Spent 4 days in the Otter Creek Wilderness and below are just some of the shots from that adventure. Being a wilderness means the land is set aside as a "Leave no Trace" with minimal modification other than signage, trails (though markers are discouraged) and maybe some maintained primitive camp sites. This allows the natural process to proceed uninterupted. Trees die, they fall and then they rot, producing an environment for life, both reptilian, and fungal. Ferns, berries, and Rhodo develop and over the course of time deposit an organic base feet thick in many places. Underneath a fractured and porous rock filters the plateau water carrying cedar tanins down the mountain giving the water that tea-like color. Giardia is nothing to fool around with, but when the cedar content is high, the liklihood for giardia is low.
What we thought was an old hunters set of trails actually turned out to be a hunter's set of trails as we met the hunter on this excursion. The first time in nearly 30+ years of visiting (only my second visitation personally, but others on the trip a lot longer) this site. The hunter comes up here to day hike often and somewhat maintain his trails by cutting back the growth keeping his pathways open through the Rhodo. We have sets of gps "tracks" in and out of this place so we can find it as the hunter does just enough so he can find his way which is a damn sight better than what we can do, so having the tracks helps a bundle.
Below are 3 grid collections: The first being fungal as I find it difficult to not stop and see what kind of images I can get from the low down perspective. These are all taken with my iPhone 16 Pro using the back lens. I honestly cannot see the screen when I click the shutter so I rely on the phone's ability to select the main subject and focus on that. It works.
The second collection are images from my Olympus EM5 Mark III with a 14-42 ED Pancake lens and processed in Lightroom and are mostly shots of the attendees on this trip. I won't name them here however for 2 of them this was their first camping trip ever, and for 1 it might be his first backpacking trip, but it might just be his first visit to this spot where his father's first visit was as a young man as well.
The third collection is also iPhone 16 Pro and include some shots from our excursions around the area, a visit to the open rock crag for some sun, and then the hike out.
