Sol Duc Mountain Stream, Olympic National Park, Washington

Sol Duc Mountain Stream, Olympic National Park, Washington

Our first hike after arriving in Olympic National Park was towards the well known Sol Duc waterfall. The hike itself turned out to be much shorter than expected and with the extra time we had we spent a little more time exploring the area.

About half way to the falls we came across one particular mountain stream that particularly caught our attention. While not a huge stream, it was a busy cascade over mossy rocks quite a way up the hillside. After admiring it from the base of the small footbridge on the trail we climbed uphill a little further, maybe 100ft or so to this particular area which could just be seen from the base.

A waterfall seems to be best photographed with an either very short shutter speed, or a very long shutter speed, and I opted for the latter here. I used an ND400 filter to draw out the exposure 20 seconds to achieve the smooth look to the water. Colors appear as they did out of camera - this has been cropped, resized, and sharpened for web display, but otherwise been left untouched. The intense green color of the mossy rocks is even better in person.

Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@26mm | f/8 | 20s | Tripod

A very short video clip showing the cascade from the footbridge below can be seen here. The small section in the photo above appears near the top of what you can see in the video. This is just for an added bit of context, and the video itself is only about 10 seconds long.

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