Cool Clouds on Hood from Owl Point (Sept 3)

[Splintercat]

Hmm.... well, hiking up to Silcox would certainly be more strenuous than Owl Point, given the elevation gain and altitude -- but you're also within a SUV ride of the lodge, in the event that your baby is suddenly impatient about the due date! With Owl Point, you're an hour from the trailhead, then a looong hour down to Hood River (the closest hospital), including a few miles of gravel road... hmmm...

But of course I agree that it would be a beautiful backdrop for a pic! Maybe I should do some photoshop for you..?

Tom

[leadfoot]

Great video!

Here's my shot(s) of Mt Hood that day (Sept 3), one looking at the north side from Rt 35 in Parkdale, and one from the Mt Hood Meadows parking lot, looking due south at the mtn. Very impressive. The lenticular cloud lasted most of the afternoon.

[Jacko]

Splintercat - in your opinion, would the view of Mt. Hood from Owl point be as good in the early morning as the evening (speaking of the light for photographs). I am thinking of heading up there to take some pictures of the mountain with my Large Format camera, but am a little uncertain as to the best time of day...

[retired jerry]

I was on the Timberline trail between you and Hood on the 3rd:

[Stevefromdodge]

Don't look now Jerry, but I think Mt Hood has been sainted!

[Splintercat]

I see a Dan Brown book in there, somewhere, Steve.... "The Lenticular Code"....

Jacko, my vote is for evening light, partly because it's a 2-hour drive from Portland to the trailhead, so the earliest I've been up there is maybe 10 AM (by the time I hike the 2 miles to Owl Point), and the light is already pretty difficult at that point. But evening light and long shadows do a very nice job of bringing depth the north slope of the mountain and the forests below Owl Point -- here's a photo taken at 4:20 PM PST in mid-October a few years ago that captures what I think are the very best conditions at this viewpoint:



Look closely, and you can see some autumn larches in the forests to the right. I'd LOVE to see what a large format image can do with this scene! The foreground element are very nice, but kind of hard to do justice to with an SLR.

BTW, not sure where you'd be traveling from, but I use the Columbia Gorge AQ cam to figure out what the conditions on the east side (including Owl Point) are like, as we sit down here in the fog:

Columbia Gorge Air Quality Cam

Vista Ridge and Owl Point are often right at the cloud break, due to the falloff to the Hood River Valley, to the east -- so it's possible to really catch some drama from that spot when the Gorge Cam shows the clouds banked up against the west side of the mountain.

Good luck!

[Splintercat]

BTW, nice lenticular views Jerry & Leadfoot -- I was looking at that on the Gorge Cam, as well (about mid-morning), and that's partly what inspired me to head up to the mountain. It was a nearly perfect disc at that point, and sort of morphed into a modified cap by the time I was set up at Owl Point.

One of the coolest lenticular clouds I've seen on Hood was centered right over the Clear Fork valley in July 2007 -- we had been up to Owl Point on a trail clearing trip, so didn't even HAVE my big camera with me, and didn't really see that we were under a huge Martian space ship! But on the way back down Lolo Pass that evening, we looked back and spotted this (as photographed with my tiny pocket camera):



Wow! The photo doesn't do it justice, but the "hole" inside was absolutely perfect -- and very creepy. As harmless as they are, they do have a rather menacing look to them!

Tom

[Jacko]

Thanks SplinterCat - Mt. Hood is my nemesis as far as a photographic subject, I've never taken a good shot of it yet and am hopeful for Owl Point...

[mayhem]

Bammm! The video is spectacular!!