fstopandsee

An empty pier at night. Clear, cold and serene. In the summer this would be a very busy place, but this time of year even the water is frozen and still.

The hike to Round Top starts by going through a wooded area. You eventually break out to where you can finally see the top of the peak, your destination for the day, off in the distance. From this point it felt pretty far away but we all knew it would be worth it! I really like the way the trail and string of skiers extends out toward the peak, reaching out for it.

I had a great weekend. I spent one day back country skiing on a peak called Round Top in the Sierras with a great group of friends. I spent the next day skiing at a resort. There wasn’t much new snow which is uncharacteristic for this time of year around here, but the hike, view and overall experience were amazing. This was one of my favorite views from the hike. It was taken from the top of Round Top just before we began our descent. The true Kirkwood fans out there will recognize the backside of the resort in the right third of the image.

Not today anyway. The snow was too good where I was without hiking to go for these lines, but they sure did look pretty from down below.

This is my lucky 200th post! Why is it lucky? It is because if I’m lucky, by posting a picture of snow for such a milestone for my blog, I will get more snow in Tahoe! Happy 200th post to me!

This was taken on one of those amazing days at Squaw Valley. The cloud level kept rising and falling. Sometimes we were in the clouds, sometimes they were just above us and everything seemed perfectly clear.

Every year the city of Sapporo in Japan hosts one of the country’s largest winter events, the Sapporo Snow Festival. This attracts visitors from around the world to check out the many snow and ice sculptures. The best view of the event is from what is simply called the TV Tower. Personally I think it looks like a mini Eiffel Tower. I’ll admit that Mini Eiffel Tower would be an even worse name than TV Tower, so I’ll stick with the official name. This was also my first time travelling with an SLR! Even as I was learning the ropes I was excited to have the city and mountains as a backdrop to the display of snow and lights!

I’ve been having a little bit of split personality between summer and winter posts recently, but such is my life. I’ve learned to live with it and I hope you can too! I’ve also shown this lighthouse before, but I like this particular angle too. It was a calm cool morning and the lake was very still. It almost made me forget that my fingers were freezing as I took this!

This small tree was trying to grow out of a huge piece of granite. It looks like it will have a pretty hard life ahead of it. The sky was overcast and snowy, allowing me to shoot straight into the sun and still capture the scene.

This is a typical view in the area I grew up of a snowy barn in winter. I have to admit it is a sight that I miss every once in awhile!

This old barn covered in snow on the side of the road was not in the best of shape, but that was just fine with me as I really liked the way it looked. I caught this just at the right time of day to get some shadows of the trees on the silo.