Undisclosed new climbing area in the Eastern Sierra's

This past weekend I got invited to Bishop, CA to go climbing with my friends Matt and Tamara and I couldn't pass up an excuse to get out of LA. Saturday was a pretty typical day at major bouldering area. By 10am the place was swarming with climbers. We spent most of our time on the fringe of the main area where everyone was at since we weren't really digging the crowd. Matt kept talking about how we should go to a place that they that knew about it the next day were we wouldn't see another climber all day. A new climbing area that they were some of the few to know about it, that sounded like my kind of place.

When we got together Sunday morning I jumped in their van for the ride out the the boulders and it wasn't till we got half way out there that I realized I was riding in the back of a van with blacked out windows on my way to a somewhat secret area and that kind of added to the excitement. When we got there you could see some of the boulders around the parking area had chalk on them but as we headed up the canyon we were walking past 10-15 ft tall boulders that were completely untouched. Every time we would see something that looked really cool Matt kept pushing for us to continue on to the top where he thought the climbing would be even better, this went on for at least an hour till we reached an area I would like to call "The Rock Garden" where the landings were flat and sandy and the boulders were tall.

This was one of the first things that caught our attention in "The Rock Garden" area, when we first saw it I would have guessed it to be about 20ft tall but when we got closer it was more in the realm of 40ft. While it is visually cool it didn't look like there was much for climbing on it.
Now this boulder on the other hand was dubbed the "Heller" boulder by Tamara since I had been the one to point it out when we first entered the Garden area. There are at least 5 problems on this one boulder and Matt is sending the first one in this image.
Matt on top of the "Heller" boulder which sits in the middle of the Garden area and comes in at around 20ft tall.
Tamara working on a project in an area we called "Easter Island". From what Matt and Tamara told me the rock here is a lot like what you would find in Hueco Tanks but everything here needs a lot of cleaning since about 98% of the area has never been climbed.
This is the "Easter Island" area, we named it that since the boulders were all kind of leaning the same way and kind of shaped like the heads on Easter Island, its kind of hard to tell in this photo though.

Out of all of my climbing adventures I have had over the years this one I think will stand out the most since it was the first time I had ever been to such a virgin area. I am really looking forward to making it back out here with Tamara and Matt to work on establishing this area.

For another take on this adventure check out Tamara Hastie's blog

Mountain Biking

I shot this on a popular riding area in Los Angeles. Shot with a Nikon D300 and a 10.5mm fisheye.

The Drainpipe

My favorite area of Minnesota is easily the North Shore area with all of the state parks, rivers, waterfalls and the Superior Hiking Trail. The image below is of the Drainpipe, which is a small section of the Superior Hiking Trail and it can be found in Tettegouche State Park. I shot it fall of 2009 on a quick backpacking trip. I don't know for sure but I am guessing that it got it name because this is the main run off for water after a rain from the top of this ridge. It might not look like it here but it gets really steep really quick almost to the point of a 4th class scramble.
Shot with a D300 and a Nikon 18-35mm.

Glacier Sunset

Glacier National Park is probably my favorite park that I've been to so far. It's where I first got into photography, I went back there several times while I was in photography school and then there was one more time a few years back. It's that last trip where I got this image, it is pretty common to have overcast skies for days on end and this image was taken at the end of about three overcast days in a row.
I saw that the clouds were breaking up a little bit on the way back to camp on the Going to the Sun road so I pulled over the first place I got just as the peaks on the other side of the lake were lighting up. I had about 5 minutes to get the shot before the light disappeared. I used a Nikon N80 film body with a Nikon 80-400 racked out to 400mm, a 2 stop graduated ND filter and Fuji Velvia 50.

Hit a mile stone

In the last few days I have hit 1,000 views of this blog half of which came in just the last month. Leaving me to believe that there is something to this Adventure Bum idea of mine. Personally I think people want to read stories about an average Joe's adventures though you couldn't tell by reading most of the major magazines.
I am still currently in SoCal and planning a couple big trips yet, places like Death Valley, Bishop and a couple more trips to Joshua Tree. So stay tuned and lets see how fast I can get to 2,000 hits.

Mount Rainier

I came to the conclusion that you can't take a trip to the Seattle area without shooting at least one photo of Mount Rainier. This was actually shot from the parking lot of an REI.

About two months ago I decided that I wanted to climb this peak. I've never been all that interested in this type of climbing, it always seemed like a lot of work for the pay off. But the more I read about Rainier the more I am interested in climbing it.

This again was captured with a Nikon D300 with a 16-85mm racked out to 85mm and handheld.

A day in Seattle

This last weekend I caught a flight up to Seattle to spend a few days with my oldest friend and his family that I hadn't seen in about a year and a half. Other then a day of golf, which was only my third time playing, the only thing we got out to do was explore Pikes Place Market. It's the place where the throw fish to each other at one of the bigger seafood stalls. The rest of the trip was spent telling stories, catching up and heavy drinking. But here are my favorite shots from the market.






Everything was shot with a Nikon D300 and a 16-85mm, handheld and processed in Adobe Lightroom 3. Enjoy