Graham Gephart Photography & Writing Blog

Last weekend brought beautiful weather for the gathering of all of our friends and family in Vermont for my sister and Jamal’s wedding. With blue skies and a perfect setting in Kingsland Bay State Park, we were able to fully celebrate their loving relationship and new family. I managed to capture a couple shots of them at the end of the evening with the sun setting, and thought I’d share here.

Congrats to Hannah and Jamal, and wishing you a long life of health, happiness, and love! We were so happy to be there, and are very proud of you both.

There will be so much more to post from this trip, but Lulu and I just wrapped up two weeks of travel and skiing through Europe for a well-deserved vacation after an action-packed year. To spend 13 of 14 days outside in the mountains was like feeling the layers of stress peel off, one at a time. All we wanted to do… explore European mountain towns, ski and climb until we couldn’t any more, and eat as much delicious food as possible.

Landing in Geneva, we set off on a week of skiing around the classic resorts of the Alps, in Chamonix, Verbier, and Zermatt, then moved eastward into Italy for a week of backcountry skiing in the Ortler Alps, all in the company of a rotating cast of friends that joined us for different sections.

So much more to come, so for now, the clouds at dusk playing on the rugged peaks above Chamonix…

Vermont winter has gotten off to a slow start this year. Early snows and cold temperatures got the bigger ski areas running around Thanksgiving, but there hasn’t been enough snow since to open much more. Smaller resorts like Mad River Glen, who have limited snowmaking and grooming, had to sit on the sidelines until the natural snow came to the Northeast.

There was just enough on the ground to make it a white Christmas, but the snow showers have been picking up for the last couple days. We spent a snowy day traveling to see friends in Waitsfield at the 1824 House Inn and then up to Burlington for a dinner party on Wednesday. It turned into a bit of an epic, with traffic on I89 slowing to stop and go for miles. Given the state of the roads, we spent the night in Burlington with the gracious hospitality of friends, and elected to drive home Thursday morning.

The blanket of new snow that coated the landscape was brilliantly illuminated with blue skies, bright sunshine, and crisp temperatures in the single digits. The rural Vermont towns looked resplendent on the way home, and we made a few stops in Warren and the Granville Gulf to snap some photos of the wintery landscape.

Fresh snow and ice coating Freeman Brook in Warren.

A single set of snowed-over footsteps leading up the stairs to the United Church of Warren, VT.

The Mad River flows peacefully through Warren Village, its banks scoured clean from the flooding of Hurricane Irene.

Snow showers from a couple maple trees in the Granville Gulf at Moss Glen Falls. Lulu spent a bit here Thursday morning photographing the sun streaming through the snowy trees.

It’s snowing again this morning, and the buzz is out that winter is here. Mad River opens today, and while we didn’t bring our ski gear with us this year, it feels a lot more like Christmas time in Rochester right now. Time to get outside for a breath of fresh, cold air.

While we’ve camped on the coast and explored a bit in the Olympic Mountains, we haven’t really seen any of the Hood Canal area, tucked on the Puget Sound side of the peninsula. So this past weekend, we roadtripped out from a gloomy forecast of rain and drizzle with friends Ben and Corey, riding the ferry across the Sound to Dosewallips State Park. With a reservation for one of the park’s three canvas-walled platform tents, the rainy forecast did little to discourage our “camping” plans. A quick tarp build later, and we had a veritable cabin in the outdoors, and an awesome fall weekend to spend it in.

The breakfast of champions – egg and cheese sandwiches, accompanied by oatmeal cookies with Nutella and bananas. In desperate times, we improvised a coffee filtering system with a bandana and our camping mugs. It also turns out that when you go camping in a platform tent, you don’t really bring any less than usual… in fact, likely more.

Fall in the PNW is rich, but in a different way from the foliage of New England. Wandering the back roads reminds me of VT’s orange/yellow/red maples lining dirt roads, but here the bit of yellow blends in with ten different kinds of green. It’s amazing that in the waning season of the Northwest that everything can look so brilliant. Maybe it’s the sudden contrast of a little yellow thrown in, or just that the shine of a little rain makes it all seep with richness. Either way, with hardly a bit of sun, it was still a stunning weekend in the forest.

Taller trees sporting their mossy sweaters, with thick ferns and soft benches in the undergrowth. Every inch is covered in plant life in the Olympics. While the Hoh Rainforest on the other side of the peninsula is better known for it, everything in the Dosewallips area was teeming with moss, ferns, you name it.

Lulu, Corey, and Ben admiring the old growth on the Maple Valley Trail.

A single bright tree shows a little reflection on an otherwise overcast morning on the Dosewallips River. It’s only a matter of time until winter starts to firm its grip!