Sunrise at Lower Robin Lake, Cascade Range, WA

(August 2008)

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be able to take my family on a 5-day backpacking trip to the Robin Lakes in the Cascade Range. Robin Lakes are accessed out of Tucquala Meadows, which is down a relatively long road out of Roslyn, WA. Departing Tucquala Meadows, the trail proceed for 2 miles to Hyas Lake, then past Hyas Lake about another 1.5 - 2 miles before starting an ascent over Deception Pass. After ascending for about 0.5 - 1 mile, the trail to Tuck Lake and Robin Lakes branches to the right off of the Deception Pass trail. Just after the junction with the Deception Pass trail, the trail to Tuck Lake decends briefly to a beautiful clear creek (fill your water bottles here!) before rising sharply over the next two miles to Tuck Lake. The climb is steep, and the trail is moderately well-maintained, but there are several spots where shorter hikers may need a bit of help getting up and over rocks (in several places, I had to use my hands to climb up and over rocks or grab onto roots to hoist myself up). I was carrying around 50-lbs, since I had a significant amount of camera gear, and extra food for the hungry hikers. Overall, the climb from Tucquala Meadows to Tuck Lake is around 2,000 feet. Past Tuck Lake, and following a bit of a scramble around the south side of the lake, the trail again rises steeply during the 1.7 mile ascent to Upper and Lower Robin Lakes, which are at an altitude of about 6200-feet, and about 900-feet above Tuck Lake (the climb, though, is at least 1200 vertical feet with some of the ups and downs.

This photo was taken with a Canon 40D (lighter than my 5D), a 17-40mm lens, at f/8.0, for 0.3 sec. using a Singh-Ray 2-stop grad ND (hard) filter to tone down the intensity of the sky and allow me to brighten the non-illuminated foreground. In retrospect, I wish I'd taken my Canon 5D, brought along my 24-70 f/2.8 as my primary lens, and perhaps even left my 135mm f/2.0 L lens home (I brought the 135mm on the 40D along with a 2x teleextender, to help me take pictures of mountain goats...in fact, I often found that even just the 135mm was too much telephoto, and I never used the teleextender the whole trip).

I'll post a few more photos in the weeks ahead, and will hopefully be able to grab some shots near Mt. Rainier this weekend or next, as the wildflowers appear to be peaking at 5,000 feet near Paradise right now.