Mountain Laurel?

[Ridge70]

Have the mountain laurel begun to bloom yet?

[Old Girl Scout]

No, not blooming yet. Lots of small buds, pink and white. Today I walked on High Peter's Kill trail. Mine was the only car in the parking lot! Amazing, for a Saturday at noon, in May. The weather report kept everyone away. On a three hour hike, it rained (hard) only once for about 10 minutes. Not a problem. The air smells wonderful, and the greens are greener after it rains.

[Ridge70]

great...i won't be heading up there for another week or so. i remember last year i caught them just in time around the 20th of june and some of the laurel were past bloom. so, i want to catch them in their prime. got a lot of nice pics last year though. aside from fall, it's another spectacular and beautiful time to be up there. then again, ANY time is great up there!

[gunx]

I went out to Castle Point today from the upper Minnewaska parking area. The laurel are not out yet but they will be amazing this year. The honeysuckle are in rare form, we could smell clusters of them from ~30-40 feet away. A pic from today can be seen by entering the following into your browsers url:
doubleyew doubleyew doubleyew dot jmd.org/castle/DSC03649.JPG

HA

[Ridge70]

great...i hope the upcoming hot weather isn't too much for the blossoms.

[Old Girl Scout]

Today I hiked a piece on the Appalachian Trail in Dutchess County, to Nuclear Lake. (I call it New Clear Lake.) Lots of Mountain Laurel there. Still buds. Next weekend it will probably be in full bloom, at Minnewaska too.

[gunx]

I took a short hike around the lower Trapps cliff area yesterday. The laurel that get a lot of sun during the day are fully open. The shady areas have not yet opened.

[Mark Schaefer]

I hiked at the Mohonk Resort and Preserve on Thursday, June 12. The laurel is in great abundance and showing very nicely.

Here is a photo taken along the Lake Shore Path. You can click on the image to enter a photo album which has several other laurel pictures along with some views.

[Ridge70]

I hiked at the Mohonk Resort and Preserve on Thursday, June 12. The laurel is in great abundance and showing very nicely.

Here is a photo taken along the Lake Shore Path. You can click on the image to enter a photo album which has several other laurel pictures along with some views.

great pics. thanks for sharing. guess i need to get myself up there within the next week while the blossoms are still fresh. do you mind me asking what kind of camera you're using?

[Mark Schaefer]

great pics. thanks for sharing. guess i need to get myself up there within the next week while the blossoms are still fresh. do you mind me asking what kind of camera you're using?

My camera is a Canon XTi. It is a digital SLR with a 1.6x crop factor which means that a 50mm lens on this dSLR camera would be the equivalent of a 80mm lens on a 35mm camera. Most of the pictures including all the laurel shots were taken with the 18-55mm "kit kens" that I purchased with the camera as part of a "packaged price" offering. Other photos were taken with a 10-22mm and 70-210mm lenses.

The nice thing about dSLR cameras is that you can increase the ISO (ASA) settings with very little loss of quality. Point and shoot cameras experience loss of quality with high ISO settings. All of the laurel shots were shot at ISO 1600 so that I could stop the lens down to f/16 and hand hold the exposure. I was not carrying a tripod on the hike. All of the other photos in the album were shot at ISO 100.

Canon recently released an upgraded version of the XTi camera called XSi.