PNWNP Fall Color Shoot - Your Ideas Wanted...

Hey folks, it's time to begin thinking about our Fall Color Event. I was considering running it two consecutive weekends this year in order to give more people a chance to participate. My thought was that we'd have one weekend in Washington and another in Oregon. One of the events (or maybe both) could be held a bit further east to give our Idaho members a bit less travel distance...

One thing to remember, is that I will plan this event with the priority being weighted for timing the color peak, and less weight on the convince of people's schedules. Beginning in Sept. I'll be watching color closely, and I'd like input from you folks as to how the color is progressing in your area.

Here's what I need from you:
1. Do you think 2 weekends as suggested above is a good idea, or a bad idea?
2. Give me your top 3 location preferences
3. Tell me when you expect the color to peak in each of your preferred locations
4. Where do you live? If people are traveling and need to spend the night, I'll do a little research on accommodations, including campgrounds that might be open.

We will decide on a date(s) by Oct 1. Depending on how the color is progressing (or not) we might change the date after that, but only if there is a compelling reason to do so.

Great Idea Curtis....

I just checked the date on some of my photos from the Mount Hood/Lola Pass area and prime color last year was between Oct 20 and Nov 6th

2 weekends is good for those with busy schedules and also because different areas peak at different times....so it could work out well....

As far as Washington goes, it really depends on what the desired subject is. For Huckleberry and Larches, you generally want to get in towards the end of September. Vine Maple, location dependant, can range from mid September to Mid October. I think probably the best easily accessible area in Washington for fall color is the Mount Baker Highway. The Bagley Lakes are a favorite of mine, as is a stretch of the Wells Creek Road, the trails in the Artists Point area are always good and then about the best in the area is the Yellow Aster Butte trail (longer and fairly strenuous but so worth it). Rainier, of course, is also good, and the Rainy-Washington Pass stretch on Highway 20 is probably the best for easy access to Larch.

Silver Creek Falls SP also peaks during the last two weeks of October - plus, there's very few people there after Labor Day. The park is loaded with bigleaf and vine maple and depending on the weather in September/October, the stream levels have usually recovered just enough from summer to be interesting.

Oops... editing to mention that this is a state park, and thus has a high-quality fee campground. It's also within easy reach for Portland/Valley photo-commuters.

Tom

We did Silver Falls last year, so somewhere new might be nice. The year before I think we were going to Cold Springs Creek but go rained out and had to divert to an alternate location because of a road closure. Perhaps we might want to try that one again. Are you going to plan an Oregon and a Washington get together?

This is an odd pano that I took on October 30, 2005 at Tamanawas Falls -- the larches were peaking (one shows up in the background), along with cottonwoods and various other yellows, so anytime in late October would be pretty close to peak colors on Cold Spring Creek.

Tom

Ryan, I was kicking that idea around and hoping to get a feel for the interest level. I probably won't make both of them because I have to save a weekend for Natural Bridges while the VM is still hot. Unless of course you guys want to make Natural Bridges one of the outings...

Just giving this another bump for more input... I'll make up an organized list of ideas and possible dates, and post it later this week, so we can make a tentative decision on where we want to shoot this year.

In case anyone's concerned that this has fallen off the radar, it has not. I'm working on the Event page and hope to finish it up this weekend. I need to do some more research this week and over the weekend so the event is still a go!