During a brief respite between drizzles and squalls over still ice-covered Picture Lake, blue skies and beautiful sunset light paint a different picture over and upon the famous angular profile of nearby Mount Shuksan, in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington.

We had one free evening in Vancouver and, never having seen this wondrous view from Picture Lake, we decided to make a dash for Mount Baker. Weather conditions looked promising as we wound our way up forested valley road toward Mount Baker's prominence, but then the unpredictable nature of alpine weather intervened. Clouds swept in, seemingly in minutes, and torrential downpours accompanied most of the rest of our drive ascending the mountain. I feared a complete washout, but thankfully, the storms lessened and left some windows toward clearer, more distant vistas. Minutes later the next drops began to fall.

A half hour or so after I took this shot, some lower clouds caught up to us and threatened to make the drive back down the mountain a tedious one for tired eyes in thick fog. Part way back down the mountain, the combination of dusk, mist and dense northwest forest had created quite an air of mystery. Just then, the hulking form of a huge bear emerged from the thick undergrowth and moved purposefully across the road in front of us before disappearing once again through a curtain of firs. In the thick fog and low light, even at a distance of probably only thirty or forty feet, I could make out no detail other than the bear's enormous form and dark fur. Had I been just a little more tired, or the fog just a bit thicker, I might have wondered if I'd seen a sasquatch!

Anyway, even though its been months since this trip, its been one of those stretches for me with no time for photography, so this post is actually still from a quick bit of processing done on my old laptop. I'll have to dig into this and process it a little better at some point, but its been so long since I've been on flickr, I just felt like posting what I had on hand.

Thanks for viewing!

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