Colorado (Part 1) + News

I have meant to get a new post up for ages, but graduate school has kept me quite busy. This weekend Scott and I went to visit his parents, which generally means some pleasantly lazy days. Today is no exception, and I am taking advantage of the gloomy, cold day by sitting in a big comfy chair while a fire roars in the fireplace next to me; perfect blogging conditions if you ask me.

Before I get into the images, I wanted to announce some rather exciting news (which is somewhat old news at this point unfortunately). A few months back I finally got a website up and running. I had put it off and put it off because I am too indecisive and couldn’t decide on formatting/organization, but finally bit the bullet and put one together. I am still adding images to build galleries and things may shift around some more, but it is up for your viewing pleasure (I hope). There is perhaps a bit of bad news to go along with this update though. In order to keep things more organized and unified I am going to be switching my blog over to be connected to my website, so soon I will no long be posting here. You can head over there (abigailithompson.com) to follow along though, and I hope you all do!

With that out of the way, let’s get on to the images. Back in the middle of October (almost a month ago at this point, yikes) Scott and I went out to Colorado for a long weekend of climbing, hiking, camping, and a wedding thrown in as well. It was an incredible weekend, and as I slowly got around to editing the images I found myself feeling homesick for a place I have never lived.

This will be a two-part post, so more images will be up soon! Also, don’t forget to head over to the new website and follow along the blog there. There is even a post of moments of light up there that I didn’t post here, so head over to check it out. Happy weekend everyone!

Spring Break Day 6

Day 6 of our trip was, unfortunately, our last day full day in Arizona. We decided to try to pack in as much climbing and adventuring as possible, which resulted in a huge overload of photographs (meaning this will be a long post). We started the day climbing in the Prison Camp area again, since there were still a few routes there that we wanted to do in that area. After climbing until we were exhausted we drove higher up the mountain to catch the sunset. Unfortunately I foolishly deleted images on my SD card before I transferred them to my computer, so almost all of the sunset images are gone. If anyone has any miracles to recover files from a formatted SD card I would love to hear them!

Spring Break Day 4

Day 4 started as a nice, lazy day. We had camped the night before, and after waking up just lounged around the campsite for a while; we drank coffee, ate what little food we had left for breakfast, and enjoyed the sun. Eventually we got rolling, and drove up a bit further into the mountains to climb at a new spot. Scott and Ben were pretty exhausted from the day before, but decided to climb anyways. Unfortunately, the route ended up being not as easy as expected, and so they had to bail and leave it unfinished. As I result, I didn’t get many pictures that day, so this will be a short post.

Spring Break Day 3

This post will need a bit of background, so I am going to quickly go back to January of this year. At the beginning of January (January 2nd to be exact) I had surgery on my elbow to fix nerve damage there. I had injured it while climbing last spring, and essentially had a pinched nerve for about 8 months. The surgery moved the nerve from the outside of my elbow, where it typically sits, to the inside of my elbow where it is more protected and freed from being pinched.

The day of surgery, shortly after I arrived home.

Since surgery I have obviously been in recovery mode. After lots of physical therapy I felt like I was finally getting back to normal (somewhat at least). I had just started climbing again about a week before our trip, and even though I knew I would have to be extra careful while in Arizona I was still fully expecting to climb almost every day. However, Tuesday morning of our trip (day 3), I woke up in extreme pain. I thought I was taking it easy climbing wise, with only 2 easy routes both days, and yet I could hardly make a fist my arm hurt so bad. The guys were wanting to do a multi-pitch (essentially climbing a route longer than one rope length) on Tuesday, and with the state of my arm I knew I had to take the day off. I went to the base of the climb with them, and hung out in a hammock and read while they were off climbing above me. I shot around a little bit, with my Polaroid and digital camera, but because of the position of the route I wasn’t able to get many shots (or any good ones really) of them climbing.

And the Polaroids. All of these were shot on my SX-70 with Impossible Project film.

 

Spring Break Day 2

Day two (Monday) of our spring break was spent in the Prison Camp area again. We still had quite a few routes in that area that we wanted to try, so after cooking breakfast and making a quick run back to Tucson to get some more supplies, we hiked in and climbed for the afternoon. I don’t think this place could get old to me. I also shot some Polaroids here, but will share all those in one post once I get them scanned in.

 

Happy Sunday everyone!

Spring Break Day 1

Last week was our spring break here at Kansas State. Scott, our friend Ben, and I flew down to Arizona for a week of climbing, camping, and sunshine. I, of course, took a ton of photographs, and will share them based on the day that they were shot to avoid an incredibly long post.

We flew into Phoenix late Saturday night, and after picking up our rental car drove to Scott’s sister’s house in Tucson. We crashed there that night, and then Sunday woke up to get supplies and head into the mountains for a few days of camping and climbing. We camped at the Prison Camp area (Gordon Hirabayashi Campground) in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The great thing about the Prison Camp campground is that there is a ton of climbing just a short hike down from the campsites. It is a beautiful area in a little canyon with a cool view of the city in the distance. Enjoy day one, and be on the lookout for day 2 soon!

Finding Winter in Kanopolis State Park

A few weeks ago I was sent a jacket from Mountain Hardwear with the mission of exploring/adventuring in it (findingwinter.com). Unfortunately I got the jacket right when school started, so I wasn’t able to take a very epic trip. And, the weekend Scott and I were able to go on a trip happened to be around 60 degrees during the day, so it wasn’t exactly your typical idea of winter.

We went out to Kanopolis State Park, which is about an hour and a half west of Manhattan, KS. Scott has been there before, and thought there could be some potential climbing that we wanted to scope out. I was also excited for the weekend in part because I had rented a lens to take with, to give me some variety in images for the trip, and also to test it before purchasing. We got to the park Saturday afternoon, set up camp, and went out hiking. It was a beautiful hike, and I was pretty surprised to find such a landscape in Kansas. The sun was getting fairly low on our hike, and down in the canyon without the sun on us it got a bit cool. I was impressed by the Mountain Hardwear jacket; it was warm, but breathed well and didn’t get too warm when we were in the sun. After hiking for a while we went back to our campsite, started a fire, and made a delicious (and warm) dinner. It was a pretty windy, chilly night, but once again I was impressed at how well the jacket blocked the wind; that was one of my favorite features. It is also a great layering jacket; flattering to the figure yet lots of room for warmer layers underneath, so with a synthetic down on as well I was nice and warm. In the morning the wind had calmed down some and the sun was out, so after a quick breakfast we went for another hike before packing up to head back to Manhattan.

I also played around with some time lapse stuff on our trip, but that will have to be posted to youtube/vimeo once I get it edited and pieced together. I will be sure to post a link once it is done, I’m pretty excited about it!

Christmas in Tucson

**Prepare yourself, this will be a long post.**

This Christmas I went along with Scott (the boyfriend) and his parents to visit his sister and her family in Tucson, Arizona. It was my first Christmas away from home, which I was a bit nervous about. But, his family was so very welcoming, the scenery was beautiful, and we managed to climb nearly every day; needless to say I was sufficiently distracted from being homesick for most of the week.

During the early part of the week any trips into the mountains (the Catalina Mountains to be exact) were fairly quick, or were filled with climbing or climbing instruction. I didn’t even bring my camera with me onmany of those adventures, so a fair amount of these images are from my phone (just a little disclaimer).

The trip down to Arizona was quite the adventure since we got caught in a major snow storm. We knew it was a two day trip, but got stuck in Dalhart, Texas, which was not even close to where we had planned on spending the night. This image was from when we were stuck in traffic in Dalhart, before we heard it would be at least 4 hours before we would start moving again. Luckily we made the decision to stay in Dalhart fairly early and were able to find a hotel room, and one that was rather nice and clean for that matter.

Our first day there we hired a climbing instructor for half the day to show us some multi-pitch and trad climbing techniques. It was an incredible day and we both learned so much.

Christmas Eve was a rather busy day, but we managed to fit in a quick hike early in the day to scope things out, and later a quick climb before the sun set.

Christmas day was probably the most memorable day of climbing I have every had. Most of the day was spent with Scott’s 2 nephews and brother-in-law teaching the boys how to climb. Once they headed home for the day, Scott and I stayed to climb a pinnacle that we had been eyeing since our first trip into the mountains. Luckily there was a woman there with her kids who had climbed the same route before, so she helped us much sure we were on the right line. We were climbing right near sunset, so the light was rich and golden. It was magical I tell you.

Scott on the top of the pinnacle, preparing to rappel down.

The rock was glowing.

Together, post-climb, in the magical light.

Our last day in Tucson was entirely dedicated to climbing. We went out to this amazing canyon that seemed to have endless climbing just in the one area. We also talked to quite a few local climbers there, and I was blown away by how tightly knit the climbing community in Tucson is. It was a fantastic end to the week.

Thanks for sticking around for the whole post, hopefully you enjoyed it!

Colorado in October

I am so very behind on sharing things here. My old computer was struggling to edit photographs and share them as well. It was a pain to do and so I just avoided it. But, I recently purchased a beautiful new laptop, one that is powerful and fast, and so I am getting back on track with all my images finally.

In October, Scott and I went to Colorado to hear one of our climbing idols speak. We also made some time for climbing and camping in the mountains. It was a quick trip, but we had wonderful weather and were able to see some beautiful things.

Our first day was spent climbing in the Clear Creak Canyon, near Golden, Colorado. It was a stunning area, maybe even one of my favorites that we have climbed in. That night we camped in Guanella Pass, which is just past Georgetown, Colorado. We were the only ones camping out there (that we saw), and were able to find a stunningly beautiful and quite campsite in the subalpine forest. Our campsite was around 11,000 feet in elevation, which I felt the effects of when we woke up the next morning. There was snow on the ground, and the creek near by had lots of ice formed over it. It was a cold night for camping, but one of the most memorable ones for me.

 

The next day we woke up and tried to keep warm with tea and eggs and sausage. We had plans to try to hike Mt. Bierstadt (a 14,000 foot peak just up the pass) but when we woke up I was feeling the effects of the elevation (loss of appetite, headache), and we decided we just didn’t have the time or the provisions to do so. We ended up driving to the parking lot for the trail to the peak and explored some of the shorter trails from the same parking lot. After taking some photographs we went back to pack up our campsite, and I wandered around shooting some more in the frosty, late-morning light.

Scott, excited about being in the alpine air. Mt. Bierstadt is behind him.

Scott grabbed this one of me; I think it sums up my personality pretty well 🙂

The double exposure series of my feet continues.

Colorado in July (Part 2)

Welcome back! Hopefully you all didn’t get bored with the first post since there are still more images to share. These are my favorite images of the trip, so in my opinion it was all worth it. Without further ado, enjoy part 2!

Friday morning we woke up early and drove to Golden, Colorado to try climbing at the Golden Cliffs area. The hike up to the cliff was incredibly beautiful, and the view once we got there was just as amazing. From the cliff side we could see almost all of Golden, including the Coors Brewery, mountains in almost every direction, and Denver in the distance; near perfection I would dare to say.

It is always interesting when going to a new climbing area; it tends to be a slow process to begin climbing as you try to get oriented according to the guide-book and figure out what routes are what. We ended up on some rather sketchy routes to begin the day, and encountered very polished rock (which we later read in about on mountain project). After finishing a particularly bad route Scott and I were both frustrated and angry, but he spontaneously decided to climb the route right next to it before we headed back to Denver. The route ended up being the hardest route he has ever lead climbed, and a terrific one to end the day on.

Saturday we managed to wake up even earlier, and again headed to the Golden Cliffs. Our friends that were in Colorado Springs drove up to climb with us for a bit, and despite some serious pain due to my elbow injury we had a great morning of climbing. A storm rolled in right as we were wrapping up a route, so I grabbed some photographs quick and then we sprinted down to our cars with thunder exploding around us the entire time.

The four of us grabbed lunch in Golden while the storm passed, and then Scott and I made a snap decision to drive up to the summit of Mt. Evans, a 14,000 foot mountain near by. It is a narrow, winding road to the top. I was driving and was terrified while doing so (you see, I terrify me despite the fact that I climb). We drove through a hail storm, some rain, along with some sunshine while driving up. When we got to the end of the road we hopped out of the car, noted the crazy effect of the altitude on us, and started to hike around. The road takes you nearly to the top; there is just a short hike to get to the actual summit. Near the parking lot there is an A-frame building where the first high altitude research ever done took place. Scott was all giddy since that is something he hopes to pursue, so we hiked around there for a bit and then headed up the short trail to the summit. While we were at the summit the clouds opened up just right, and I got some truly amazing light. I have never been in the alpine environment during golden hour before; it was one of the most magical things I have witnessed. I have already vowed to go back when I can spend more time there and explore a bit more for the perfect shot.

I had a guy at the summit snap a photograph of me and Scott quick, so that there would be proof of us being there together 🙂

Sadly this was our last night in Colorado. The next morning we woke up to drive back to Kansas; not nearly as exciting as finding a new place to climb and explore in the mountains.