This trip was an astrophotography bonanza.
Davis Peak sits just north of the intersection of the Cle Elum and Waptus Rivers, about a mile-and-a-half past where state highway 903 ends at the Salmon la Sac campground in central Washington. The 20%-grade trail switchbacks straight up the southern ridgeline for four miles before leveling out at the foundation of an old fire lookout. A short distance to the west lies a craggy central summit, past which progress can only be made by scrambling. I embarked on an overnight to take advantage of the new moon for astrophotography and to (hopefully) get in a few miles of off-trail ridge walking on my way up to Goat Mountain to the north.
After gaining the central summit I left the day hikers behind, following a boot path south to a notch and descending scree towards a tarn on a shelf overlooking Lake Terence. After a brief water refill I ended up trying and failing to descend the steep bowl to the lake directly, which was fortunate because travel via the western shore was blocked by a just-out-of-sight cliff.
To the west was an impassable ridge and to the east the only slightly less impassable northern summit of Davis Peak. I ended up heading northeastward and upward, navigating a series of short, unpleasant scrambles up gulleys overlooking the lake before finally reaching the ridge north of the northern summit.
From here it was smooth sailing until I reached the meadow where, due to exhaustion, I decided to skip Goat Mountain, set up the tent, and dig in for some astrophotography.
Dreading going back down the way I came, a bit of searching the next day revealed a much safer alternate route that skirted the tops of the scree slopes along the western side of the north and central summits, depositing me back at the initial notch.
Goals
- Test out my new Exped FlexMat Plus foam sleeping pad ✔️
- Summit Davis Peak ✔️
- Summit Goat Mountain ❌
- Do some scrambling ✔️
- Take some amazing photos ✔️
- Get in shape ✔️
- Don’t die ✔️
What I Learned
I’ll often trot out the rhyme “If trees can grow there you can go there” as an aid during route finding, the idea being that if there’s enough soil to sustain decent-sized trees then the area has a solid chance of being passable. I’d like to add “If rocks can sit there you can get there” to the mix since a large portion of the effort on this trip was traversing across scree slopes. Small rockslides aside, the steppy nature and maximum angle of repose of 40 degrees of granite boulders actually makes them surprisingly good avenues for travel rather than obstacles to be avoided.
Scanning the satellite map for tarns saved my bacon on this trip. There was no water at all heading up Davis (the solid-blue “permanent” stream crossed just below the summit was nowhere to be found) and also no water anywhere along the ridge north to Goat – or so the topo map said. In fact there was a decent-sized tarn just west of the central summit and then another larger tarn with a very nice outflow just east of the meadow where I intended to camp, both of which were only visible on the satellite layer. Without these possibilities I would have planned to camp on the edge of Lake Terence (accessed by descending down an iffy ridge) and completely missed out on the views and astrophotography opportunities afforded by the meadow.
I burned myself on the flames that lick up the side of my pot while trying to wiggle it out of my Caldera Cone. Takeaway: first lift the pot and cone together to blow out the flame, then set them back down before attempting to separate them.
Gear
LighterPack:
https://lighterpack.com/r/b6buof
What Worked
My Oboz Sawtooth Lows were champs! It feels so good to finally be off the trail runner wagon and back onto the tried and true. For serious off-trail scrambling I need more structure than what the Oboz Aretes can provide. I did notice that my feet were a lot warmer (or maybe it was just the weather) which is just that much more motivation to stick to my hourly break routine.
I love my Zpacks foam sit pad. It’s been my trusty companion for well over a year and has done a hell of a job keeping my butt comfortable while I wait for some thing or other to heat up or cool down.
Gossamer Gear has been out of their Lightrek pack bungee attachments for ages. I originally purchased two of them sometime last year and over the course of time managed to misplace them both. Fed up with waiting for a re-up I spent a whopping 15 minutes poking around the cabin and managed to re-locate them both. They’re indispensable for attaching doodads such as ice axes or tripods to your pack. I wish I had three or four more but two are better than none.
Speaking of tripods, the astro pics say more than words ever could about just how amazing the Manfrotto Pixi Evo is. I left my camera on top of a boulder overlooking a huge drop into a lake bowl all night long in gusts strong enough to make the tent fabric flap and the little guy was still there in the morning.
The elusive six-inch Easton nano nail stakes are absolutely incredible. I was camping on soft ground (looked like a recently dried-up snow patch) and despite sliding into the soil with relative ease I had a hell of a time pulling them out in the morning. My intuition is that much like a regular nail the amount of material displaced by the shaft causes a large amount of pressure to build up along the sides, holding the nail in place. Contrast this to, say, an MSR groundhog which displaces almost no dirt whatsoever. Love the Eastons.
Mosquitoes, finally! Not that that’s a good thing but I was starting to wonder if something had killed them all off. Ben’s InvisiNet let me enjoy the evening in peace.
I spent several hours hopping around on rocks while my head was comfortably protected by my Petzl Sirocco helmet. At a gravity-defying 178 grams it brings ultralight to scrambling’s doorstep. Great piece of gear, great peace of mind.
Finally, my custom 20F Enigma was perfectly comfortable despite the lows hovering around 50F or so (at least per the forecast, I didn’t have my thermometer on me). I’d been concerned that I’d need to purchase a dedicated summer quilt due to overheating so this was a reassuring data point. I do recall having it pulled down over my waist earlier in the evening but used the whole thing as the night got on.
What Didn’t
The Exped FlexMat Plus was a big letdown. The claimed thickness of 1.5 inches is achieved by using an exaggerated egg carton shape, resulting in uncomfortably spiky protrusions. This made it difficult to position myself comfortably on the mat and my arms started to fall asleep multiple times due to the pressure applied by the spikes. Frustration-free sleep is a hallmark of my backpacking style, I won’t be using this mat again.
The insoles in my Oboz Sawtooth Lows finally gave out, one by having the surface fabric delaminate and slide out of place, the other by wearing through the surface fabric under the heel.
My DryMax socks finally wore through! I’ll have to put together an exact calculation but I’d bet on 300-400 miles per pair.
On the way in Gaia GPS performed admirably as usual. On the way back, however, it went completely nuts while I was standing next to a massive wall, “hunting” constantly for several minutes without ever converging on a location. I’m assuming this was what’s known as a “multipath” signal caused by the radio waves reflecting off of mountains or other obstructions. On the way in it wasn’t an issue presumably because I was recording a track and thus keeping the receiver active the entire time whereas on the return trip I was only pulling it out occasionally to double-check my location. In other words, the lack of context from the cold-start meant the app couldn’t overcome the noise from the reflections. I only mention this not because it impacted the trip in any way but because it’s the first time I can recall this happening and it’s an interesting failure mode.
What’s Next
The search for a summer-weight sleeping pad continues. Although… I’m wondering if I could get away with wrapping my ProLite Apex burrito-style inside my Thinlight, cinching it down with a strap, and then storing it sideways under the lid of my pack? It isn’t the weight that bothers me so much but rather the volume – having the sleeping pad outside the main compartment easily gives me enough room for food for a week-long trip.
Need to all pull loops to the nano nails. Not sure how I missed this before but when they’re in there, they’re in there, and a pull loop tilts the odds in your favor.
I’ve already ordered and received two pairs of DryMax replacement socks (and a sweet DryMax hat!) as well as a brand-spanking-new pair of Oboz Sawtooth II Lows. Can’t wait to take them for a spin!
Route
Gaia folder:
https://www.gaiagps.com/public/gAvOUBQmF8bBi4133G556CkR
Stats:
- Distance: 15 miles
- Elevation: 5,000 feet
Photography
SmugMug gallery:
https://turigrinos.smugmug.com/Adventures/2020/Davis-Peak/
Let’s start out with my first attempt at star trails:
I created this image by taking 279 exposures 10 seconds apart and then blending them together using StarStaX. Of course, it doesn’t understand Fuji’s raw format so I had to download Fuji’s own raw file converter to change them to TIFFs before processing. Passing airplanes and satellites left a combination of ugly streaks and bright red trails across the image so I had to hand-edit them out of a close to 100 frames. Unfortunately neither StarStaX nor Luminar support median merge so this was the only way to rescue the resulting composite. Once down to a single image I turned up the exposure to make the divide between horizon and sky obvious and bumped the saturation just a bit to bring out a bit more color in the stars (although they were already quite colorful to begin with.
Composition-wise this is pretty lousy as far as star trails go. First of all, I didn’t even get the north star in the frame! I remember getting out my compass and pointing the camera north but did not take into account the insanely high angle of the northern star above the horizon. Since a wider angle lens is out of the question for cost and weight reasons, I’ll just have to remind myself to get much, much closer to whatever it is I want the stars to be above. Second, the foreground is just a dark blob along the bottom of the shot, which is another way of saying that there’s no foreground at all. Still, I’m ecstatic with the results, especially for a first attempt.
A bit more reading online recommends bringing a spare battery (which makes sense since the camera died pretty quickly), light-painting the foreground, and timing the individual exposures so that they’re properly exposed rather than trying to bump up against the maximum stars-as-points exposure time for your particular camera system (between 6 and 13 seconds for mine). Better merging software to save hours of hand-cramping editing probably wouldn’t hurt either.
My original motivation for upgrading to an APS-C system was for better nighttime performance over my excessively noisy Micro Four-Thirds sensor, and I chose Fuji due to the sane control layout as compared to Sony. I also recently switched to an 18mm pancake prime which weighs less than a third of my old 16mm monster. However, I also had to give up some viewing angle and light as the 16mm is an f/1.4 whereas the 18mm is “only” f/2. Through both changes the question lingered: will I be able to take the kinds of Milky Way shots that I’ve always dreamed of taking?
Apparently: yes.
I don’t need any more camera than this.
Process-wise, this is a combination of a 13-second exposure for the sky (the maximum I can go without the stars getting too smudgy) and a 45-second exposure for the ground. Now, my camera only has a 30-second maximum timer length so I had to switch to bulb mode and hold the button down by hand which is a shake-introducing no-no. Only afterwards did I realize that I could have just blended together two 30-second exposures.
I try to plan my trip schedule around either new or full moons, meteor showers and comets don’t really register with me. However, there was a lot of hubbub around the comet in the office so I thought I’d give it a whirl. This is just a single exposure of around 10 seconds with a little bit of lightening on Mount Daniel to bring out just a hint of snow.
Even an HDR blend of +/- 2 stops isn’t enough to capture the huge dynamic range on sunrises: this picture originally had a washed-out sky and decent ground. Drastically lowering the exposure in the sky brought out these beautiful colors, slightly surpassing the in-person intensity.
Last and also least (of the ones worth talking about), this is a tight crop of the sun setting on the ridge above Waptus Lake with Mount Daniel on the right. Nailed the starburst but the rest of the photo is meh.