Going back to Utah

Kendra on G2-07 (V8) in Joe's ValleyKendra on Big Joe (V7) in Joe's Valley Utah.

Today finds me getting ready for a trip coming up in a few days to Moab Utah with a group of college students from BSU for a week of climbing, hiking and mountain biking. Its kind of funny though that at this exact time last year I was getting ready to go on a another trip to Utah. That time was to the world class bouldering destination of Joe's Valley which turned out to be a bit of an adventure.

The trip started off after I had spent the day competing in a dart tournament that my team actually won. By the time that was finished and I was on the road with my friend Patrick and his brother the driving conditions were horrible, for at least six hours we drove through a snowstorm. After that though the rest of the drive was pretty smooth. Once at Joe's Valley we had to find the unmarked, unofficial campground at the Man Sized boulder area in the dark and then set up camp without disturbing everyone else. The biggest issue I dealt with was I brought the wrong sleeping bag with me for the conditions that we ended up with. I had packed for more of a dessert condition, not realizing that we would still be in the mountains on top of which we found out that Utah had gotten the biggest snow pack they had seen in 27 years.

Sunrise, first morning in Joe's

A Myspace friend of mine, Kendra, showed up at the end of day 2 and things went pretty smooth until we came back to camp one day to find that the wind had mangled one of our tents. Turns out though that was a blessing cause I then moved into the car for the next couple nights and was finally able to get some decent sleep.

The only other problem we dealt with on the trip was the drive home ended up being just as brutal as the drive out. Once we got into Wyoming we got hit with an ice storm that slowed us was down. Now I really didn't get all the images I would have liked to for a magazine story I learned a lot on that trip about what it is going to take to become a pro adventure photographer and I am hoping to put those things to use one the upcoming trip to Moab.

Moab images.

Finally getting around to posting images from the Moab trip that I went on with the Bemidji State OPC. Over all it was a decent trip, kind of hard not to have fun in a place like Moab. Climbing within minutes of town, the entrance to Arches National Park is in town, world class mountain biking is all over the place, there were cave drawings in our campsite and I got to shoot photos of it.

I did have a couple of rough night though, on the first night camping I got a leak in my sleeping pad but it didn't really get bad till the second night. Which has to be the single worst night I have ever spent in a tent. The pad was flat in about 45 minutes and I don't have any insulation in the bottom of my bag so it got damn cold. But the pictures made it all worth wild!

This is somewhere in Colorado when we stopped for gas.

Cave drawings in the parking lot of our campground.

Moonrise from camp.
Dave trying to tame the stove to make dinner.

Casey playing guitar in camp.

Another moon shot from camp. This one though I broke out the 10.5mm fisheye to get the shot.

Of course I had to break out the strobes to play around a little bit. I had one camera left zoomed to 105mm and pointed at the bike, then there was a second SB-800 sitting in the mouth of the tent to light me and the inside of the tent.

Rachel and Adam during the day of mountain biking. For this one I used my 12-24 mm Nikon at 12 mm.

This is one of my favorite shots from the trip, its the Morning Glory Arch. I used the fisheye again and took two different exposures, one for the highlight and the other for the shadow and then combined them in photoshop. I am really getting to like this whole HDR thing. I was thinking about HDR (high dynamic range) yesterday, about how this is nothing new. HDR is basically the same thing as Ansel Adams' Zone System only much easier. Don't get me wrong you still have to pre-visualize what you want. But instead of having to precisely meter, then process the film to either tame or punch up the contrast and then spent hours in the darkroom dodging and burning to get the final result, now you just bracket, slap everything together in Photoshop and your done. There is a little more to it then that but now is not the time to get into it.

And now for something completely different.

This post is going to step away from the photography aspect of this blog and get into some of the gear testing. My favorite piece of outdoor gear is the stove and over the years I have acquired five of them and even made one. The two that I have found that have been working great for me are the MSR Pocket Rocket (top) and the White Box alcohol stove (bottom). Both have their pros and cons so lets start with the MSR.

Pros:

-No preheating, once on the canister you just light it and its good to go.

-Will boil 2 cups of water in my Titan Kettle in less then 4 minutes.

-Has flame control, it doesn't have to run at full blast all the time.

-Flame is more concentrated so you don't heat up the wire handles of the Titan Kettle.

-Weighs in at 3 ounces for just the stove itself.

Cons:

-Takes the canisters that you can't just pick up at any hardware store or gas station. Also you can't tell how much fuel you have left.

-When the canister is empty you still have to carry it with you and you have to make sure to puncture it before you can recycle it.

The White Box alcohol stove

Pros:

-The stove is made from recycled aluminum bottles.

-Stove, windscreen and base weigh less then 3 ounces.

-Can boil 2 cups of water in the Titan in about 5 minutes with only 1 ounce of fuel.

-Whisper quiet (which is also kind of a con if your trying to use it in bright light since you can't see the flame).

-Uses denatured alcohol or even HEET (yellow bottle) which can be found at any hardware store or gas station.

-Can store the fuel in something as simple as a pop bottle so you can see how much fuel you have left and when empty it doesn't weight hardly anything.

Cons:

-No simmer control, its pretty much full blast.

-With the original size stove the flames come out around the edge of the Titan which makes the wire handles get too hot to handle. They have since came out with a smaller solo model that is designed to work with the smaller pots.

-Even though the stove is very stable you have to make sure you don't tip it over since the fuel isn't really contained.

On a side note, it doesn't do much good to have a stove without a pot to put on it and I have as many cook-sets as I do stoves. My go to set-up for the last two years has been an MSR Blacklite which I can't even find on MSRs website anymore. They probably discontinued it since they had always had a problem with the nonstick coating flaking off. I never had a problem with it since I never use metal utensils when I am camping. This system came with two pots that nest together, a lid, pot lifter and a wash cloth sized camp towel. Making it the choice when I go out with a group. When I am going solo you'll find the MSR (titanium) Titan Kettle. Works great as a pot, mug or bowl. The biggest complaint I have heard about this pot (aside from price, titanium isn't cheap) is that the lid fits too tight. It does fit tight, to the point where it is best to just set the lid on top when cooking, otherwise you have to grab hold of the pot itself to get the lid off.

I just find this funny.

Last year when I was in Joe's Valley the group I was with did all of our food shopping at the Food Ranch in Orangeville which also serves as the towns sporting goods store. Being a gear junky I had to check to see if they had any climbing stuff and I found this little gem. I love to see small towns like this do stuff to help out the climbers when there are plenty of other places that look down on us. I just find it funny that they chose to package the chalk they sell.

One of my favorite places.

The whole point of this blog is to share my stories and photos from my travels so I figure it probably wouldn't hurt to tell a few stories from over the years and not just concentrate on the new stuff. A theme you will start to pick up on in my tales is that the conditions are never optimal, I am of the firm opinion that the more miserable the conditions the better the story is.

One such trip was my first trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota for three days of bouldering with three buddies. We decided to leave about 5 pm on friday and drive through the night since there were four of us to handle the driving. At about 3 am I am driving through Rapid City, SD Jake is navigating and keeping me awake. All of the stop lights are flashing yellow so I am just taking it slow. Out of no where Jake tells me to turn left so I make the turn from the left lane instead of the turning lane since no one was around or so I thought. As soon as I made the turn lights went on behind us, I had failed to see the two different cop cars that were laying in wait. Come to find out that even though the lights were flashing yellow I missed that the turn light was red. Leigh who was in the back seat had woken up by this point which is good since I was driving his car. We told the cops where we came from, where we were going and that we were looking for a place to get off the road and get some food. Luckily the only thing the cop gave me was directions to an all night truck stop. After breakfast we hit the road again an hour later we had made it to Hill City, SD and to Sylvan Lake State Park just in time to scramble to the top of a cliff to catch the sunrise. We climbed till around 2 pm and headed off to set up camp. Once the tents were up it started to rain, hiding out in the tent it wasn't long before the night of no sleep caught up to me, I was out. The next two days were a blur of cold October days and nights but the sending was perfect, I even managed my first 5.10 lead, course none of us knew what the grades were guesses were as close as we had. The last night there we decided to get a room which proved to be a smart idea. It got so cold that night that the LCD screen in my DVD player I brought with froze, now it only plays in black and white.

Two years later I made it back with my friend Aaron. I had planned a big project for that trip, I had about eight people lined up to go but about a week before everyone bailed out except for Aaron so we went anyway. This time around was in May so the weather was great but Aaron ended up coming down with the stomach bug his kids had when we left. But even that didn't stop him from sending V7s with ease. In all the years I have been climbing Aaron is probably the most talented climber I have ever seen, great blend of movement and power. The best part of the 2006 trip was meeting a climber by the name of Peter Lev. He used to guide for Exum and was now retired. He did a slideshow the night we met him, all of the images and stories were about his exploits in the Himalayas and other far flung destinations on government sponsored trips in the 60's and 70's. Back when we had to beat the Russians when ever we could. He told Aaron and me about a climb he did in Minnesota where they used a the steering column of his VW bus as an anchor to repel to the bottom of the cliff.

This guys name is Luke, met him on the 2006 trip with Aaron.
Aaron 2006

Aaron in 2006

Aaron 2004

Jake on a possible first ascent 2004

Bouldering right in camp.

Aaron

Leigh warming up before a climb.

Long overdue.

This is an image I had in mind now for close to two years. I drove past it almost everyday and usually when the light was great I didn't have a camera and when I did have a camera I was on my way some where else. Then a big pile of railroad ties were placed in front of everything until about a month ago. Today on my way home from another shoot, the light was nice and I had the time so I pulled over and got the image I had been wanting for two years in about two minutes.

Landscape images from the Tetons.

Now don't get me wrong, Yellowstone is a cool place to visit and its probably a lot better if you venture off the main roads. But this time around I spent most of my days while in Yellowstone driving around looking for wildlife. Once I got to the Grand Teton National Park I was feeling much more inspired to shoot landscapes and I think I got a handful of cool ones.

Enjoy.

More animals from my Yellowstone and Teton trip.

On my recent trip to the Yellowstone/Teton area to shoot photos the animals didn't seem to want to cooperate. Saw a lot of buffalo but as subjects they don't really do a whole lot for me. One conclusion I have have come to is that some of the best wildlife photos can be found right in camp or within a hundred yards of the ranger station. Well here are the rest of the selects from the wildlife images, enjoy.

All images shot with a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 200-400mm f/4 except the Mule Deer fawn that lens was a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

Panoramics can go vertical also

This is a shot from my time in the Tetons at the beginning of September. I stitched together 8 shots to get this one, at its full size the dimensions are 12x50 inches at 300 dpi.

More to come.