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I'll be Damnationed
Posted 2009-04-08 18:35:19 by Bryan Swan
On tuesday I set out to scout out some locations in the Skagit Valley, but had to bail out early because of soreness in my legs. Before I absconded, however, I managed to scramble my way up the canyon of Damnation Creek and discovered a nice 230 foot+ series of falls and cascades which I've dubbed Purgatory Falls. In true North Cascades fashion, it wasn't a terribly photogenic waterfall, but it turned out to be fairly impressive and about what I expected to find hidden up there. Worth taking a look at for the hardcore bushwhackers out there, but not a Sunday stroll type location.
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Spring Conditions Report
Posted 2009-04-03 19:01:41 by Bryan Swan
Gathering a little data from my various querying about where to go (or rather where I can go), I thought I'd toss out an update to the status of some roads used to access some of the major waterfall areas.
In the Olympic National Forest, FR 25 (Hamma Hamma River) is closed just past milepost 10 by a large landslide and, according to the FS website, may never be repaired. Its currently about a mile walk to Lower Hamma Hamma Falls and another two miles to Hamma Hamma Falls. This also makes accessing the waterfalls along Whitehorse Creek and Lake of the Angels longer by almost 2 miles.
In the Baker Snoqualmie area, the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road is closed before the Mailbox Peak trailhead due to dozens of landslides on the county portion of the road. A time table has not been firmly given by the County but it sounds like it should be repaired before summer hits. Initial reports, however, indicate that the road between the Taylor River and Dingford Creek trailhead suffered severe damage. The approach to the bridge over the Taylor River is gone and may take a long time to repair, so for the extended future, the only access to anything in the upper Middle Fork drainage will be via the Middle Fork Trail.
In the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, FR 54 (Canyon Creek) is closed by a large landslide BEFORE FR 57 splits off to the Lower Siouxon Trailhead, so this means not only are the waterfalls in the upper Canyon Creek drainage not accessible, but those along Siouxon Creek can only be accessed from FR 57 by coming in from the Trapper Creek side and that access probably won't be melted out until June at the very earliest.
Those are the big points of order at the moment, everything else is still buried under snow. It even snowed in Seattle the last two mornings. Been too cold this winter.
One last point of contention, the State looking to trim its budget is considering mothballing 35 state parks until the budget crunch is solved. The parks slated for closure include Wallace Falls, so anyone interested in seeing the falls ought to do so sooner rather than later because even though you will still be able to hike to the falls when the park is closed, there won't be anywhere to park, so you'd almost have to park in Gold Bar and bike to the trailhead.
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Bring on the Haters
Posted 2009-03-20 03:45:22 by Bryan Swan
Well I apparently have hit the big time - I have haters. Maybe not direct but rather by association. It seems that someone has it out BAD for pro photographer Marc Adamus, who I feel is among the finest photographers alive. They've launched an anti-Adamus website suggesting he is killing the art of landscape photography. Now I posted a couple shots on Flickr (1)(2) where I pointed out I had emulated scenes that Adamus had shot prior. Apparently this is enough to suggest that not only do I not know how to take a picture, but that I am also pretending to be straight while I pursue a homosexual relationship with my friend Trevor Anderson (for those of you who don't know me personally, yes I am straight and not at all offended by this).
This all just made me laugh. Really, whoever this petty, childish and clearly jealous (and probably homophobic) person(s) is, you have only served to promote the very thing you claim to detest. Nothing breeds popularity like controversy, so in that regard, I thank you for the extra traffic I hope you will send my way.
As far as addressing the claims of the hater(s), its really not my place to defend anyone but myself, and as much as I enjoy a good flame war, these particular sorts of "debates" are usually futile because the opposing party will usually think that dropping the "your a fag" line will win them the argument, so its generally not worth the effort. In the mean time, I'm assuming whoever you are you will see this post since you have clearly been lurking my websites and I'll just say that no matter how much you bitch and moan and complain about how Marc Adamus (and myself apparently) is killing landscape photography...your childish attempts to do something about it will be a waste of your time and money. Have a nice day. :o)
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Mail Forwarding Issue
Posted 2009-02-27 02:13:05 by Bryan Swan
I may have been having problems with my email routing over the last two weeks, so if anybody has tried to sign up for a workshop any time in the last week and not received a response, email me again about it so I can be sure I've got your name on the list.
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Announcing 2009 Photography Workshops
Posted 2009-02-20 19:57:17 by Bryan Swan
I'm officially announcing the preliminary schedule of Waterfall Photography Workshops for the 2009 season. To start the year off, there are five workshops scheduled, one each in May, June, July, August and September (for dates, see Workshops details). By signing up for one of these classes, you'll be exposed to a hands-on classroom environment in the field (but without the tests) and you'll get to see some pretty cool places too. Cost is $150 per person per class and you will be responsible for your own transportation to a central meetup location. Click the above links for further details and to sign up. Email me if you have any questions.
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Definitive Guide to Wallace Falls
Posted 2009-02-17 17:03:44 by Bryan Swan
There had been a lot of discussion about the various different hidden waterfalls along the Wallace River over on nwhikers.net, the weather this weekend turned out to be quite nice and I hadn't gotten a good hike in for almost 5 months, so it was time to do some thorough investigating.
What was uncovered wasn't exactly revelatory because I'd seen Beta from a couple of Canyoneers who have descended the whole thing, but I was able to both measure and photograph 11 of the 13 major drops (which group out to only three Waterfalls - Upper, Middle and Lower Wallace) along the main stem of the Wallace River. The very top drop turned out to be better than I thought it would be, though there was no good view to be had, and the two final drops were very nice as well, but quite dangerous to see.
Probably more relevant to the average sunday hiker, though, is that the State Parks Department has done some much needed trimming of the trees within the canyon so that various sections of the falls are no longer obscured. The main fall can now be seen quite easily from the picnic shelter at the Lower Falls and the main falls are now 100% visible from the Middle Falls viewpoint rather than being about 1/3 blocked on the left side. Its too bad the Forest Service can't employee similar practices - there are a ton of places that are suffering because of tree branch encroachment.
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Punch Bowl Falls is log-less
Posted 2009-01-26 06:11:18 by Bryan Swan
Finally, after years and years of complaining and threatening to tote a chainsaw up Eagle Creek to remove that eyesore log that obstructed the view up the gorge below Punch Bowl Falls, it has removed itself from view. Presumably this occured during the January floods. If losing Benham Falls was the price to pay for this fantastic turn of events, then I say "bottoms up!"
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Benham Falls has been destroyed
Posted 2009-01-24 02:59:05 by Bryan Swan
The aftermath of the January floods is slowly being revealed as the low elevation snow starts to melt off. There was substantial damage to Canyon Creek Road #54 near Chelatchie - several huge landslides took out some really large chunks of the road. I don't know if they were before or after the turnoff to the Siouxon Creek trailhead (I'm assuming after). Roads 21 and 90 also suffered some damage in the GPNF.
But most shockingly was the damage that has been levied on FR 25 at Benham Creek between Randle and Elk Pass. Benham Creek has in the past been a thorn in the sides of the Forest Service maintenance crews. The bridge had completely washed out in 1998 or 1999 (don't remember which exactly) and it took them almost 3 years to rebuild it to a permanent state.
Benham Creek is NOT a large stream either, so for it to do this was an impressive feat. Well the storm in January seems to have thought the first washout wasn't bad enough. This time, the entire hill slid down, over the road, destroying the bridge and completely burying Benham Falls and its small, scenic gorge. You can check out the carnage on the GPNF website if you don't believe me, but if what I'm seeing in this picture is accurate - and based on the angle of the roadbed leading towards the slide, I'd say it is - Benham Falls no longer exists. Its not a huge loss as waterfalls goes, but it was pretty and its a shame to see any waterfall destroyed. I just hope that there isn't a more serious casualty elsewhere.
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Waterfall Photography Workshops Poll
Posted 2009-01-18 18:48:11 by Bryan Swan
So I want to gauge interest in my offering of Waterfall Photography workshops this summer. I'm toying with the idea of offering one-day workshops in the Cascades where we will focus on teaching how to photograph streams and waterfalls. The possibility of multiple-day workshops also exists, but that may not happen until next year. You would be responsible for transporting yourself to a predetermined meeting location and we would carpool from there to shooting locations, shoot for most of the day and then discuss some post processing techniques either afterward or during mid day when the light might not be conducive to shooting. These will be paid workshops, but I haven't yet determined what the fee(s) would be. I'd appreciate it if anyone interested in even the slightest would answer the poll question on the home page so I can get an idea of whether this would be worth investing my time in.
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Thus begins the annual 100 year flood. Again.
Posted 2009-01-07 16:00:35 by Bryan Swan
Forecasters are suggesting this one is going to be bad. The Cowlitz River is predicted to obliterate its record level at Randle but not at Packwood. This means there will probably be equally absurd amounts of water coming down the Muddy / Clear Forks as there is coming down the Cispus River and for those of you who paid attention, the Cispus drainage did not fair well during the 2005 floods. At the moment the Skykomish Gauge at Gold Bar is sitting over 53,000 cfs and the Snoqualmie below the falls is about to hit 50,000 cfs and we're only halfway into this thing according to the weather predictions. If you can make it to North Bend today or tomorrow, Snoqualmie, Twin and Weeks Falls ought to be quite the spectacle.
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Future Disruptions
Posted 2008-12-12 05:33:12 by Bryan Swan
This is an advanced notice that I plan on doing some major database maintenance in the next month or two and there may be a period of a day or two when this site is unavailable.
Right now I've got separate databases for the Northwest Waterfall Survey and the World Waterfall Database. Because the data in NWS is going to be duplicated almost entirely on WWD, its easier for me to just maintain one source rather than have to copy and paste everything. This site won't be shut down, I will just need to point the database connections and SQL queries to the other database, but I will have to slice up my code a bit to do so.
I don't know exactly when I will be doing this, but I am getting close to the point where I will begin to fill the new WWD tables with content, so it'll likely happen before the end of January. I will post further warnings when its coming.
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Fridays Sunset
Posted 2008-12-07 00:26:07 by Bryan Swan
To those of you living basically anywhere from about Everett to as far south as Portland or maybe even Salem, you may have noticed the "words simply are incapable of explaining how awesome that was" sunset last night (12/5). The color itself was far and away among the absolute best I have ever seen, but the factor that really set it apart was the three stacks of huge lenticular clouds lofting above Mount Rainier (and apparently over Adams, Hood and maybe St. Helens as well).
Well I live about 10 minutes from downtown Seattle and I have a partial view of Rainier from my living room, so when I saw the clouds just sitting there, waiting to be photographed, I hurried over to Kerry Park, which provides maybe the epitomal view of Seattle, and set up to shoot sunset. I've seen some good ones in my life, but this may be the absolute best I've personally witnessed. I usually shoot landscapes, but I've wanted to shoot some cityscapes for a while now, and as many places in the wilderness I've been to have blown my mind, I think this image may be the shot I am to date most proud of. Just wanted to share it with my readers.
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Missing Pictures and a boot covered in Fail
Posted 2008-12-01 00:01:38 by Bryan Swan
I just noticed I hadn't posted a picture of Benham Falls in the Iron Creek drainage in the Gifford Pinchot area from back in June, so that's now online. Weather today was pretty damn nice (had to be at least 55 degrees out) and since I'd been cooped up in my apartment for the last week for one reason or another, I had to try and do something.
Aaron Young went and found a path leading to the lofty upper waterfall on the unnamed stream feeding Suiattle Falls near Darrington, and that's one which been pestering me for a long time, so I had to take a stab at it. Well I somehow got in my head that Aaron told me that the trail he found was on the right side of the creek and not the left. So I started scrambling up the hillside, occasionally finding traces of wear that may have been caused by people. One or two flags here and there egged me on, but after nearly 1 1/2 hours of veggie-belaying up the mountainside, I noticed I had almost climbed ABOVE the whole waterfall and immediately knew I was on the wrong side of the creek. Dammit.
The resulting descent was much faster, however it involved many branches in the face, almost losing one of my boots to a hidden puddle of leather gobbling mud and wading through a thicket of blackberry bushes in order to get back to my car. So with the weather turning to crap for the foreseeable future, it looks like 2008 will be sending me off with a nice wet layer of Fail all over.
Not like its the first time.
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Flood Aftermath
Posted 2008-11-16 20:39:58 by Bryan Swan
This one wasn't terribly bad, but there has been some moderate damage in Mount Rainier National Park. The Carbon River Road is closed indefinitely outside of the park boundary (and are we really surprised?) due to an apparent 200 foot long washout of the width of the road and then some. The Nisqually Road is closed for another week so crews can shore up the road around Kautz Creek and divert it back into its former channel and away from the road.
Sounds like the worst damage might have been due to the Ohanapecosh River going apeshit (again), which damaged the suspension bridge at Grove of the Patriarchs and if it was that high, it may have ended up taking out the bridge above Ohanapecosh Falls again (though I don't know if it was ever replaced after the 2006 floods - pretty sure it was). Hopefully there aren't new logs pinned in the falls after the floods finally cleaned out the old ones.
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Here we go again
Posted 2008-11-12 15:33:07 by Bryan Swan
Right on time, Washington's annual November 100 year flood is currently on. The Nisqually entrance to Mount Rainier National Park is currently closed because Kautz Creek is flowing 6 inches deep over the road (maybe it'll move itself back to its old streambed and spare blowing out the huge culverts they just installed a couple years ago).
The Skykomish River is currently sitting at 65,000 cfs at Gold Bar, which means Sunset and Eagle Falls are most likely moving at about 40,000 cfs at the moment, which I can't even fathom. South Fork of the Snoqulamie River is above 6500 cfs, so Twin Falls should be absolutely insane right now, Snoqualmie Falls itself may actually be inaccessible.
Unfortunately I can't get close enough to these things to go take pictures because the roads are all flooded well before the waterfalls. Plus I need new tires and I don't want to hydroplane off the side of the road.
Everyone pray to the weather gods that the roads and trails stay relatively intact this time.
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