Snow Shoeing + Light Painting & Totally Missed The Once In A Lifetime Blood Moon @ Snoqualmie Pass | Washington

It’s everything everybody is talking about, social media, coffee shop, streets, everywhere, it’s the blood moon, everybody is talking about the blood moon. So to catch this sort of once in a lifetime nature event, a group of us went up to Snoqualmie Pass in hope of catching the event with our camera. We knew the risk that we might not be able to witness it because of snow in the forecast, but we did it anyway. So we bring our snowshoes and our camera gear and drive up to Snoqualmie Pass to try our luck.

Getting our snowshoe and gear ready to hike up the pass, its snowing, so we kind of know our chances to see the blood moon is next to none, but we do have other activity we can do up here, plus snowshoeing itself is enough reason to get out here.

Snowshoe ready, and we are ready to go! This snowshoe hasn’t been tested in an actual hike since I get it, snowfield with no elevation only, so we will see how it does, but I am very confident that it will do just fine.

Sign on a tree on our way to our destination, we are at the Alpine Lake Wilderness area.

I forgot to hit my tracker until midway of the hike, the tracker shows that we stop at about 3,724 feet. Considering I started tracking late, we actually gain about 800 feet on this hike, and mostly double that calories burn. Snowshoeing is one good exercise.

By the time we get up there, it is still snowing heavily and the sky is completely covered. The hope of photographing the blood moon is all but crushed. No miracle. But fear not, the guys have other fun stuff in mind, so light painting it is!

This is the first time I have ever done light painting, it’s a lot of fun!!! Well, being with some very funny people add to that, all wise jokes that were cracked and thrown around throughout the night filled the winter forest with uncontrollable laughter. Well, that could be due to oxygen deprivation as well …

As for photographing the light, although it is my first time, there’s no worries, I am with some light painter veterans here, they know all the settings by heart, and they are not shy to share, and through some trial and error, I got some interesting result, nothing to brag about, but I thought they were very cool~

This one here is pretty wild!!! I was amazed by how it came out, I mean when I see our excellent light dancer walking towards me with light sticks in creative and graceful motion, I can never imagine what will come out of it, so I was seriously awe-struck when I saw what I have got on the LCD screen.

We took turn to be the light dancer for the camera, I didn’t that night, I was too comfy and enjoy my self too much through the whole process that I just want to be a participant. Our light dancers try different motion, different speed, different direction and of course, Star Wars tune was hum throughout the night. this is just way too fun.

Please hum along as you go through these photos, dum dum dum, dum da dum, dum da dum~

It’s too bad that this one got block by a tree, otherwise it would have been a perfect drag, like a Chinese dragon gliding through the snowy forest.

Other than light painting, our gang also have other fun things in mind. It’s fire spinning!!! while I did not do any spinning, our fire God Ken show off all his power and might by creating some awesome fire moves and light up the forest!!! All hail Ken the Fire God!!!

Photographing fire spinning is also a first for me, I was impressed as hell with what I got, it doesn’t look much when Ken do the spinning, but the result on the photo sure tell a very different story!!!

We spent some good hours up in the mountain until we … urm … got bored. So we hike down. By the time we got down, Snoqualmie Pass is completely quiet and there’s literally no other people in sight except us, a couple gigantic snow plowers and some far and between cars. I always like Snoqualmie Pass this way, quiet and peaceful, it’s a very unique and exclusive feeling I have for this place.

I did track our return from the start this time, snowshoeing down is definitely faster and easier on the body, but still a pretty good workout, I should do this more often as my belly is more apparent by the day~

Guess what, we did saw the moon eclipse after all, just a tiny little bit of it, the last bit of it, the end of it all, on our way down from the mountain, when we have already put all our gears away.

The moon shows itself just enough to laugh at us loser who miss this once in a lifetime event, while everybody else in the Pacific Norwest saw it, and will surely slap out face with their awesome high-definition-clear-sky-blood-moon photos the next day.

Even though the moon is not kind to us, but hey, it did show right? We have to at least get some photos of it right? So we scramble and take out our camera and shoot what we can, high ISO, hand held.

The photo is nothing to write home, but it sure is a useable memento for years to come.

My gang on the way to the parking lot after a whole night snowshoeing and chasing that elusive blood moon. Well, elusive only to us, apparantly, lol~

Anyhow, I love this photo, it is so lonely and tired and isolates, the exact feeling I have at the moment I am walking this road. I will try this in black and white and see how it feels.

Well, we didn’t get what we come here for, but we still have a nice night snowshoeing and having fun with light painting and fire spinning. Any chances to get out to nature is an opportunity I do not want to miss. Hope we will go up again soon~

-Lumaca-