The Other Pacific Northwest

After returning from a three week tour of the mountains, valleys, watersheds, and parts of the coast in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia I was trying to find a common thread to a part of our lands I haven't visited since 1980.
Looking at my photographs, and remembering the moments that geographically stand out I found that water became the binding element. Perhaps coming from a drought stricken dry environment where I live the enormity of the rivers, the lakes, the glaciers, the controlled waterways, and all they provide struck me.
We followed great rivers, the Columbia to its source in Canada, the Kootenay past places with mystical names like Valhalla, crossing mirror smooth Lake Chelan, along the 100 mile Arrow Lakes, past unreal blue Crater Lake. Up the McKenzie and Yakima, the Okanogati. Water everywhere. This abundance of water provides for great swaths of agriculture, apples in the Okanogan, corn in Chelan,  wheat in the Palouse, berries, and rich, deep forests of fir, spruce, redwood, pines, ferns.
These rivers are fed by wild glaciers high up in the mountains of British Columbia, the Purcell Range, the Kootenays, the Nelson Range, Selkirks, the Bugaboos. Hidden places with black and grizzly bears, mountain goats, moose and eagles and osprey and horseflies the size of hummingbirds.  Places where the only way to see them is on foot.
In an attempt to understand where I've been I take photographs, maybe to document the days, but mostly to share the incredible places I experienced. Our idea was to see the offbeat places, the quiet zones. I can only hope that these images portray in some small way the beauty of the territory.

Be sure to open these photos on a large screen if you can, enjoy.
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It takes a 30 minute ferry trip to cross Upper Arrow Lake on the Columbia River, British Columbia

First evening, rain near Mt. Shasta California

Crater Lake, Oregon

Apple boxes, Chelan Washington

August wildflowers, Rossland, British Columbia

Rossland, B.C.

Morning in Nelson, B.C.

Gimli Peak, Valhalla Provincial Park, B.C.

Horsefly and Mountain Goat, Valhalla Park

Mulvey Lakes cirque below Mt. Asgard, B.C.

Northwest Face of Gimli Peak

The Slocan River section of the Columbia

Slocan Lake at Silverton, B.C.

Ferry crossing, Galena Bay

Shelter Bay along the Columbia

A small tributary in Jumbo Valley, B.C.

Forest, Jumbo Valley, B.C.

Hanging Glacier, Redtop Mountain, B.C.

Jumbo Pass Trail

Cauldron Mountain and glacier.

That's about eight miles away.

Mt. Lady MacBeth and Mt. MacBeth.

Glacial melt, a great campsite

Sunset in B.C.

The Palouse, wheat and open roads, Eastern Washington

Farmstead, The Palouse, Washington

Railway on the Washington side of the Columbia River

Hood River, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Umbrella Falls, Mt. Hood, Oregon

Nightime on Newport Harbor, Oregon

South Beach, Newport, Oregon

Bandon Harbor, Southern Oregon

Bigfoot at night, Prarie Creek Redwood State Park