Update from the Lake: Wintry Days

During the recent holidays, I was fortunate enough to spend a few days at my favorite northern CA lake. I was unfortunate enough to be "mildly" ill during that time, recovering from an unknown malady that caused upper and lower respiratory distress, inflammation, infection—whatever—something that the local clinic (in my northern NV home area) did not bother to test for, but gave me two anti-inflammatory medicines, Z-pak and prednisone (Z-pak is primarily an anti-biotic, but who knows if I needed one).

While recovering, mostly by relaxing in front of a wood cook stove, I took a few walks down to the local beach area, where spring water enters the lake.

So, let's go for a walk or two.

Christmas day, it was sunny but occasionally foggy.

The lake has a little picnic area, though it was a little cold for just sitting around.

Nice lake view, looking south toward the dam, which is not in view.

A few days later, I made another hike down to the lake. It was a gray, cloudy day. A bright white line on the shore across the lake stood out, creating a little bit of lighting drama.

Down on the rocky shore, water from a spring feeds into the lake, causing a bit of green—probably algae.

A few old stumps from when trees were cut before the reservoir was filled, back in 1914, are scattered about. Most of the present-day lake bottom consisted of meadow and marshland before filling, so tree stumps exist only along some shores.

The last photo looks west, down the rocky shoreline. Rocks consist primarily of rounded and partly rounded basalt cobbles and boulders, derived from the dominant bedrock of the area: basalt not far below the soil of the surrounding forest. Snow line here is below the high water mark, which is probably about 5 feet below the lowest pine tree, just below the upper concrete slab (concrete?). That is, when the lake is full, you can walk along the shore by moving from boulder to boulder, to do a little fishing (although technically, any land above the high water mark outside the beach area is private land).

Snow Day!

Views from my front and back doors this morning. All told, there has been about 6" of snow, 5" shown in the photos.

Twelve (or Ten?) Months of LFD (2017)

I'm doing the year-end meme wherein I compile the first sentence of the first post of every month. Meme rules are as follows, as per DrugMonkey (2014):

Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

I also add the first photo from the same first post. Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Aaand...here's the year 2017 for LFD:

January:

It's been icy cold in the far northlands, with temperatures hovering not too far above zero for several days.

February:

It was a late fall day, and I stopped along Route 447 to see if I could get close to some of the brilliantly colored trees along the Truckee River a few miles north of Wadsworth.

March:

I planned to have this descriptive section as part of the last post—the one about being packed and ready to leave town—but this "little bit" grew and grew, and eventually it had to find its own home.

April:

I was looking back through some photos and realized I had some of the Roan Cliffs from the spring of 2006.

May:

What is this?!!1?1!?

It all started when I was trying to find out what rock formations and rock types I was seeing while making the long trip to work and back out near Elko.

June:

I'm moving slowly on this mini-series about the Humboldt River while working essentially 12-hour days and while (hopefully) recovering from some long-lasting bug I caught on the road or out in Elko more than two months ago.

July:

Returning once again to my spring mini-series about all the rivers and lakes that are at higher levels than I've seen in quite awhile (most recent post), I decided this time to show a few pics of the Truckee River, which I drive by quite frequently.

August: Nothing.

September:

It's been a busy summer, such that I really haven't had time to get much blogging done—and I had so many good posts planned!

October:

This is a classic road song with "road" right there in the title, courtesy once again of MOH.

November: Nada.

December: (this post).

I'm doing the year-end meme wherein I compile the first sentence of the first post of every month.

A Little Report on Our January Storms

Intellicast radar image from 23Jan2017, approx 6:10 am, PST.

Our latest atmospheric river is passing through the area and will probably be gone by tomorrow (for more detail about the atmospheric rivers we've been subject to so far this January, see Garry Hayes' excellent live blogging of the storms here).

It was just three days ago, and this current ongoing storm or set of storms had just dumped an additional 8 inches in our area, which is at about 4560 ft (1890 m) in what is essentially the northern Sierra. The snow was wet and heavy, and had fallen on a base that included wet slush in places and thick snow drifts in others. I thought I'd better head out back to knock the weighty stuff off our fairly young fruit trees.

The gate to the back yard was frozen shut, so I went through our gazebo.

Small fir and pine trees weighed down by ice and snow.

A large cable spool.

As I tramped around in the back, shaking trunks and branches to knock snow off the thin limbs, I post-holed into the snow over the tops of my pack boots, to a depth of about 17 inches. Later measurements of this snow showed that the backyard was covered with about 24 inches.

After my backyard expedition was over, I wandered around taking a few pictures.

Snow on a rickety-looking ladder in our construction area.

A mini-avalanche on the roof from snow falling off a pine tree.

The road in front, not yet plowed, with tire and ski tracks.

Pine branches with snow.

Pine tree with needles plastered with ice and snow.

More plastering.

As I walked around, the temperatures were starting to rise, and large clumps of snow and ice started cascading off the trees. I became fascinated by this process and managed to get a number of action pictures.

The falling clumps drove me under some of our scaffolding structures.

Mostly protected from the falling snow, I felt a little more secure in getting photos without having myself and the camera caught by the falls.

Here I'm still under the scaffolding, looking up at a few large clumps of ice and snow that remain near the top of this pine tree, the same one that created the tiny avalanche above.

Finally, my patience in standing and waiting with camera poised was rewarded with a sizable fall.

One clump remains at the very tip-top of the tree, but it was time to go in to warm up hands and have a cup of coffee.

My "New" Toy

Yes, that's an 18-200 mm zoom.

This isn't really a new camera, but it's new to me. It's old, probably from 2006 or 2007. I inherited it from Alaska Al. You saw some of my first photos from this DSLR a couple weeks ago.

I struggle some with accurate color balance when posting on the web. Cameras in general don't shoot accurate color by themselves, hence enhancement or editing. Hence white and gray cards, e.g., this one. Maybe I'll get one. (Any white balance setting on a digital camera is a type of programming—except, perhaps, the PRE or custom setting. Any choice you make is, imo, a type of editing.)

So far with this camera, I've been using auto white balance (AWB), although I know the camera will shoot warm under indoor lighting, and so it will usually require a change to tungsten or something else when indoors. With AWB, the color on the LCD screen has, so far, fairly well matched the color of what I see when shooting, or maybe it's too reddish or bluish on occasion. Of course, when using a DSLR one can't actually see anything on the LCD screen until after taking a shot, because the process of DSLR is different, and one looks into the viewfinder to see exactly what the camera is seeing.

These first pictures below were taken from 395 north of Reno on a fairly gray day. I've enhanced the photos such that they look to me the way they looked on the LCD screen, although they are all probably off, in color, by a hair. I think the next picture could be slightly yellower, but my opinion of it seems to vary depending on what I looked at last.

Sunlight hitting the west part of Seven Lakes Mountain, the part that's in California.

The next photo was shot from a moving vehicle with ISO 800 (not really fast enough for the conditions) at 200 mm zoom (35mm equivalent of 300mm). It was slightly unsharp, though not from the motion; I've since modified the D80's sharpness settings. I've cropped the photo slightly to suit my idea of best composition (hence, it's been enlarged very slightly).

Some rocky crags on Petersen Mountain (MyTopo location).

Petersen Mountain, on the crest of the range not far to the right of the photo, is the site of active quartz crystal mining.

Petersen Mountain from a little farther south.

The photo was taken from about here (Google Maps location), looking southeast toward the high point of the Petersen Mountain (range): Petersen Mountain (summit).

And here's a shot of one of the northern peaks on Peavine, looking southeast from about the stateline near Bordertown.

The camera shows quite a bit of vignetting at 200 mm.

I have, in the meantime, taken a lot of nice photos, particularly some zoomed-in photos of birds. But I'm still figuring out the many settings and possibilities, and am finding the color a little odd in shadowy settings.

Aerial Views of Two Northwest Volcanoes

My first view of Mt. Rainier out the window on New Year's Day was quite colorful, but the high-order rainbow effect of alternating pinks and greens was due to refraction, from shooting sideways through the Bombadier Q400's window toward the front of the plane.

I waited until Rainier moved fully into view for the next shot:

Photo looking almost due east.

The high peak on the left is Liberty Cap, at 14,112 feet (4301 m); the peak on the right is Point Success, at 14,158 feet (4315 m). The high point of the entire mountain, in the center and back behind the other two, is Columbia Crest, coming in at 14,411 feet (4392 m).

In the view above, we're looking at the head of the South Fork of the Mowich River just left of center in the foreground. The small ice field above and left of the river head is Edmunds Glacier. The shadowed icy mass to the left of Edmunds is the North Mowich Glacier, which is above the North Fork of the Mowich River (mostly out of view).

A radial dike runs from between the two closer and less elevated peaks to the lower right, into what is the headwaters of the North Puyallup River. The landform formed by the radial dike is known as Puyallup Cleaver.

Photo looking a little east of northeast.

Here we're looking almost straight up the andesitic dike that forms Puyallup Cleaver. This dike fed lavas that erupted between 280 and 190 ka (Pringle, 2008). The Puyallup Glacier is to the left (north) of the dike; the Tahoma Glacier is to the right (south). The steep headwall above Puyallup Glacier is called Sunset Ampitheater. Ice in Sunset Ampitheater spills (or flows) into both the Puyallup and the North Mowich Glaciers.

I was on the wrong side of the plane to see Mt. St. Helens, but had this great view of Mt. Adams as the sun went down and the light got pink. Notice the reddish irridescent lenticular cloud off to the side.

Mt. Adams looking almost due east.

Too bad I hadn't thought about my new camera on the Alaska-SeaTac leg of the flight! For some reason, I didn't think about it, and hence only got some not-so-great phone photos.

Update from the Lake: First Snow!

It was a cold and misty morning, with lots of smoke from wood fires drifting by (cue that wonderful scent that reminds me of fall and winter, but makes my sinuses clog up a bit), when MOH finally got me to drag myself away from the heat of our front-room oil stove. "Take some pictures," he cried, "It's the first snow of the year! And it will melt soon!" So out I went.

Well, it hasn't melted completely, four days later, though snow is gone from the patches of ground that get our low-angle, late fall sun, where the sunlight manages to slip through our neighbors' trees.

Snow on pines, firs, and cedars.

Snow on manzanita, with background of bamboo.

Closeup of snow on ponderosa pine needles.

A leaf hanging from our Blackgold® cherry, with hints of construction in the background.

Green leaves from the same cherry tree. Green!

Snow on Surefire™ pie cherry leaves.

We have a lot of fencing material here and there in our yard.

The raspberries were mostly green when the snow fell (and they still are!).

Snow on the green leaves of our Titan almond tree.

The leaves were mostly gone from the nearby Betty peach tree.

Snow on the Orus 8 gooseberry x currant plants.

Leaves of the Breda Giant and Puciu Super Mol medlars, with snow and shadows.

Snow on manzanita branches.

The manzanita from above, looking down.

Snow on the leaf of the Surefire™ pie cherry tree.

Leaf shadows.

More Surefire™ pie cherry leaves, with partly frozen drips.

Fencing wire hung hanging from the gate.

The gate, with a hint of boat in the background.

Pine needles in corn snow on concrete.

A door leaning against another door.

There is still enough snow in the shadowy parts of the yard for crunching about, and the ground is mostly still frozen, although we are having highs in the low to mid-50s. And surprisingly, at least to me, many of the leaves I photographed for this series are still on the trees and bushes, and the ones that were green are still green.