Outdoors

I finally got the call from the Dorais (It’s pronounced DOE-RAY, and the D is not silent) brothers last week and it was game time! Pack up the bags and drive 13hrs to Rainier. I’ve been shooting them and their “ski-running”, or randonee, or even worse SKI-MO (can we please come up with a better name) approach to big mountains for the upcoming film. We had been out around the Wasatch, but this was the big idea, to shoot them setting a record on another iconic American peak (they currently hold the speed ski record on the Grand Teton). I was excited to try and capture this event AND get to ski Rainier for the first time. Mixing business with pleasure? Don’t mind if I do. Simply put these guys strap on the lightest equipment available, strip down to next to nothing and run up, then ski down mountains as fast as possible. Our objective route, the Disappointment Cleaver. Their goal was to beat the 4hr mark. The current speed record was 4hrs 19mins. The volunteer ranger volunteered the information that it wouldn’t be possible because of conditions, not this year at least. We arrived shortly after a storm that had kept summit seekers at bay for a week or more. Lots of things had to come together for this to work out. The weather would need to cooperate,  snow would need to remain firm, folks would need break the trail to the summit. Until that happened we hung out low on the mountain getting sun tanned and acclimated while making plans and turns. Andy swears that matching won’t make you faster just makes you look good. And apparently Jason agrees. It was funny watching the bro’s trying not to go stir crazy. They dialed in the lower mountain and put in their own booter to avoid the sloppy mess of a trail left by herds of climbers. Our window of opportunity was only 3 days and it wasn’t until the final day that the route opened up. Many thanks to the guides and rangers and climbing parties that blazed the way. Filming this speed business is tricky. I obviously can’t hang with them especially with camera gear. My plan was to head up the night before, sleep for a few hours at Camp Muir then continue to the top the next morning. We would all meet up around 9am on the summit where I would film them victoriously sucking in thin air. I packed up as light as possible excited to get a sunset and sunrise on this mammoth mountain. I arrived at Muir around 11:00, cooked up some beef stroganoff and got a few hours of “sleep”. The hut can be a really loud and busy place with folks coming and going at all hours. It’s a great shelter from the elements though. I woke and brewed up some coffee while the sun percolated. These are the moments where work and play get blurry. Things were lining up really well. My hope was to summit, but soloing glaciated terrain is risky business. I told Andy and Jason that I would advance as far as I felt comfortable. If things got too sketchy I would just wait and film them from whatever point I was able to reach. The route was well traveled and there were many parties out climbing. Ascending was perfect and I found myself thinking about the fellas and randomly yelling out “C’mon guys”! I also told all the climbers I passed about the fitness they were about to witness, and that they should heckle the speedy chinamen when they blew by. I topped out and the clouds moved in. Winds were a blustery 40-50 mph so I snacked and hunkered down. They wanted to be to the top by 9:00. 9:05 came and went, 9:08 and still no sign. Shit, shit, shit! I kept thinking something happened. Then I saw Jason speeding along in the clouds and I flipped out, yelling and howling at the top of my lungs and almost forgetting to film. They saw me and shot over for a quick transition and in a minute or two were skiing off into the clouds. They were pretty cooked and Andy couldn’t mutter a word, but it was all downhill from here. They had covere

Saturday, May 25th celebrated the 105th anniversary and 47th running of the Mount Wilson Trail Race. It was another successful year with great weather, stellar finishing times, and a lively crowd. Friday night race festivities included the Pasta Dinner and runner check-in. The Pasta Dinner was catered by Zugo’s Café with additional items provided by Stonefire Grill. On display was the 2012 race video, photos from prior races, and point of view footage on the mountain. Attendees were also able to purchase Mount Wilson Trail Race merchandise. Saturday activities included the Race, Kids’ Fun Run, Beer Garden, and vendor booths. The Race started off with a bang from official race starter, Lono Tyson. The first place overall male was Eli Rodriguez with a time of 1 hour and 31 second; the first place overall female was Mireya Vargas with a time of 1 hour 14 minutes and 33 seconds. This year 184 youth participated in the Kids’ Fun Run which was sponsored by Sierra Madre Community Foundation and CATZ sports. Proceeds from the Pasta Dinner and Beer Garden were donated to Sierra Madre Search and Rescue, which provides race day safety support on the trail the day of the race. The City of Sierra Madre and Mount Wilson Trail Race Committee would like to thank the following sponsors and donors for making the 2013 Mount Wilson Trail Race such a success: Run With Us, Asics, Team CrossFit Academy, Santa Anita Park, Matt & Aaron Duda, Sierra Madre Community Foundation, HealthCare Partners, Methodist Hospital (Dr. Ken Wogensen M.D.), Zugo’s Café, CATZ Sports, Sierra Madre Civic Club, First Wilshire Securities, Joe Pacilio – Century 21 Earll, Ltd., Lantern Cycleworks, Samsung, Tommy Marshall, Arcadia Radiology, Matt Denny’s Ale House, Judy Webb-Martin, Mountain Khakis, Bob Okeefe, Dr. William E. White M.D., Mission Brewery,  Uinta Brewery, Dennis Hartman, Faulkner Design, Lucky Baldwin’s, Trail Runner Trophy Series, GoGo Squeez, Sierra Madre Woman’s Club, Trader Joe’s, GU, SGV Municipal Water District, S & S Construction Services, Kaiser Permanente, Simon Cooper, Jill Liston, Leonora Moss, Patagonia-Old Town Pasadena, Dr. Budincich,  Only Place in Town, Stonefire Grill, Mama Pete’s Nursery School, Best Buy Drugs, In ‘N Out, Mount Baldy Run to the Top,  Moving Comfort, Vibram, and The Peach Cafe. Additionally, the MWTR Committee would like to thank the following volunteers for their support of the 2013 Mount Wilson Trail Race: Sierra Madre Search and Rescue, Sierra Madre Civic Club, Ham Radio Operators, Sierra Madre Boy Scout Troop 110, Sierra Madre Cub Scout Troop 110, The Spero Foundation, and VFW Post 3208. The 2014 Mount Wilson Trail Race will be Saturday, May 24, 2014. Be sure to check out www.mountwilsontrailrace.com for the 2014 MWTR registration information. Registration will take place in early March 2014. In 2013 the trail race sold out in 2.5 hours, so sign up as early as possible!

The sun came out just in time for the second race of the Asheville River Bound trail running series. With 210 runners, sunny weather, cold beverages from Highland Brewing and winding forest trails, NC Outward Bound School was able to raise money toward scholarships for local youth, educators and military veterans attending its wilderness programs. The next race takes place in Charlotte on July 20 at US National Whitewater Center. To register or find out more visit the River Bound  website at: www.riverboundrace.com.

The most important photography tip I was ever given was just four words. Sabine Meyer had just come on board as the photography editor of National Geographic Adventure, and I wanted to take better photos so I asked her advice. I wasn’t sure exactly what “better” meant, but I knew that my shots weren’t where I wanted them to be. “Compose more, shoot less,” she said. But…but…what was the point of having a motor drive that shot 11 frames per second if you couldn’t machine gun as a mountain biker or skier whipped past? Shooting more meant I was guaranteed to get something, right? Well, yes. But not necessarily something that was good enough for National Geographic. From that point forward, I changed almost everything about my photography. I shelved my 35mm gear and invested in a medium format system from Mamiya, which would shoot, at best, three frames a second and whose film rolls only held about a dozen shots. It forced me to slow down. And whenever I came to a scene, I would sit with it for a minute or two and think about what I wanted from it — what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I thought about the elements that might be put into a photo, or left out, rather than just tried to find the “prettiest picture” in a given place. I deconstructed why some photos worked and others didn’t. One day, after years of this, I was in the middle of a shoot when it hit me that I knew exactly what I was doing. Not that I’d learned all I needed to know or that I’d stopped pushing myself or even that I thought I’d become a great photographer, but that I had developed my own voice. That when I came to a scene, I knew precisely what I wanted to do with it. After so many years, decades really, of just blasting away, I’d crossed from taking pictures to making pictures. Over the next few months, Adobe Photoshop Elements, the consumer-oriented photo software, is underwriting a series of photography lessons, tips, and guidance here on AJ. (At the end of the series, we’ll be giving away copy of the program.) And while I have a bazillion opinions about how to shoot better, I want to start by asking you what you want to know. The scope is wide open. Do your smartphone action shots stink? Are you tired of filters but don’t know how to make your photos look cool? Do you want to know more about working with light? Give me your questions about gear, technique, editing, workflow, post-production, working with models, anything at all, and over the next few months I’ll tackle them here. Adventure Journal’s Make Better Photos series is brought to you by Adobe Photoshop Elements. Learn more at adobe.com.

By my estimate, there is nobody who doesn’t like summer, except maybe polar bears and vampires, but this poll isn’t for them. No, it’s for all us other organisms, who thrive in long days and warm temps and warm water. But summer really doesn’t need an introduction, and neither does this poll. Let’s put our efforts into lots of things to choose from. In the spirit of summer freedom, you can pick as many as you like. Let’s see what comes out on top. Take Our Poll WIN SMITH SUNGLASSES JUST BY VOTING! This week, one poll participant will receive Smith Optic’s Lowdown shades. We’ll pick the winner via random number generator (and announce it here) — all you have to do to enter is vote and leave a comment so we have your email to contact you. Must have a U.S. or Canadian address. Contest ends Sunday, June 23, at midnight PST. Map by Shutterstock

My dad told me the other day he’d won a three-day Harley rental at a raffle. I said Dad, I think you have to have a motorcycle license to rent a motorcycle, don’t you? He used to own a motorcycle, according to family legend, but that was before my brother was born in 1977. So my dad hasn’t ridden a motorcycle since at least 1976, something I pointed out to him over the phone. “I have a motorcycle license,” he said. “Every time you renew your drivers’ license, they ask you if you want to renew your motorcycle license, so I do. Why would you say no?” For 37 years, you’ve been doing that, I asked. “Why would you say no?” he said again, laughing. I guess because you never know. I am still learning from my dad. Fathers are interesting. They take care of you for the first 18 or so years of your life, and then you spend the next 18 years trying to figure out how to talk to each other. We’ve gone from “Son, you can’t do that,” to “Son, you shouldn’t do that,” to “Son, are you sure you want to do that?” My dad’s a very patient man. One of my favorite lines he’s ever said, which I heard secondhand from my Uncle Danny, refers to raising children: “Sometimes you just gotta let them make their own mistakes.” Which there have been many, but zero I-told-you-sos. I’ve sat next to my dad on golf carts, barstools, a group therapy rehab room (for me, not him), baseball stadium seats, ski lifts, and our conversation style has always been like two guys riding in a pickup truck together: few questions, lots of statements, rare silence. All my life, though, jokes like “Does your face hurt, son?” “No, why?” “It’s killing me.” One year when I was in grad school, he decided he and I were going to build and paint a 120-foot long fence, and instead of digging the post holes by hand, he told me we were going to get a skid loader for the day. Between us, we had zero experience operating a skid loader. Dad, miffed that the cheapest skid loader rental in town was $300 per day, arranged to borrow one from Stan, his friend who owned an auto body shop and had somehow acquired a skid loader. Dad paid Stan something like a case of steaks and four cases of Busch Light cans, which is how you do business sometimes in a small town. I grew up in a small town, which is all the good things everyone says it is, but only if you’ve got someone to instill simple values in you. Like my dad did: Show up on time. Work hard. Make people laugh. Find out their stories, and find some common ground. Listen. Finish the job. I asked my dad a few years ago, in his 25-plus years in management, if he ever had a problem with employees being late. He said Not really, actually, wait, one kid who works for me lately has been late a lot. I said what do you say to that guy when he comes in late? He said, “I told him that if he needs to be five minutes late every day, he might think about finding another job where that’s OK. Now he comes in three minutes early every day, which is still not early enough for me, but it’ll do.” I am sure every child falls somewhere in a spectrum with “Exactly Like My Parents” on one end and “Completely Opposite Of My Parents” on the other end. My life, or the first 34 years of it, have been a lot different from my dad’s life, but I’d like to think he understands me. Probably the better thing to say about him is that he doesn’t mind if he doesn’t understand me. I’m sure he’s cringed a little through things like bad haircuts, tattoos, leaving good jobs for worse-paying, less-secure jobs, and buying vehicles with 100,000+ miles on them, but he doesn’t protest. I know part of it is because he gets it. I have this photo of my dad and I sitting on a bench in Rocky Mountain National Park, taken in August 1985. I believe this is the genesis of something — my dad lived in Colorado for about a year in the early ’70s, and after he moved back to Iowa and started raising a family, he took us out west on a couple vacations. I moved out west as an adult, and I may never leave,

Spring came late to the the South—late enough that my party of four anglers and hikers woke up covered in yellow pollen even on Memorial Day Weekend, high above the greenery on the Appalachian Trail.  We decided to take advantage of our three-day’s rest to hoof it into a remote zone in the Nantahala Wilderness, where we were rewarded with excellent stream flows, good brook trout fishing, and gorgeous views. In the Southern Appalachians, any bit of water above 3,000 feet is likely to include some brook trout.  We knew that if we simply kept pushing further up, we’d eventually hit pay dirt, and so we did, in a swampy beaver pond not far from the feet of the AT’s string of fire towers. Several years ago I made it to the summit of Albert Mountain, North Carolina, not too far from the Georgia line.  This fire tower is a metal structure with a small house on top.  Back then, the house was derelict, with its windows broken and no one at home.  On this Memorial Day, I was pleased to see the Forest Service had repaired the structure in the intervening years.  The Albert Mountain fire tower is by no means as impressive as its nearby brother on Wayah Bald (a 1930s rock structure resembling a pyramid), but it is still an important piece of our history, as well as a great way to get up above the treetops. The last time I climbed Albert Mountain I was in blue jeans.  This time, I wore my Granite Creek pants, reminding me of how nice it is to be well equipped.  A weekend of hiking and camping, plenty of fire smoke and not a few wet crossings later, my pants looked like they had just come out of the washing machine and were just as comfortable.  Good gear goes a long way towards having a good experience.

Our world is so colorful right now, for a brief period of glory, that I cannot bear to make most of my photos black and white. It's a special time of year, and Shyla is seeing and smelling it for the first time! The Columbines are opening, reaching for the sky. This was taken with my point-and-shoot, but I'll have a macro lens soon for my favorite camera. I am excited take photos of the

Globeflowers : Prints Available On Friday Claudia and I went backpacking to a lesser-known basin in the Sneffels Range. Globeflowers #2 : Prints Available Summer is in full swing in the mountains! Except for a few lingering patches, most of the snow is gone and the tundra has come alive with its vibrant green grasses and early summer wildflowers like these Spreading Globeflowers (I think that’s what they are called). Potosi Peak Sunrise : Prints Available Sunrise light on Potosi Peak (13,786 ft.) – June. We woke up at 3:30am to hike up to a high saddle from where I shot the sunrise light on Potosi Peak, one of the giants of the range. (For reference on how little snow we have this year, check out the photos from skiing/snowboarding down Potosi’s north couloir in June a couple years ago). Hiking on Whitehouse Mountain with a view of Potosi Peak (13,786 ft.) – June. Our goal for Saturday was to hike up Whitehouse Mountain, a seldom-climbed mountain on the northern end of the Sneffels Range. Despite feeling like a zombie from the stupid-early start, here’s Claudia powering up the northwestern couloir which allows passage to the upper slopes of Whitehouse. We were stoked to find no snow in here, since we had left our crampons and ice axes at home. After a pleasant stroll along the nearly mile-long summit plateau, we reached the somewhat anti-climatic 13,492 ft. summit of Whitehouse Mountain. We were the first to sign the summit register this year! There’s the town of Ouray 5,700 feet down below! Nice view of Mt. Sneffels on the way back. Back in greener pastures. We napped a few hours in the tent, cooked some cup-o-noodles for lunch, packed up, hiked out, and were back in Ouray by afternoon, looking back up at the summit we had just been standing on that morning!

Dad and I stand on the summit of Mount Whitney, August 2001My dad took a nasty fall on the Pfeifferhorn a few days ago. Pfeifferhorn is a beautiful triangle-shaped granite peak in the Wasatch Mountains, reminiscent of the Swiss Alps — which is how it got its name. The summit ridge amounts to little more than a pile of boulders loosely stacked to a razor-sharp point, which demands sometimes precarious scrambling with exposure to big drops. A snow cornice still covered the main route, so Dad climbed around on the more rugged side of the knife ridge. At one point he lost his footing and/or hold, and went down onto a lower rock, breaking his trekking pole, exploding his hip-mounted water bottle and smacking both of his forearms. Later that day he described his injury — swelling and rampant bruising — and I couldn't help but think, "sounds like a broken arm." I appealed to my mother to see if Dad might be willing to get it checked out.Dad on the summit ridge of the Pfeifferhorn, July 2010"I thought the very same, and will be watching it," she wrote. "Your Dad just rolled his eyes. The swelling seems to be going down. His arms have wicked bruises. He is going hiking with Tom tomorrow so that must be where you get it."Dad on Ch-paa-qn Mountain in Montana, August 2010Where I get it? Like my dad, I am prone to lapses in grace and resulting blunt-force injuries, but unlike my dad I can be a huge baby about my boo-boos. I still occasionally complain about an injury I sustained on my right elbow two years ago — "My scar hurts today" ... like I'm Harry Potter or something. A decade ago, Dad climbed Mount Nebo — the highest mountain in the Wasatch — with a badly sprained ankle. We'd made big plans out the expedition — I took a day off work, and we drove down the night before to camp at the trailhead. He confided in me that he injured his ankle at work when he stood up from his desk after his leg fell asleep, and toppled over. A funny accident — I laughed. It wasn't until we were 5,000 feet up the summit ridge that he showed me the swollen black and purple mess masking his entire foot. "It doesn't even hurt that bad," he insisted. I couldn't help but wonder if Dad just didn't want to disappoint me — so much so that he was willing to limp up a mountain.Dad and I on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, October 2011I sometimes joke that my dad is solely responsible for hooking me into my outdoors- and endurance-focused lifestyle. Growing up, I was not even remotely an athlete and we were not necessarily an outdoorsy family. Sure, we went on vacations to Yellowstone and Arches National Parks, but beyond that I was a bookish kid who liked reading and music. When I was 12 or 13, dad made some mountaineering friends who introduced him to hiking routes in the Wasatch. A couple of years later, he started inviting me. My sisters were still too young and a few degrees more disinterested than me in hiking, but even I can't say I was enamored with the thought of lots of sweating and sore legs just to look at pretty scenery. Still, there was appeal to the idea of a day-long outing with just my dad and me, and on some level I didn't want to disappoint him, so I agreed.Dad and I at Phantom Ranch, September 2006I was 16 when we embarked on my first truly big adventure, Mount Timpanogos. I had just acquired my first brand new pair of leather hiking boots, which in my mind marked me as a serious hiker. Dad carried most of the snacks — Twizzlers and granola bars — allowing me to get away with just a bottle of water around my hip. We drove to the trailhead in bleary predawn dusk. The air was dusty and sweet. We climbed with the sun as my dad instituted snack breaks and blister checks; and we talked with comfortable honesty as fatigue broke down my teenage information-withholding walls. The aspen canopy opened up to a wide meadow of wildflowers, and then we ascended to a moonscape of granite. One final gasp to the peak and suddenly I could see everything — everythi