Last week we announced that we'll be sharing images and stories from our friend and photographer Scott Rinckenbeger. I'm happy to say he just sent us the first installment, and it's pretty darn spectacular.

I'm a huge fan of his black-and-white work, but some situations demand color and this is definitely one of them. Shot on a recent overnight trip up on Washington's Mount Rainier, the image captures a rare glimpse of a sunset and a full moon rising in one singular environment. Not since Tatooine have sunsets been so globe-tacular.

Says Scott of the shot: "Snowboarder Rory Robison takes in the view from a rock outcrop near 10,000 feet on Mount Rainier's Ptarmigan Ridge on August 31, 2012. To the left is the sunset on the Mowich Glacier, to the right a blue moon (second full moon in a single month) rises over Curtis Ridge and the Carbon Glacier; the combined effect was rare and breathtaking."

After a spectacular night of camping under the full moon, Scott and Rory skied and snowboarded nearly 4,000 feet from the top of the Russell Glacier to the Flett Glacier and into Spray Park before hiking the remaining distance back to the Mowich Lake trailhead. 

The image is really spectacular large, which is unfortunately beyond the capabilities of our current blog (we're working on it!). However, you can see it larger on the REI Facebook page or on our newly updated REI Pinterest page. If you'd like to see additional images from this outing, Scott's got a great writeup on his blog.

A few technical details from Scott for the photographers among us: This image was composed from 12 original frames shot hand-held vertically and stitched together in Photoshop. It was shot with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 with a shutter speed of 1/160 an aperture of f/7.1 and ISO 200.

Enjoy!