Mount Shuksan from Picture Lake
— a mountain that arrives twice.
Not only on a wall.
“Picture Lake sits in the Heather Meadows above the Mount Baker Ski Area, at the end of State Route 542. The view across it is among the most photographed in North America: Mount Shuksan, the peak behind, doubled in the water on a still morning. The paved loop around the shoreline is short, the parking pullouts are right there, and the road only opens a few months of the year. In late September the blueberry and huckleberry leaves along the bank turn red, and the road closes for the season not long after.
Mount Shuksan from Picture Lake, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Picture Lake is a small tarn at about 4,200 feet in the Heather Meadows recreation area of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, in Whatcom County, Washington. It lies at the end of State Route 542, the Mount Baker Highway, roughly 56 miles east of Bellingham. The lake's claim is the view it gives across the water to Mount Shuksan, a 9,131-foot peak that stands inside North Cascades National Park to the southeast. A paved and boardwalk loop of about half a mile circles the shoreline, with the classic reflected view positioned on the southwest shore.
The reflection is a function of two things: the lake is small and shielded enough that wind catches it only lightly, and the prevailing morning calm in Heather Meadows leaves the surface still for the first few hours after sunrise. The water is dark, fed by snowmelt off the surrounding ridges, with little sediment to scatter the light. Mount Shuksan stands about four miles to the southeast across the divide, close enough that the doubled image holds the detail of the Hanging Glacier and the summit pyramid. Photographers traditionally work the southwest shore at first light, before any breeze picks up.
Picture Lake's window is short. The Mount Baker Highway is plowed past the ski area to Heather Meadows from roughly late June through October, depending on the snowpack. The upper road sits above 4,000 feet, and the area receives some of the heaviest annual snowfall in the contiguous United States, with the nearby Mount Baker Ski Area holding the world record for measured seasonal snowfall set in the 1998-1999 season at 1,140 inches. The September turn of the blueberry and huckleberry leaves along the shoreline is the photographic peak. By November the road closes past the ski area and the lake disappears under snow.