Pacific Northwest

Autumn Metlako

Metlako Falls, Eagle Creek Trail Columbia River Gorge, Oregon I’ve seen many photos of the Columbia River Gorge and it was high on my photography bucket-list. Willie, Alan, and Jave still laugh at how jealous (and how quickly I responded to their behind-the-scenes post) I was of their trip to Oregon in the spring. I asked Alan and Willie if they wanted to go back in the fall and off we went. I was in Portland a couple weeks earlier for a bachelor party and the fall colors were just starting to emerge; I figured a trip in a couple weeks would be perfect timing. Unfortunately recent rain and some weird weather caused the fall color to somewhat fizzle — we never really found a great abundance of color but we did manage to find little patches here and there. After exploring the Gorge for a bit we decided to head to the Eagle Falls Trail and visit a few more waterfalls. We came upon Metlako Falls and found a nice patch of orange leaves. I immediately setup my tripod, pulled out the 80-200 and proceeded to drop my lens hood into the gorge. I seem to have a habit of dropping things when in precarious places: I almost lost my Lee Filter Holder off the side of the Grand Canyon, I dropped a 2-stop filter off the edge of a wall at Hawk Hill and now I lost my lens hood. Oh well, at least it wasn’t my camera! The one nice thing about the rain was that the waterfalls were gushing very nicely. It was a great hike and we saw some beautiful scenes. I can’t wait to get back! P.S: Thanks to Alan I think I put on 20 pounds after this hike. We stopped at the local eatery and Alan somehow convinced me to eat an ice-cream that was taller than my head! And I downed most of it! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF: 100mm, f/9, 1/10 sec, ISO 400

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