Welcome to John Carr Outdoors!
Please visit the blog and follow. The follow button can be found at the bottom of the page.
If you are seeing this on Facebook, click the link to visit the blog to see all of the photos.
Badger Creek Wilderness
At the Fifteenmile Forest Camp on the northern edge of the 44-square mile Badger Creek Wilderness, I was greeted with sunshine and warm temperatures.
The Trail steeply followed Fret Creek into an upper basin, reaching Oval Lake in two miles. This is a very pretty, small lake sitting underneath the cliffs forming the headwall between the Fifteenmile Creek Basin to the north and the Badger Creek Basin to the south.
Soon I met the Divide Trail and began heading west. At 6,000 feet I was clearly in an alpine environment with meadows, wildflowers and short alpine trees (mainly hemlock, but also whitebark pine, alpine fir and a few alpine spruce.)
Another pleasant mile and I was on top of 6,525-foot Lookout Mountain, the highest peak remaining of the old Cascade mountains, all much older than Mt. Hood.
Breaking out a snack, I was soon joined by a large number of beautiful butterflies. A short way into my hike back to the trailhead, I photographed a white butterfly. Thanks to Caitlin’s ID, the butterfly was a checkered white, the first recorded one in Hood River County.
A very nice day indeed.
Love the way the peak of Mt. Hood is obscured by the clouds. Do they do anything to prevent the wildfires from occurring?
Clouds covering the peaks of high mountains are fairly common, especially later in the day. From a photographer’s standpoint I like it. It provides a little more drama for the shot.