Mount Rainier From the West

by Connie Fox

Title

Mount Rainier From the West

Artist

Connie Fox

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Photograph - Outdoor Color Photo

Description

The active volcano Mount Rainier (elevation 14,410 feet) appears nearly hidden in the clouds above a drought-parched desolate meadow west of Mount Rainier National Park. Shot in late August 2012 on a day-trip on the Mount Rainier Scenic Railway, which departs from the tiny town of Elbe, Washington, U.S.A. The entire state was enduring a severe drought, and my intent was to capture how the drought had affected the land. Pretty bleak.

I am embarrassed to admit this, but I thought I was just photographing a meadow. Worse, I was disappointed that I never saw Mount Rainier on the entire train trip. But when I returned home and processed the pictures, I saw that the mountain was in my viewfinder after all. It just did not look as I expected, for I had never seen a picture of Mount Rainier from the west.

As Ron Warfield explains in his beautiful book, Mount Rainier National Park, on the western side the classic cone shape is truncated into three separate peaks: Liberty Cap, Columbia Crest, and Point Success. The broad Puyallup Glacier, he writes, occupies a cirque beneath Sunset Ampitheater, a huge bow-shaped scar left by the Round Pass and Electron debris flows.

If you study this image, you will find those three peaks, as well as the glacier. And perhaps you will be reminded, as I was, that just beyond a parched meadow can be THE mountain (as it is known throughout the region) and some important life-lessons.

Copyright 2012 Connie Steitz Fox
All Rights Reserved.
Nikon D80

Featured in Beauty Captured, November 2013. Featured on the homepage of the ABC Group - V IS FOR VISTA themed week- September 23- September 30, 2019, and Women Photographers, October 2019.

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October 27th, 2012

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