Playing with a Raynox DCR250 Macro converter when I should be working…
The freezing fog is gone. The inversion has cleared. The mountains are visible, but barely. There is heavy overcast and it is snowing. But it is REAL overcast, not the low foggy cloud layer. It looks and feels very different. I could take some photos outside. But it just looks gray and cold now, so I played photographer inside, with my new toy…which came in the mail today.
Something different.
I got up.
I fed Bob.
I started the coffee…
My work day started early and went well.
I work with a team of 2 others – 2 wonderful men who are smart, professional, caring fathers and husbands, thoughtful of me and of each other. It is a pleasure to work with them. One, I have never met in person – the other just once. Most of our interaction is by email, phone and an internet conference program – the workplace of the 21st century.
Midday, I had a break and Karl and I went for a long walk/snowshoe. We are still under the inversion stratus, in the damp and cold, but as it is below freezing, the snow is hard, crusty and easy for both of us to stay on top of.
Afternoon – more work on my own.
Late afternoon, Big John’s picks up the snowblower for the second time. I have a nice visit with the young men who do the pickup. They ask good questions about the blower’s problems. I mention my trip to Blacktail – one of them skied at Big Mountain (Whitefish) yesterday and we compare notes about the beauty of being up in the sun. We laugh.
A bit more work and then a break for dinner, a glass of wine on the front porch while a lasagna from my freezer bakes in the oven.
Karl waits for some lasagna…
Karl shares some lasagna…
Some of us think about bedtime…
…a wonderful day.
From the valley…
…to the mountain top.
The freezing fog, it usually comes with another phenomonon – an inversion. Warm air up high overruns cold air in the valleys. Under high pressure it creates an inversion – between the warm upper air and the cold valley air lies the stratus.
In the valley, under the status, we have had cold temperatures accompanied by high humidity and so the freezing fog.
Karl’s and my mission today was to see the inversion from the other side. We headed for Blacktail Mountain, home of Blacktail Mountain Ski Area – an “upside-down” mountain in that the day lodge and parking are at the top of the mountain. The ski runs go down into a hanging valley. But the important thing for my purposes was that the lodge and parking area were above the fog deck…in the sunshine! And the temperature at 8:00 a.m. was already 40 compared to 25 at my house.
The road to Blacktail Mountain takes off from MT Highway 93 in Lakeside, MT. The road is 12 miles from Hwy 93 to the top of the mountain. It is 35 mph max and much of it is 15-25 mph hairpin curves. The road has it’s excitement in the winter and that 12 miles takes at least 40 minutes.
As we ascended into the stratus…
Going up I had occasional glimpses of the stratus deck from above as we cleared that, but the driving demanded my full attention. The road is barely 2 lanes, narrowed by the plowing, and sometimes the wish for a much higher guardrail, or any guardrail at all was more prominent in my mind than the view.
But as we cleared the fog layer and came into the sun and the cloudless blue sky at the summit…
These photos do not begin to convey what it really looked and felt like. The high mountain peaks poked through the fog layer looking like islands in an ocean of soft cottony seas.
It was over 50 degrees. The sun was so bright and strong that I was too warm immediately. There were other people there – all of us smiling and laughing and enjoying the sunshine. The ski area is only open Wed-Sunday so I was able to walk out on the summit on this day.
I got Karl out of the Jeep and we walked around the parking area. His tongue was soon hanging out…too hot for a black dog with a heavy coat!
We started back down.
I have always said that this gloom that we sometimes get in winter does not bother me as I’m always out a lot. But, that sun, it was wonderful. And the indescribable beauty from the mountain top made me feel like I had been on a wonderful vacation.
The transition down was beautiful as well as a little sad – From the mountain top to the valley.
When the temperature is below freezing and there is fog, then we have freezing fog. We have it now. We are forecast to have it until late next week. Here is what it looks like…
No mountain tops, a haze of cold fog that freezes as ice crystals on some of the trees. I am not sure why some trees and not others, but I’m guessing that just like fog swirls around things, this freezing fog swirls also, hitting some trees and not others.
It hits the roads also and it hit my road. I was going to take Karl to the park by the lake and see what things looked like there, but after seeing my road I changed my mind and we walked here at home. And since the lake keeps things warmer around it, there might have been nothing to see…
Freezing fog or not, we walk and we play…
The soccer ball is close to being skinned. This particular ball was acquired in Ohio in Spring of 2006. Maybe we’ll spring for a new one THIS Spring!
Taken at 5:56 a.m. 1/16/2006
Canon S3 IS Manual Mode
ISO 100
F 7.1
Shutter 1/160
Focal length 72mm*
Continuous motor
Tripod
Image was cropped but otherwise is SOOC as is below which I added after the original post…nothing on the camera lens, some reflection I think causing the extra shadows. Above was image17 and below image22 – taken within 30-60 seconds of each other, just different camera settings.
ISO 100
F 5.0
Shutter 1/400
*I included this info but this is not 35mm equivalent…72mm on this camera is ??? – it has more “zoom” than the 17-85mm lens on my Rebel. That 17-85mm is equivalent to an 18-135 in 35mm. The “real” focal length on the smaller cameras – I don’t understand the equivalents myself yet.