better. How about a 360 degree mountain panorama? It could be done here. I didn’t feel like trying a hand-held 360 panorama though so I settled for a couple of smaller views. The one below is looking towards west.

There’s just one problem with admiring this landscape. It was cold. Really, really cold. I was appropriately dressed for the weather, but when you get up on these peaks the wind is relentless. And this wasn’t even a bad wind!

Öster-Stoljan seems to be a very popular place. Understandable, because it’s one of the closest peaks from Messlingen and very easy to reach. At one point I was seeing so many snow mobiles up there that I thought they had a convention. Judging by all the tracks, I was the only one who got there by foot… Good for me.

When I got back to the car, it was already 6pm so the light was nice. My plan was to take the road to Funäsdalen (no way was I going to take the muddy road back to Hede!) because there would be quite a few opportunities for catching the evening light. And just when I found my opportunity, the light faded. Some thin clouds in the west, just enough to obscure the sun so that the glorious warm sunshine was transformed to blah during the time it took me to walk from the car to my subject, because it figures that there’s no way to park right next to it.

But no complaining. This tradition of mine, it will most definitely continue!

Today was probably the warmest day of the spring yet. Warm and sunny, it was incredibly nice to be outdoors. The snow is very slushy at the moment so you foot sinks through even when following snowmobile tracks, but I was ok on snowshoes – for the most part, anyway. But it got me thinking, if we now get temperatures below freezing, the crust will be awesome! Anyway, not a hint of freeze today. I had packed coffee and cookies in the camera bag and headed to the Eagle Mountain wind shelter and then just sat in the sun, sipping the coffee and enjoying the view.

On the way back, I didn’t want to take the shortest way home. I was feeling so good that I just took the first best tracks I could find and followed them, didn’t care where they were leading.

Now this is truly what they call the fifth season. If there’s anything that could’ve been better, then I wish I had been in the mountains. But that day will come…

I talked about the Moose Lake hike a while back. Another favourite hike I have is north-west to the Kvarnsjön lake, then south to Ryggskog and home via Gäddtjärnen. I used to do it a lot when I was still skiing, but not so much now that I’m snowshoeing because it’s a tad long for that. But when you’re on foot, it’s possible to take the road from Ryggskog back to Loos so it was easy to make the decision today to do this hike.

Photographically this route is not quite as good as the Moose Lake, but yesterday I went to Älgsjön and had very little to show for it, so today all I wanted was to have a nice hike and maybe take a few snapshots along the way. And the hike certainly started well, I got a real kick out of the wide open spaces and the new snow. It was snowing and there was almost no contrast at all, so the trail is barely visible in the picture.

When I got to Kvarnsjön, I had a look at the Storryggsån brook that runs into the lake from the west. During milder winters this brook is almost always open, but now it’s been covered with ice since December. I found a great opportunity for a panorama though, and there aren’t a lot of places around Loos that would work as a panorama quite as well as this. It was still snowing but the sun was starting to come out, which provided an interesting light on the landscape. I found a few other opportunities as well, but they would have required digging my way through the deep snow. I had already done one 50m detour and my legs were screaming for oxygen afterwards, I’m really not cut out for hiking knee deep… but following my own tracks back was easy. I can see the benefit of snowshoeing in a group – people can take turns in doing to the hard work. Anyway, I missed those other opportunities I speculated about because my legs were still shaking from the first effort and I had to leave some energy for the hike to Ryggskog.

The trail from Kvarnsjön to Ryggskog is not used a lot. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen a snowmobile here, but they do drive the route occasionally because the tracks are there. Except now of course, nobody’s done the trail since the snowfall started this week, so I had to pulse through the new snow. It’s uphill almost all the way to Ryggskog, but I love the forest that this trail runs through. It’s a fairly dense forest, mostly pines but a good dose of spruces as well (which is the norm around here). Because of the closeness of the trees, you’ll often see snow here when it’s already fallen down from the trees everywhere else. I haven’t found a way to photograph it so I could do it justice, but as an experience to hike through this forest it’s just simply wonderful. For me it’s a mile of pure winter bliss! And today it felt like it was better than normal… I don’t know if I was stopping so frequently to catch my breath or to enjoy the sight and silence!

I had high hopes for great winter scenery, because it’s been snowing for a couple of days solid now. But alas, I had a really tough time finding subjects. A few twigs sticking out of the snow turned out to be the highlight of the day… Oh well, one more to add to my minimalistic snow abstract collection.

The snow cover is probably about one metre on the marshes. It’s all powder – there hasn’t been any thaw since December to create an icy layer, so it’s tough to walk in the snow even with snowshoes. I sank to my knees wearing the snowshoes, but I guess it’s better than sinking to my hips without the snowshoes. Knee deep, you can still move… hip deep, and you’re pretty much stuck! Despite the generous snow cover and recent cold weather, there’s always a small element of risk to sink in a water hole. This particular water hole here was easy to avoid, but some small holes are covered so you have to watch out for those depressions in the snow to avoid wet feet. So every time I ventured outside the trail, I was just a little bit nervous… I do not like wet feet in cold weather!

Sometimes four seasons isn’t enough. When the sun breaks out from its winter hibernation and you feel it warm on your face while the landscape is still covered with snow, that’s what we call the fifth season. It’s that time of the year when you can go skiing wearing a t-shirt and when the sunglasses is a must or you go snowblind. Early February is still winter, but the thing is that I had a fifth season feeling when I was snowshoeing today. My clothes were too warm and I was missing my shades! To top it off, I heard the birdsong that I always associate with the spring winter.

As for the snowshoe hike, it was nice as always, but I’m really struggling with the pictures. I hoped that the fish-eye would inspire me, but nix. I blame the landscape though; even with all the snow we got this week, the trees are looking a bit scabby and in the end it didn’t matter which lens I had with me. Or maybe a little bit – I wouldn’t have been able to take this picture of a pine when the wind picked up the snow from the branches and blew it towards me. Serendipitous perhaps, but isn’t that what it’s about – being at the right place at the right time?

It’s been a cold weekend and I skipped my planned excursion yesterday, so I was really hoping I could go out today. By noon the temperature was up to -18°C so I dressed warmly and set out. And it wasn’t actually as bad as I expected, breathing was my biggest concern and that was no problem at all and as long as you keep moving at a good pace, you generate enough body heat to keep the extremities warm as well. It’s only when you stop to take pictures that you can feel the heat dissipate quickly… just as well that I didn’t have many photo ops then. Only two in fact, one in the way out and another in the same place on the way home – the light had changed so it was worth shooting twice, LOL.

But yes, I was a little bit surprised that I didn’t have to use the camera more often than that. The sceneries are wonderful to look at, but it just doesn’t quite work in the viewfinder. A little bit too much wind in conjunction with the snowfall earlier in the week so it’s not all photogenic. But it was a nice hike in any case, I was positively surprised to see that the cold temperature wasn’t a problem so if we get another of these cold weekends, I shouldn’t allow myself to be stuck inside four walls.