Archive for the 'snowshoes' Category
Ice leaves
I did a quick trip to the mountains yesterday, had to check the cabin site because they’re almost finished with the groundwork now (more about that in another post). Since I didn’t have much choice in the date, I was lucky to have somewhat reasonable weather so I could do some photography while I was there.
And the photography started before I even got to the mountains. Road 84 follows the Ljusnan river and there’s a few spots along the way which are quite photogenic in the right conditions, and nothing beats the lay-by just before Hede. I’ve driven past a few times without stopping although the scene was looking incredibly good, so now I’ve made it a habit to slow down before the lay-by in case it’s a worthy opportunity… and this time it was. The river is normally open during the winter, so there’s plenty of potential especially in cold weather.
When I was finished at the cabin site, I still had a few hours of daylight at my disposal so I put on the snowshoes and followed a snow mobile trail. It hasn’t been snowing lately in the mountains either, so the snow was old and had crystallised in the cold weather. 
By crystallising I mean that the top layer of the snow had frozen and these crystal structures were sticking up… the phenomenon itself is not unfamiliar to me, it happens every winter, but what stunned me was the sheer size of these crystals. They were formed like birch leaves and were easily the size of them, so I started calling them ice leaves. The wind was picking up and the “leaves” were falling at every gust of the wind, you could hear the faint tinkle when they hit the ground. Amazing thing!
One of my favourite mountains is Ånnfjället, it has a very characteristic profile that looks good from any angle. It’s also visible from much of the road between Mittådalen and Funäsdalen, so it was the obvious choice to concentrate on during my short trip. The setting sun was fading behind the clouds, but there was just enough light to provide some contrast for the clouds of snow that the wind was whipping up on the mountain. I was hoping for the sun to come out for a glorious sunset, but that didn’t happen so I gave up and drove to Funäsdalen to get a good cup of coffee and drive home.
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It has taken me half a day to process the HDRs (all of them from that lay-by in Hede). I didn’t use a tripod (lazy, lazy and more lazy) so I relied on quick shutter speeds and IS to keep the picture reasonably steady for processing. But it turned out that none of my four different HDR programs were able to align the pictures correctly (even if they were off by only a few pixels) so I had to manually align everything and then run them through the different programs to see which one gave me the best result, because I wasn’t happy with anything I was getting out of them. In the end I settled with LR/Enfuse or otherwise I would still be processing them. The worst part is that I needed to process every series of shots to be able to determine which ones were worth keeping, and when I finally had the results I threw away half of the work I put into them. Oh well, what are Sundays for anyway?
4 commentsThe Moose Lake hike
My favourite winter trek has got to be the trail to the Älgsjön lake. For starters, it’s just the perfect distance for a snowshoe hike, maybe a tad short but it’s also nice to come back home and have some energy in reserve. In the summertime there’s a road to Älgsjön, but it’s not really the lake that’s interesting, it’s the trail there. I take this trail many times every winter, and somehow I always come back home with pictures. It’s never the same – the conditions are different, the time of day is different, every winter is different… if you didn’t find anything interesting, then you were just staring at your feet all the time.
When you come to the lake in the winter, you approach it from the north. There’s a marshy area just before the lake, so the low winter sun shines right on your face and I swear I felt a little bit of warmth… or maybe I was imagining it, having not seen the sun for a long time. Normally the marsh is good for me, but this time I left empty handed as the wind had whipped the trees bare and snowless trees in the winter is a bit of a turn-off for me. But if the wind takes, it also gives – I found some lovely snow drifts elsewhere along the trail and that’s all the inspiration I need.
In my skiing past, if I wanted to sap out all of my energy, I sometimes continued the trail to Öratjärnen and Ryggskog but that’s a lot of pain for no gain (=big blisters and no pictures). So Älgsjön is all you need, all the excitement is bound to happen before you get there anyway!
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