Mountain webcams can provide real time images of recent storm activity, snow cover, and sun/shade on different features at different times of the day. This info might help you make a decision of your preferred route and equipment, and give you another tool beyond an avalanche and weather forecast.

But, webcams are usually a static snapshot of the current time, you often can’t look at historical images, and finding reliable webcams can be hit or miss. 

Here’s a solution to all that. Portland-based geographic data wiz Ben Stabley has a streamlined website for viewing time lapse images of major mountains - mtcams.net.

His website works great on a mobile device as well as a desktop computer. You can see webcam images of Hood, Three Sisters, Rainier, Baker, Shasta, Whitney, Grand Teton, Mont Blanc, Fuji, and the Eiger. (Other major but more remote peaks are not included because they generally lack good quality webcams.)

The website is pretty intuitive, you can click around for a minute or so and figure it out. Here's a step-by-step.

• Choose the mountain you want to see.

• Choose “From” and “To” dates.

• Press “Load Photos”.

• This brings up three tabs, the middle one is “Time Lapse.” Choose from one frame per second up to 30 frames per second. You’ll then see a time lapse image of webcam photos of that peak for your chosen date period.

Notice that the webcam interval is different depending on the mountain. For example, the Mt. Hood camera grabs an image every five minutes, while the Mt. Fuji camera grabs one image per hour. So experiment with the “frame per second” option until you find a time lapse that looks helpful. 

It's also fun to go farther back in time rather than just the last few days. Wondering what the snowpack was like on Mt. Rainier in late July three years ago? You can do that. (Note: imagery starts in 2017, so nothing before that.)