Misty Mountain Morning

The day started out strange.  The weatherman was calling for freezing fog.  I was almost to the top of the mountain and emergency vehicles had the road blocked.  Not ice — somebody had tried to dodge a deer and went off the road.  They must have gone way off.  After I had backed up and found a place to turn around, I went back down the hill a little and parked at the trailhead to wait for the road to clear.  That's when the second wrecker went by.  I decided I'd walk up the mountain.

Did I mention the ice fog?  It wasn't that cold — 33ºF/1Cº — but the wind was howling.  And the trail is on the north side of the mountain.  It's really dark at 5 AM. So I started out freezing but by the half-mile mark I was warming up and by the one-mile mark I was taking breaks just so I wouldn't sweat.  There aren't a lot of pictures to take in a forest when it's dark.

Anyway, I got to the top and you couldn't see a 100 yards.  Freezing fog was starting to turn the branches of the trees white but with the wind blowing so hard I couldn't get the shutter speed I needed to stop their motion.  (I gave up after I noticed I was up to ISO 10,000 to get 1/60th of a second.)

That's when my friend (the walker) showed up and I decided to hike back down the hill with him to see if I could get warm again.  We got to the bottom of the hill and I could see my truck when my friend piped up, "Look, there's steam coming off the creek."  I was so close.

It turns out it wasn't that bad down on the creek.  It was out of the wind.  And the mist added a nice touch.

Cold Spring Creek just off the Bankhead Trail in Monte Sano State Park, Huntsville, Alabama.

Nikon D7200 — Nikon 18-300mm F6.3 ED VR

57mm

F8@1.6 seconds

Polarizer

ISO 100

(DOL_6887)

©Don Brown 2022