by Steve Eshom on January 25, 2012
Most of the snow from the January 15th snow storm fell west of Bingen. The result was I spent the day west of Bingen too! Snow in the gorge has been pretty sparse lately so I wanted to take advantage. Most of the morning I hung out around North Bonneville photographing Amtrak, several BNSF westbounds, and two eastbound UP trains. The gorge is pretty narrow and cluttered with trees around North Bonneville. I knew I wanted a wider view to demonstrate what the snow looked like so after lunch I drove to Dog Mountain to wait for an eastbound.
Since it was Monday maintenance was out in full force so I took a quick trip to Underwood during a lull to see what the White Salmon River looks like after the Condit Dam breach. I’ve read many people’s complaints about how the breach has ruined one of the best salmon fishing locations in the Gorge. I will agree that the river is choked with muck but since the October 26, 2010 breach we really haven’t had any high water. Once we have a few heavy rains it appears a river channel will reappear there. Now, what will happen with the back water areas? Good question. I’m sure mother nature will show us.
I arrived back a Dog Mountain about the same time and eastbound stack train was going through Stevenson. Perfect. I climbed the hill and gathered in the photo I was looking for.
by Steve Eshom on January 18, 2012
Aaron and I will be making some behind the scenes changes to dogcaught.com over the next week. The result is you may experience some outages or unusual responses. Don’t worry everything will be as it was and we’ll get back to our normal content.
As a teaser here’s a photo I took on Monday while I visited the Columbia River Gorge. We received a bit of snow down to the river level on Sunday so I ran out Monday to take advantage. This image is the DPU of a west bound grain train crossing Cascade Dr. in North Bonneville, Wa.
by Steve Eshom on December 23, 2011
Merry Christmas to all the dogcaught readers! I hope your holiday season is filled with all the things you enjoy.
Last January I was on Stevens Pass (Washington) enjoying my annual winter railfanning adventure. Like normal I was up early and on the road looking for that first railroad photograph of the day. My travelling companions, Robert Scott and Scott Lothes agreed we’d have a pretty good opportunity east of the pass to get a morning photo of Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Off the highway and down a recently plowed forest service road we went to a gap in the mountains called “The Slot”. Cautiously walking up the icy road to this location I set up for an 8 second exposure that would capture the lights from the passenger train streaking by in the very low pre-dawn light. The result is one of my favorite images from 2011.
by Steve Eshom on July 7, 2011
The Northwest experienced some late snows and unusually cool temperatures (not cold temperatures) this spring. The result is snow remains in the mountains in places it usually disappears from in May. As part of my Pengra Pass adventure I wanted to hang around tunnel 6 (North Cruzatte) a bit. That wasn’t going to happen this time unless I hiked in thanks to a 2′ deep drift blocking the forest road to the tunnel. Sure I had 4 wheel drive and a shovel but I really didn’t want to spend the time clearing the road. Plus a bit of hiking showed me that the drift right off FR 5884 was not the only battle I’d have to fight.
In this photograph of brand new UMAX containers on the I-PDCIR (Portland, City of Industry Repo train) at South Cruzatte the snow still shows through the trees on Judd Mountain. What you can’t see is all other drifts tucked around under the trees. There’s plenty of melting yet to come in the Cascades.
This will be my last post on the Oregon Cascades for a bit. On to Providence Hill….
by Steve Eshom on February 1, 2011
Sunday out near Camas it was clear from the trees that we still have some more winter to go. I shouldn’t complain because there are others in the country who have it much worse. In fact I’m sure the folks on the train from the mid-west were happy to see our mild Northwest winter.
