Category Archives: Adventure

Ice Walk

Posted by dkrashb on

I find myself searching for photos of frozen things.  These are from a guided hike we did in the Maligne Canyon our first day out in Jasper on a winter trip a few years ago.

When the temperature is dropping to -25 fahrenheit, what better way to spend the day than touring ice formations?

We were nervous about our first hike in those temperatures–we weren’t sure we’d be able to stay warm in a group hike where we were constrained to the pace of the slowest hiker.  I decided to layer up.

I take layering very seriously.  For anything less than -10, if I’m not going to be moving quickly, this is my tried and true approach:

Layer 1:  quick-dry undergarments, including a long-line bra top that adds warmth all the way to my waist.

Layer 2:  panty hose

Layer 3:  silk long underwear, top and bottom

Layer 4:  Sock liners

Layer 5:  Under Armor for very cold weather top and bottom

Layer 6:  Wool long underwear top and bottom

Layer 7:  Fleece top and bottom

Layer 8:  Waterproof pants and heavy wool socks

Layer 9:  Down sweater up top

Layer 10:  Waterproof shell

To Top it All Off:  A very sexy balaclava with a super thick wool beanie over it.

Add waterproof snow boots with HotHands toe warmers, windblocker glove liners and a pair of waterproof down mittens and I’m ready to roll.

The most difficult part of all these layers is getting into them without breaking into a sweat.  Usually, I’ve soaked through layers 1-6 by the time I get to layer 8 and I have to carry layers 9 and 10 outside with me to cool off before putting them on.

The second most difficult part is walking.  If you have ever seen the moving “A Christmas Story” with the classic scene of the kid so bundled up that when he falls over, he is stuck on his back waving his arms and legs like an over-turned turtle, that’s what I feel like when I dress for really cold weather.  In truth, technology is pretty amazing these days so each layer is impressively thin for the insulating factor and I can walk pretty well.

I eschew cotton because of the sweat factor.  Cotton loses its insulating properties when it gets wet.  With fabrics that keep me warm even when they’re wet, I worry less about wearing too many layers.

Right at the moment, I’m looking out the window at heat lightning flashing in the sky and wondering how on earth I got from thinking about ice to thinking about wearing 10 layers of warm clothes.  The last thing I’d want right now is an extra layer.

But in Maligne Canyon, among the giant ice formations, I was perfectly warm with the cold air against the only exposed skin on my face, content to stand with my mouth wide open in amazement, blowing out clouds of frost with each breath.

Savage Falls

Posted by dkrashb on

One of the things I love the most about hiking is the solitude.  There is nothing like hearing only the wind whistling quietly through the trees.  It’s like the secrets of the universe being spoken quietly in your ear.

When we did the Stone Door hike, we were surprised at the solitude we found.  In spite of it being a short, easy trail that started out with a paved segment, we only saw people going the opposite direction.  At the top of Stone Door, a breeze blew through the pines and we enjoyed that hard-to-find solitude that usually only less accessible wilderness offers.

For me, this sense of solitude somehow always generates a wondrous feeling of connectedness in what might be one of life’s great paradoxes.  It was so palpable at the top of Stone Door that I had to set my camera aside for 10 minutes and just sit and listen to the wind and feel part of life.

When we decided to walk at least part of the Savage Gulch Day Loop trail, we thought we might see even fewer people–it’s more remote.

When we arrived at the parking lot, another couple was getting ready to head down the trail.  I overheard the man ask the woman, “Got what’cha need?  Need what’cha got?” What a profound question.  One of the greatest mistakes I’ve made in my lifetime is not asking the second question.  But I digress.

Tisen has been limping and so have we, so we didn’t expect to make it all the way around the 5 mile loop trail.  We also got a bit confused because there are about 5 trails that converge with the loop trail.  So, we didn’t start out with the intention of going to Savage Falls, but that’s where we ended up.  But we were OK with having gotten slightly lost–who can resist a waterfall?

When we arrived at Savage falls, we were a little jealous of the people swimming in the water.  We contemplated getting in, but we didn’t see a good path for Tisen to get down to the water and Tisen has put on a few too many pounds to be carried easily.  So, we sat in the shade and watched.

I attempted to shoot with my 100-400mm lens since there was enough of a crowd that my 24-70mm wasn’t giving me tight enough compositions.  Plus, I was shooting for a lot of depth of field, so I figured my faster lens wasn’t doing me that much good anyway.

There were two wrong assumptions about this.  First, the faster lens has an easier time focusing no matter what aperture I have it set on.  Second, the shorter focal length is easier to hold still even though that lens lacks Image Stabilization.

But, I did my best to steady the lens.  If only my subjects would have held still–I had to refrain from yelling “freeze!” at the couple under the water fall.

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Crossing Bridges

Posted by dkrashb on

I love my dog.  I love him for many reasons, but today, it’s because every day he reminds me that we can learn, we can grow, we can be completely different than we were before.

How many times do we hear people say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?  As someone who strives to learn every day, I know first hand how hard it can be to undo decades of habit to do the thing I will myself to do.  Many days, I feel like it’s an impossibility.  Then, I have days when I do things like fly off a mountain in a hang glider and I know that anything is possible.  But, sometimes I walk away thinking that maybe flying off a mountain in a hang glider doesn’t ultimately change anything at all.

That’s where Tisen comes in.

Tisen has transformed himself from a nearly-dead street dog to a urban-dwelling, middle-class gentleman who likes to hike.  He wants to make me happy.  That’s his bottom line.  While I’m not sure I could handle a person being so into me, in a dog, it’s kind of nice.

When we went to Savage Gulf Natural Area to hike the other day, we encountered something called a suspension bridge.  The dreaded structure was not the kind of suspension bridge you drive over, but rather a flexing, swinging, bouncing rope-and-wood bridge meant for no more than 2 pedestrians at a time.  These bridges make me nervous; I have no idea what they are like for a dog.  For Tisen, it was clearly a gauntlet of terror.

First, he would not step onto the bridge at all.  I walked across first to give him a reason to cross.  Then Pat came behind, encouraging Tisen to come with him.  Tisen considered climbing down a sheer rock cliff to the stream below over walking onto the bridge, but Pat managed to get him up the entrance ramp to the bridge.  But there, he stopped.  It wasn’t until Pat had crossed and Tisen was left standing alone that he decided he’d better cross.

He made it all the way across the gulch (which really wasn’t so far below as to be completely terrifying), got to the top of the exit ramp, stared down at me with his longing eyes, then eye-balled the ramp down to me and decided he’d had enough.  He turned around and went all the way back across the gulch.

We managed to coax him back across and all the way to land on the other side.  We completed our hike to Savage Falls and then wondered what was going to happen on the way back across.  When we got to the suspension bridge, I went across first, Pat coaxed Tisen up to the bridge, and Tisen led the way across looking like he’d been crossing suspension bridges most of his life.

In about an hour, Tisen transformed himself from a ‘fraidy cat to a top dog.  He’s my hero.

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The Fungus Among Us

Posted by dkrashb on

I’m a big fan of mushrooms.  I like to eat them (when someone else has tested them first) and I like the way they look.

When we started off down the Savage Gulf Day Loop trail, it seemed like there was a new mushroom we’d never seen before every 10 feet or less.

In fact, sometimes there were whole families of mushrooms and, in some cases, it looked like the children were adopted.

I was blown away by the colors and sizes and varieties of mushrooms that added color to the trail in a way previously left to flowers.

Unfortunately, after toting the tripod around for 2.5 miles at Laurel Falls and Stone Door, I’d decided I didn’t want to tote it around for potentially 5 miles on the loop trail.  I opted for my camera with the 24-70mm lens and a 100-400mm lens in my bag in the hope of having less weight on my shoulders.  I also made a mental note to myself to, in the near future, look for a backpack with a hip belt that I can use to carry photography equipment–I have got to get the weight off my shoulders.

I’m fairly certain that the decision to leave my 100mm macro lens and tripod behind actually caused a massive mushroom bloom from the time we left the car to the time we started down the trail.  I would bet a lot of money that had I carried my tripod and macro lens, we wouldn’t have seen a single thing interesting enough to shoot up close.

As it was, I was left to try to simulate shooting macro in a dark environment with a hand held camera.  I was thankful that my Canon 5D Mark III has such awesome higher ISO performance (well, compared to my 40D, which I also left behind).  Were it not for that, I wouldn’t have captured a single mushroom.

On the way out, I shot mushrooms at 70mm, getting as close as possible, which isn’t that close since it’s not a macro lens.  The images are all cropped as a result.

On the way back, I shot mushrooms at up to 400mm, standing back further and desperately trying to hold the lens still.  I’m impressed that I got any decent shots at all.  I think this speaks to the amazing technology of image stabilization built into the lens.

Granted, some of the shots are a bit blurred from too much movement with too long of a shutter speed.  The second image is an example of this.  It’s one I should probably just delete.  But, when I looked at it in post processing, I was so pleasantly surprised to discover what I assumed was leaf debris was actually a tiny snail sitting on the mushroom cap, I couldn’t think of deleting the image.

It’s funny how sometimes the most pleasure comes not from executing a shot well but by discovering something in a shot completely by accident.

Stone Door

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Continuing our weekend adventure, having made it from the asphalt to the “unimproved” part of the trail (does anyone actually think asphalt is an improvement?), we continued on our journey to the Stone Door.

I don’t know exactly what image “Stone Door” conjures in your mind, but in my mind, when I read the description that said:

Stone Door, a 10 ft. wide by 100 ft. deep crack, forming from the top of the escarpment into the gorge below. It looks like a giant door left ajar and was once used by Indians as a passageway.

What I envisioned was a giant slab of rock standing straight up in the middle of two cliffs and standing ajar so that one can walk between the “door” part and the cliff part.  I guess I skipped over the “deep crack” part.

When we arrived at Stone Door, the view of the valley was fantastic.  Plus, the top of the cliffs provides some really interesting scenery in and of itself.  The only part I didn’t like was being anywhere near the edge.  The drop off was terrifying.

Pat and Tisen sat patiently while I worked my way around the top of the cliff, shooting everything I dared to shoot.  I really wanted to get a great shot looking down on the crack in the cliff, but it was tough to get a good angle without rock climbing gear.  I always knew I should have become a rock climber.

I have to pause here for a moment to do a mental double take on whether those words actually came out of my fingers.  Me . . . a rock climber?  Well, maybe not.

In any case, I couldn’t get the shot I wanted mainly out of pure fear.  Or perhaps fear in this case was good sense?  I was pretty determined not to fall into the crevasse never to be found again.

We worked our way back down with me stopping to shoot straight on to the crack.  There was a large tree in the opening that created a key hole sort of image for me.  I played with that for a while and contemplated walking down the steps a bit to see what kind of interesting views I could get, but Pat was concerned about time and we needed to drive to the other side of the park to see the next part of our adventure:  Savage Gulf Day Loop.

So, I packed it in without getting a great shot of the crack.  As we walked away, Pat said to me, “I wonder where the Stone door is?”  I wasn’t the only one who didn’t picture a big crack!

Tisen seemed nonplussed by the whole stone door thing.  I imagine there are certain advantages to being a dog.  One of them is probably no expectations.  Don’t get me wrong, Stone Door is really cool and definitely worth the effort to get there.  Just don’t expect something that looks like a door.

Cross-Country, uh, Wrestling?

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Back in 2009-2010, we decided to spend two weeks in the Canadian Rockies over Christmas and New Year’s.  On this particular day of that trip, I’d managed to talk Pat into renting cross-country skis.

My logic was simple.  It was about -22 degrees Fahrenheit that day.  We were either going to end up sitting in the lobby of our hotel all day (and it was not the kind of lobby you want to hang out in) or we were going to find something to do outdoors that would keep us warm.

I don’t know of any outdoor activity that keeps a person warmer than cross-country skiing.  It’s the equivalent of going running with trekking poles.  You use every muscle in your body, including some you may not have known you had, and the only time you get a rest is if you happen to go downhill.

Since Pat had never cross-country skied before, we chose a flat, groomed trail listed as easy.  This may not have been the best idea–Pat never got to experience what gliding down a gentle hill feels like.  In fact, I don’t think Pat got to experience what gliding felt like at all–for him, cross-country skiing was more of a wrestling match.

As it turns out, cross-country skiing does not keep a person warm when said person must stop and wait for wrestling spouse to catch up every 5 minutes or so.  And, shocking as this may be, being impatiently waited for every 5 minutes or so does not exactly make the wrestling spouse enjoy his wrestling match more.  This was not one of those activities that turned out to be good for our marriage.

I’m better at being patient when I’m not cold and he’s better at learning a new activity when I’m not around doing it better than him.  The fact that he had never done it before and I had did not seem to make him feel any better.  It certainly didn’t keep me any warmer.

I did my best to pretend I was grateful he was taking so long because it gave me time to shoot.  It also allowed us to see some deer along the trail who didn’t notice we were there, possibly because they couldn’t perceive we were in motion.

The trail was 18K to the lake and back.  We had read that doing the first 5K was well worth it.  If we made it out 2K, I would be surprised.  But it was good we turned around when we did–the sun was already getting low in the sky by the time we made it back to our car.  Days are short up North at the end of the year and the darker it gets, the more bitterly cold it gets.

Pat determined we could have hiked faster and declared that we weren’t going to bother with cross-country skis anymore.  So far, he’s a man of his word.

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Snow Surprise

Posted by dkrashb on

Because I am taking a learn to row class 5 days a week and recovering from said rowing class the other 2 days a week, I have not been doing a lot of shooting lately.  As such, I have returned to my photos from our 2010 trip to Glacier National Park.

We stayed at Glacier Park Lodge a couple of nights at the end of our stay in the park.  Getting to the lodge is not difficult.  It’s an easy drive from West Glacier.  What is less easy is the long drive up the East side of the park to St. Mary’s Lake.

The memory of one early morning drive up the East side of the park still haunts me.  Montana has a “fence out” rule about livestock–if you don’t want them on your property, put up a fence.  Otherwise, they’re free to range.  While I don’t know enough about the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to argue for or against, I do know that it resulted in two dead horses spread across the road at about 7AM one morning.  As we drove past, my stomach lurched and I hoped they died quickly.  We were debating who one is supposed to call when there are two dead horses on the road when, a couple miles down the road, we passed a front loader headed at full speed toward the gory scene.  I had to look away.  The thought of the horses being scooped up in a front loader was a little too much for me.

But, on to happier thoughts.  When we awakened our first morning in the lodge, we discovered an unexpected snow had moved in overnight.  While Pat slept in, I wandered around the lodge looking for photo ops.

A red jammer was parked in front of the lodge loading up a group of senior citizens for a tour.  I perched up on a walkway above the scene and started shooting this historic vehicle.  About then, the snow started sliding off the roof of the hotel in enormous chunks.  One tiny lady (the top of her head is just visible through the window of an open jammer door if you look closely in the photo) got pummeled repeatedly by chunks of snow before someone ran over and shielded her.  I felt a little guilty standing there shooting, but I was quite out of reach.

When Pat got up, we drove to the small town nearby (Browning) in the Blackfeet Indian reservation (and yes, it is called “Indian” and not “Native American” there for whatever reason) where we found a trading post that sold rubber boots.  Pat bought a pair and we proceeded to go take an easy walk around a lake before driving up to St. Mary’s.

On the way to St. Mary’s, we encountered many cows on the road.  We also had to pull over so I could shoot some of the scenery with snow.  It might have been unseasonably cold, but it was beautiful.

Cloudland

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We made it back to Cloudland Canyon for the 3rd time a weekend ago.  We managed to hike the West Rim trail after going there once completely unprepared to hike and once just to show friends the views from the parking lot overlooks.

This time, we went prepared.  Well, semi-prepared.  I decided to wear my monkey feet (as Pat calls them)–my black five fingers shoes–since they’re by far the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever hiked in.  However, they’re not so good on sharp stones and there were plenty of those.  That led to Tisen and Pat having to wait on me while I picked my way over the trail.

The other issue was that I opted not to bring a tripod, but I had a polarizer on my wide angle lens since we were hiking during some of the worst light of the day.  I love my polarizer when I need it.  I does wonders to cut out the bright reflections and remove glare from a scene.  However, there are two problems with a polarizer.  First, a stop and a half of light is a pretty high cost to pay when you are tripod-less.  Second, a polarizer works best when it is used at 90 degrees to the sun.  When hiking, one does not have control over what the angle to the sun is.  So, sometimes it does it’s thing well and sometimes it doesn’t.

The part I didn’t think about before taking off down the trail was whether I would want to remove the polarizer and, if so, what I would do with it when I did.  This meant I either had to shoot with it on or I had to recruit Pat to hold it for me.  Given that it was mostly overcast that day, I probably would have been better off without it.  I had to scrap many photos because of movement blur due to slow shutter speeds.

But enough technical talk.  Cloudland Canyon was beautiful that day.  With big puffy clouds appearing and disappearing as sunshine streamed around them one minute and rain streamed from them the next.

We got wet more times than I counted.  This was another thing I was unprepared for, rain.  It was so hot, I had no need for a rain jacket–the water simply steamed off of my skin.  But, my camera wasn’t that hot.  Fortunately, I had packed a wide-brimmed hat which worked well to shield my camera each time it rained.

Tisen did amazing on the trail.  He stayed much closer than he has in the past and stopped when told to stop.  He could teach Pat a thing or two.

After completing the 5 mile hike around the West Rim of the canyon, we got a nice shower on our way to the car.  We piled in as quickly as possible–the rain started to pour down hard about the time we were ready to go.

It was a great day.

Not a Beach

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Unlike yesterday’s post, this one isn’t about the beach.  In fact, it’s pretty much as opposite as it gets from the beach.

Pat and I fell in love with a place called Jasper in the middle of Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada.  After spending a week hiking in the area, we started fantasizing about living there.  We figured before we got too far with this fantasy, we should go back in the winter.

We had flown in and out of Edmonton the first time, so we thought we’d try flying in and out of Calgary this time and return to Calgary a few days before our return home so we could spend New Year’s Even there.

This was the second time we decided to travel over Christmas.  It was the first time we went somewhere where it was -15 Fahrenheit (-26 Celsius) for the high during our whole trip.  (We loved it anyway.)

By the way, if you are considering going to Jasper, I recommend flying into Calgary if it’s summer, but flying into Edmonton if it’s winter.  The drive up Icefields Parkway is beautiful in the summer, but it’s down right terrifying in the winter.  I suppose one might intuitively know that driving up a highway called “Icefields Parkway” in the middle of December could be a bad idea.

We, however, having been there in the summer to see the glaciers, assumed the name referred to the glaciers rather than the actual road.  The Toyota Camry we rented faired far better than one might expect, but we really should have been driving with chains.  It was supposed to be a 5 1/2 drive.  We were about 3 hours late getting to Jasper.

The drive back to Calgary went much better–there hadn’t been any fresh snowfall for days and we left in the morning, driving in daylight.

After spending 9 days in the snow and ice, we thought it would be nice to return to the city, thinking it would be warmer between being further South, at lower elevation, and being made of heat-holding materials.

It’s quite possible it was actually colder in Calgary.

I think it was the wind tunnel effect of all the office buildings, but it might have been psychological.  It’s hard to notice that you’re cold when you’re surrounded by incredible mountains.

We made it to the local bird sanctuary for a little bird watching in spite of the cold and a lack of binoculars.  I even managed to get a few shots.  I was fascinated by the Magpie nests at the sanctuary–they looked like multi-story condominiums.

I struggled to identify what kind of large bird of prey I got a shot of.  At the time, I assumed it was a hawk.  When I reviewed the photos again tonight, I suspect it’s actually a second year bald eagle, but will have to confirm.  I remember thinking it was extremely large for a hawk, though, so it would make sense.

Everything’s Better with a Beach

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Several years ago, we had the opportunity to attend a special event in St. Lucia.  We’d always wanted to vacation on a Caribbean island, so it seemed like a good time to go.

I’m not usually one to stay in resorts.  I prefer an experience that is less homogenized.  However, having been to Jamaica once for a work conference (yeah, I know) and having been warned not to go “off the reservation” without an appropriate escort due to issues with crime outside the resorts (I was always suspicious the risks were exaggerated to keep unsuspecting business women from taking their American dollars elsewhere), staying a resort eliminated concerns about crime.  To be fair, I didn’t do much research about St. Lucia because we were meeting a group at a resort.

I’m glad we had the resort experience.  Now I know what I’ve been missing.  It was exactly what I expected it to be–predictable, uninspired, stripped of virtually all local culture, and overall less than what it should be for the prices they charge.  It’s like going to Italy and eating at McDonald’s.

That said, who can complain about being on a gorgeous island at a luxurious resort in the middle of the Caribbean?

Small islands with a large number of inhabitants are probably not the best place to do things like backpacking.  But quite honestly, I wouldn’t know since we only walked around outside the resort once.

We saw quite a bit of the island from the back of the airport shuttle, winding around tight mountain turns to the point that I got motion sickness for the first time in my life.  Interestingly, having never been motion sick before, I interpreted the nausea I was experiencing as been intense hunger.  Maybe that’s what kept me from throwing up?

We also got a peek of the island when we went SCUBA diving.  We were shuttled to the port and then taken out to sea to dive.  I had never been diving before and only had a resort certification to dive only to 20 feet.  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn how to properly equalize and my head felt like it was going to explode.  After the first painful minutes, I finally took a deep breath and relaxed.  The pain subsided and I was truly excited.  Then, I realized all the other divers were swimming below me.  I decided to look up to see how far down I was.  When I raised my head, it popped out of the water.  I probably should have just stuck to snorkeling.

Besides the great group of people we were with and the fun we had celebrating with them, the best part of the trip was the beach.  I signed up for a yoga class on the beach one day.  That might have been the highlight of the trip–no one else signed up.  I got a private yoga lesson in a gazebo on the beach, witnessed by the rising sun and the cool sea breeze.

*Note:  Images starting with “img” are mine.  The rest were from members of the group.