big mosquito lake

Did a long ride on the bike yesterday: over 200 miles through Central Washington, alongside St. Helens and Adams. It was a satisfying day of riding, and after nearly a week of +90° weather, it was nice to get up into the mountains where it was cool.

There wasn’t a lot to shoot, and I was really just enjoying the riding. These are mostly roads and vistas that I’ve been exploring the past few years, and there’s a satisfying feeling when you’re on a great road that you’ve ridden a few times before. You can anticipate the turns and the straightaways with more confidence and dig in a bit deeper than you would when you’re first encountering a road. I don’t feel that I’m an aggressive, balls-out kind of rider–it’s not really about going fast for me–but I do like to work my bike, especially on a good road.

During the ride, I was thinking about locations I could travel to this fall and winter, when the conditions are a bit more photographically dramatic. I wasn’t expecting to find anything new, but I stumbled across this place towards the end of the day. I was wandering (a bit lost, if truth be told) on a Forest Service road, trying to find my way back to the Columbia, and I drove past a spur where I caught a glimpse of some open sky, water, and a brightly lit green glow coming from it.

I drove a mile or so beyond the spur, tossing the, “I should be getting home”/”That looked cool,” debate over in my mind. I ended up stopping, turning around, and then spent 20 minutes or so getting a few photos from a couple of angles. The sky wasn’t great (although there were some nice high, wispy clouds moving in), and I didn’t want to go trekking into the bush so late in the day, but the lake was beautiful, and those greens were just amazing.

+Brian Matiash, you have been warned; make sure you’ve got chains for the tires on that new car of yours…Big Mosquito Lake awaits us this winter.

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