Derek’s surprise proposal to Abby at Reflection Lake at Mt Rainier

In late July I received an email from Derek.  He lives in North Carolina, and he and his girlfriend Abby were coming out to Seattle in mid-August to start a vacation exploration of the West Coast.  Derek planned to do a surprise proposal to Abby at the beginning of their trip. Derek had done a bit of research online of Seattle area photographers and wanted to know if it was something I would be able to help him with.

But here is the thing.  Derek has never been to Seattle before and really was not sure exactly where to do the proposal.  But he had seen photos of Reflection Lake at Mt. Rainier and planned on going hiking there with Abby to start the trip, and thought that would be a cool place to do the proposal.  I love Mt. Rainier and thought it was a great idea, so we started to lay out the plans for the proposal.

The Setup

Because we were planning this out several weeks in advance we really did not know what the weather was going to do, but our hope was that since it is mid-August we should have nice weather.  There was a little wiggle-room in Derek and Abby’s trip timing, so we tentatively set the date for Thursday August 16 but left the option of changing to Friday August 17 if the forecast looked poor for Thursday.  Sure enough, when we were still a week out the forecast for the entire week was perfect, EXCEPT for Thursday.  Knowing how quickly forecasts change here I told Derek that we should wait as long as possible before making the decision on the date.  Derek agreed, and we decided to talk again when they got into town on Wednesday.

However, now the “wedding gods” decided to have a little fun with us.  As all Seattle residents know, we started to experience extremely hazy/smoky conditions around August 12, with bad forest fires in British Columbia sending lots of smoke south and making the visibility all over western Washington extremely poor.  When I checked the webcams at Mt Rainier on August 13, the visibility there was so bad that the mountain was hardly visible from cameras located only a couple of miles from the mountain!  I got in touch with Derek and explained what was going on, and that now the forecast was that Wednesday night and Thursday morning there might be some wind that would clear the air a bit, but there was no guarantee that we would even be able to see Mt Rainier from Reflection Lake on Thursday or Friday.  Derek was undaunted, and thought we should go with our original plan of doing the shoot on Thursday.

I was a bit nervous about what this might mean for the photos (hey, I’m a photographer, that’s what I’m always thinking about!) but agreed to the plan, and we then started to work out the logistics for meeting at the lake for the photos.  The big issue is that there is ZERO cell phone reception on Mt Rainier, meaning we needed to plan in advance when and where we would meet, and do it all in such a way that Abby wouldn’t guess what was happening until Derek pulled out the ring!  To complicate things further, it is a ~2.5 hour drive from Seattle to Reflection Lake, with the possibility of traffic slow downs, etc, that could make all of our plans worthless.  And without the ability to reach each other by text or phone, if something happened to either of us to delay our arrival we had no way to let the other know what had happened.

I decided that I would bring my wife Sue along to help with my “disguise” of just being a random photographer at the lake.  Because Reflection Lake is a very popular place for photos, having me set up and taking photos when Derek and Abby arrived would look completely normal, especially if I was taking photos of my wife.  After thinking about it a bit more, I told Derek that I would already be set up in the perfect spot to get Mt Rainier and the lake in the background, and when he spotted me he could come over and ask that I take some photos of him and Abby with their camera.  I’d set up my camera on a tripod to make it easier to recognize me (we had no idea how many others might be at the lake that day).  We set our planned time to meet at 11AM and we were ready to go!

The Proposal

Thursday morning when I left my house with Sue the weather was questionable at best.  Very gray skies, and low visibility.  But I hoped that we might get above some of the haze as we got closer to the mountain and gained altitude.  We left the house a teeny bit behind schedule, but traffic was light and I had no worries about arriving at Reflection Lake on time.  I texted Derek that we were on the way and off we went.

As we got closer to the mountain, rather than clearing up the weather got worse, with light rain when we were only 20 miles away.  But by the time we got to the entrance to Mt Rainier National Park the rain had ended and there were patches of blue sky overhead.  From the entrance of the park to Reflection Lake is a ~25 minutes drive with a pretty decent elevation gain, but as we wound our way up the side of the mountain we found that it was still quite difficult to actually see the mountain through the thick haze/smoke.  We arrived at Reflection Lake just before 11AM and I was a bit freaked out as I had planned to arrive 15-20 minutes earlier, so we quickly got my gear and moved down to the lake.  I did a quick reconnoiter of the shore of the lake to see if Derek had already arrived, but did not see him.  I got my camera set up on my tripod and proceeded to take some photos of Sue and the mountain, which was just barely visible through the haze. 🙁

Derek had given me a description of himself and Abby as well as what he would be wearing, and I soon spotted a couple that met their description.  They walked past me and Sue down the lake, taking in the scenery;  the man turned to look at me as they walked by and gave me a nod, so I was pretty sure this was Derek and Abby.  At this point I was approached by two young women wearing backpacks who wanted to know if I could take their photo using their phone.  They had been hiking their way around Mt Rainier for the last week, with another three days before they’d complete the loop.  I was happy to take their picture, and as I was doing so the couple I had seen a bit earlier came back our way, and asked if I would take their photo too.  The woman (who I was quite sure was Abby) gave me her GoPro and I put her and Derek into position to get their photos, just as Derek and I had planned.  After I had taken a few shots with the GoPro Derek asked if I would mind taking some photos with my camera as well, and at that point he began talking to Abby about why he had brought her here that day.

Either Abby is an Oscar caliber actress or Derek caught her completely by surprise!  He dropped on one knee as he talked to her, and then pulled a ring out of his pocket.  While this was going on my wife and the two hikers had found a vantage point sitting on some rocks right behind me and were watching the entire thing.  I was just clicking away, making sure I captured every moment.  After giving Abby the ring, Derek told her that he had hired me to be there to take photos and we all finally met each other.

After we all talked for awhile and finished congratulating Derek and Abby, I took the two of them on a walk along the lake so we could get a few more photos in some different spots.  The haze level was still really high, and while the mountain was visible it was not the imposing presence that it is on a clear day.  But we still got some good shots, and it was a lot of fun.

Looking back I am still amazed that everything worked out almost exactly as we planned.  We managed to find each other easily and even all got there on time!  The only thing that did not go quite as I would have liked was the visibility problem.  We managed to get some good photos even so, but (being someone who wants perfection) I really wanted to have the mountain sharp and clear so it would also give us a great reflection in the aptly named Reflection Lake.  I did manage to make the mountain a bit more visible through post-processing, and I think we got a lot of good photos.  Check them out below, and I hope you’ll leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Quick postscript – Here is something else that happened that I still can hardly believe.  As we were all talking and I was asking about where Derek and Abby live, another hiker happened by and heard part of the conversation.  Derek and Abby are from a town called Asheville, located in western North Carolina, and it turned out this man was also from Asheville!  Too weird that we would just happen to run into another park visitor at that exact time who happened to be from the same relatively small city located on the far side of the country.  If they had all been from New York it would have been one thing, but this was truly a crazy coincidence. 🙂