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!

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.

182/366 – Stream

*Friday, July 6

This stream went right past our campsite at Whitewater State Park, it was perfect.

181/366 – Camping

*Thursday, July 5

Camping in 110 degree weather with insane humidity is not ideal.

North Carolina

Just last post I said I was going to post more often, and already I have failed to post on a regular basis. But, I have a bit of work and news to share, so hopefully I will have quite a few posts in the next few days.

Two weeks ago, over Halloween weekend, I went camping with my boyfriend in North Carolina. We were in Pisgah National Forest, just short of an hour south of Asheville. We had planned on leaving early Friday, but of course ended up behind schedule and didn’t arrive at our campsite until dark. It was raining, windy, and cold; not ideal camping weather at all. We didn’t bring a tent with us since we had our hammocks to sleep in, and so we were both dreading what that night would be like. Even though it was getting late, we had to make dinner, so we quickly hung up a tarp between some trees and set the Jet Boil on the ground to get some water going to cook our dinner. While sitting in the car eating our dinner we decided it would be best to just sleep in the car that night, since it was so late and still raining. I slept only a couple of hours that night; it was one of the longest nights I have ever experienced. I remember laying there awake, thinking that it was never going to get light out, ha. When we woke up the car was all fogged up, but the light coming in was amazing. My lens was also fogging up so it made pictures difficult.

I didn’t shoot hardly any digital on our trip, and most of what I did shoot was double exposures for my current series. So unfortunately I don’t have a ton to share as of yet, but there will be more to come once I get the film developed. For now, here are some digital double exposures.

That night we drove to one of the many waterfalls in the area to get some long exposures. It was so dark in the forest that it was a little bit difficult to get a good image without having an exceptionally long exposure. This was around a 5 minute exposure, with light painting (with a flashlight) for over a minute.

We ended up sleeping in the hammock that night, and managed to stay surprisingly warm. I had on a crazy number of layers, and ended up getting hot in the night and needing to take a few off. Though they are not interesting images in and of themselves, here was our camp and our hammock situation.

64/365 – Camping Nights

*Monday, August 1 – Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP)

Monday we spent most of the day hiking in RMNP. We had a pretty easy (but absolutely beautiful) hike since it was just our first day in the park. I was pretty excited to do some night-time stuff while we were there, but unfortunately this was the only night that I actually did any. It was a cloudy night too, so it was a bit unfortunate, but I still feel like this image sums up the camping experience to some extent.

63/365 – Welcoming View

*Sunday, July 31 – Just entering Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP)

Sunday morning we all got up early and packed up some more stuff from my brother’s house and got on the road to head to RMNP. It was around a 6 hour drive through the rest of South Dakota (my brother lives in Spear Fish, where we spent the night), Wyoming, and then finally Colorado. When we got to the park it started storming, and when we turned on to the road to our campground this was the view that greeted us. I actually took this in the car as my brother continued to drive, so I was lucky it turned out so well! It was one of the few pictures I managed to get that day (really the only good one) since we were in the car for most of the day. And the rest of the night was spent setting up all four tents and getting our stuff set up inside them, and making dinner. We were all pretty exhausted from the drive and such and so we headed to bed pretty early.