graduated neutral density filter advice

Last weekend I took my camera gear my girl friend and my trusty Ford F150 drove to the top of Trap Line mountain, possibly one of the most beautiful places on this earth.
We arrived at the summit about 5000' just after noon after several hours traversing a steep narrow unmaintained logging road. You can stand on the summit and see snow covered mountain peaks for miles in every direction it's absoultly breathtaking. I found that in several of the pictures I took the mountains in the distance were over exposed. I'm sure a GND filter system would be the solution. I have zero experience with GND filters but would like to add them to my photo arsenal so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Looks like a stunning place. Very envious!

For GNDs I use the Lee system - picked it up from B&H and it's not badly priced. 4x6" resin filters are ~$100 and the foundation bits aren't too bad.

I use a 3-stop hard GND primarily and would probably start off there again as it seems to be a sweet spot for me as far as GND strength goes.

I had a look at Singh-Ray filters but my Lee filters give zero colour cast, are much cheaper and stand up to being dropped onto rocks several times (so far...) so I can't see any reason to spring for the more expensive ones. There are cheaper brands than Lee but I've seen several reports of colour casts so I avoided them.

Yes, definitely a job for gradient ND filters.

I recommend the Lee filters as well. They are excellent in every respect and outclass the cheaper brands by a significant margin.

You will need an adapter ring for your lens (preferably the wide angle type ring), a foundation kit (which is the actual filter holder), then the filters themselves. If you intend eventually to get 1, 2 and 3-stop filters in hard and soft gradients (recommended!) you can save some money buy buying a set of three at once. I also recommend the zip-up Lee filter case, which has soft pockets for up to ten filters.

As Jim has already said, the cheaper brands (Hitech, for example) can give an annoying colour cast, so I wouldn't recommend them unless you are on a really tight budget.

Mike

While a GND would work fairly well with an even skyline, I'd rather take two different exposures & then blend them to get the best from both.