Superior Hiking Trail from June 2010

I think it would be pretty safe to say that the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) that runs along Lake Superior is by far the best backpacking in Minnesota. In a single day you can hike through fir trees and hardwoods, scramble up and down steep, rocky sections past waterfalls and lakes in the closest things we have to mountains in Minnesota (if you look on the map there is an actual mountain range that the trail runs through called the Sawtooth Mountains)
This last summer I managed to get a few days off from work and needing a break from people (I had just started a job running a cash register at a gas station) I thought it would be cool to head over to the SHT for four days. It had also been raining for about a week straight so I was jonesing to get outdoors. I got a bit of a late start the day I left, making it to the trail head at about 3pm leaving me about 5 hours to make it the 8 miles to the campsite that I wanted. I thought it would be an easy task even stopping to take photos. Everything started off great too, I was close enough to this deer to get a shot with the 16-85mm lens that I had with me.

I tend to go really light on the camera gear when I do trips like this, not just backpacking but times when photography isn't the primary objective of the trip. This trip all I brought with was a Nikon D60 with a Nikon 16-85mm lens (will be reviewing this lens in a future post)

Then things started going a little sideways, mutant two headed flowers,

leading to skull shaped lichens.

This was one of the last dry spots on the trail for the next few miles. It had been kind of muddy up to this point but it started to get a lot worse really quick.

This is what the rest of the day looked like for me, slogging through ankle deep mud and standing water. I tried to carefully pick my way through this stuff but in most places it was too brushy to get off trail and even when you could it was just about as bad as staying on the trail.

Or there were the places like this section of trail that was a solid wall of poison ivy on either side of the trail.

By the time I made it to the site that I wanted to spend the night at it was already taken leaving me 3 more miles to go before the next site in the rapidly setting sun. It took almost two hours to make it there, finally arriving after it had gotten dark. I was stumbling the whole way there because the light was making it tough to see the contour of the muck, that is one area LED headlamps kind of suck, they cast such a flat light that it seems to throw off my depth perception.

I did get to try out a new piece of gear on this trip though, I had just gotten a GoLite Shangri-La tarp tent and thought this would be a good trip to test it on. And for the most part it was great, cut my pack weight down a lot and didn't take up a lot of space but since everything was so muddy and this didn't have a floor my sleeping pad ended up getting really dirty (not a huge deal breaker, just kind of hard on it) The biggest issue I had is that this sets up with trekking poles, which I have but rarely use so I would have been better off with a dedicated set of poles for it, which I am looking into DIY options.
Since the trail wasn't getting any better I decided the next morning to just head back to the car the way I came in and use the extra time to work on projects at home rather then punishing myself for a couple more days. On my way out I ran into a group of young guys that told me they were going to try doing the whole trail (200+ miles) in six days. I told them about the conditions ahead and wished them luck, I would have liked to know how for they made it in those six days.

Watching the sunset after another long day on the Superior Hiking Trail but that is a story for another time.

A day at Echo Cliff

The best part of this whole social media craze that we are in the midst of is that I have been able to use various sites to not only make contact with people all over the country but also to be able to meet up with them during my travels. A few years back I came across Tamara Hastie and after swapping emails every now and then we were finally in the same state together, not only that we were able to get together for a day of climbing at a place called Echo Cliff which is kind of in the Malibu area.

The guidebook that I had for this place gave me great directions on how to get there but it also said that the 45 minute approach was relatively flat and it was for the first half hour then it turned kind of epic. Lots of scrambling down a step wet chute, it even got so steep that I took off my pack and had to lower it down a few steps. But it was worth the effort to get down there.

Everyone trying to keep warm between burns, when the sun dropped behind the hills on the other side of the canyon it got cold really quick. On top of it all we lost the sun at a little before 3pm.
This is the ladder that we had to use to get to the end of the cliff band.
And to get back out.

The Gerber L.S.T.

One thing I haven't really delved into much on this blog is the gear side of things which is odd since when it comes to outdoor gear I am a huge gear junky. I have like 4-5 various tents, easily a half dozen stoves and almost as many cook sets the list goes on. The single most important piece of gear in my humble opinion is a good knife. Over the years I have collected lots of knives, from little folding key chain knives to fixed blade hunting knives. Each has their place but for the last two years my go to knife has been the Gerber L.S.T. Its a simple, extremely light, folding knife that holds a great edge. I carry it with me on a daily basis but it's also the only knife I carry when I go backpacking. I know a lot of people swear by the Swiss Army or multi-tool set ups but I like the simplicity of this knife, it's also a fraction of the price of those other ones. I have seen them go for about $16-25 depending on where you're at, I got mine for $20. I only have one gripe with it and thats just that I wish it had another half of an inch on the blade, as it sits now it is just short of being able to cut all the way through a summer sausage.

Gerber LST Drop Point Fine Edge has a 2.63 in. Stainless steel Drop Point blade. Black Zytel handle. Overall length is 6.13 in.

Lightweight synthetic handle

Tactile texturing on handle

Lock-back design

Limited Lifetime Warranty

Overall Length: 6.1"

Length Closed: 3.61"

Length of Blade: 2.63"

Weight: 1.2 oz.

Blade Material: 420HC Stainless Steel

Handle Material: Glass-filled nylon

Blade Style: Drop Point

Blade Type: Fine

Joshua Tree in Black and White

Another landscape from Joshua Tree.

Nikon D300

16-85mm

Day two at Stoney Point

I had a chance to shoot with Laura Griffiths and Dan Goodwin when they came to LA for the holiday. We spent an afternoon at Stoney Point and without a guide book for the area we just jumped on cool looking problems and got some great images from it.

Running with Justine

Went back out to Stoney Point with Justine here and shot some photos, this was my favorite of the running images. I prefocused and shot at f11 so I could have a greater depth of field but then bumped up the ISO to 800 so I could still get 1/1000 of a second for shutter speed.

Stoney Point climbing

Today I went to Stoney Point for a climbing clinic through REI, made for a great way to get out and explore the area a bit. Everything we did was pretty easy the hardest route being about 5.10 but it was perfect for my reintroduction to outdoor climbing since it had been a year and a half since the last time I roped up outdoors.

After the clinic disbanded I made my way down to the main bouldering area which was just swarming with climbers. Not sure of what any of the problems are here but there was something for everyone.
This problem got a lot of people lined up to get on it and at one point a big hold broke off and it promptly saw a new first ascent.
And a lot of falls.

The nice thing about Stoney Point is that its about 20 minutes from my house so I am gonna try making it there as much as possible I figure I might as well gorge myself on as much rock as I can before I have to head back to the frozen tundra of Minnesota.

Joshua Tree

I made it out to Joshua Tree National park on thursday for a photo shoot, most of which isn't related to this blog but I did manage to snag this one while I was waiting for the model to change. I will be hitting Jtree up a few more times before heading back to Minnesota so this is just a taste.

What I've been up to.

Since I've been out here in Cali I have only really managed to explore the neighborhood a little bit. With the speed at which this all came together I didn't really have a lot of time to find people to get out and about with so I have been spending most of my days down at the local Starbucks trying to line up photo shoots. This statue is a pretty famous guy from what I understand he's been in several movies and I have to walk past him on my way to Starbucks to use their WiFi.

I lined up a couple shoots down at Zuma Beach in Malibu, CA and while waiting for models to show up I took advantage of the dramatic sky.
Back home seagulls have never really interested me as a subject but here with large flocks of them they can provide plenty of cool images.

All images done with a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 70-200. There will be more to come soon, going to Joshua Tree tomorrow and climbing at Stoney Point on Sunday.

This was a surprise

Greetings from Los Angeles! This has been a very bizare five days to say the least. I have never been a fan of big cities and now here I am in one of the largest cities in the country. But other then dealing with the traffic I'm looking forward to my time here. Back home in Minnesota I would be getting ready for deer season and the typical bitter cold of winter but instead I am just down the road from some classic crags such as Stoney Point, two hours from the climbing meca that is Joshua Tree or the classic roadtrip to Vegas for climbing. Right now my biggest hurdle is just finding people to climb with. I am here for the next two months so stay tuned for more stories and plenty of photos.