Off to the Mountains!
For those of you who aren't familiar with the Palisades, they're a chain of 14,000 peaks in the Sierra Nevada mountains just outside of Bishop (which is about 60 miles south of the Mammoth ski area). Though not quite as tall as the more well known Mt. Whitney which lies about 60 miles to the south, the peaks are more isolated, more rugged and more difficult to climb. There are no trails to the top and most involve technical climbing, i.e. rope and gear.
So, instead of taking a nice relaxing vacation on the beach like I should have after a long season of shooting, I decide to hike in 8 miles over two 12,000 peaks with 65 pounds on my back. If that sounds like suffering, I can assure you it is. Long ago, I came to the realization that actually doing the mountaineering isn't all that fun, but it makes everything that comes after it seem easy and the food taste so much better.
My partner in suffering was Taylor Abeel. He's also a photographer - some of you may know him from working with me. You can check out his work at Violet Hill Photography. Once we set up base camp, we tackled Thunderbolt Peak which just cracks the 14,000 mark with a height of 14,003 feet. The routefinding was a little tricky - here's Taylor crawling through a tight spot.
Here's the two of us just below the summit of the peak. (The actual summit block only fits one person at a time.)
The next day, we climbed the jewel of the Sierra: North Palisade. You can see it in the center of this photo. I don't have any photos of the climb because I decided to leave my camera at our basecamp. It was just too heavy for the technical climbing that we had to do. Suffice it to say that it was a great climb and the exposure of looking a thousand feet down to the glacier made it like a fun day at disneyland.
After it all was over, we headed off to the hot springs outside of Mammoth. It's like a little spot of heaven on Earth.
Finally, here's some scenics of the Palisades that I shot from our basecamp. I was pretty much dead tired after all of the hiking and climbing, but I figured since I brought the dumb thing (my camera), I might as well use it. And I'm glad I did. :-)
So, instead of taking a nice relaxing vacation on the beach like I should have after a long season of shooting, I decide to hike in 8 miles over two 12,000 peaks with 65 pounds on my back. If that sounds like suffering, I can assure you it is. Long ago, I came to the realization that actually doing the mountaineering isn't all that fun, but it makes everything that comes after it seem easy and the food taste so much better.
My partner in suffering was Taylor Abeel. He's also a photographer - some of you may know him from working with me. You can check out his work at Violet Hill Photography. Once we set up base camp, we tackled Thunderbolt Peak which just cracks the 14,000 mark with a height of 14,003 feet. The routefinding was a little tricky - here's Taylor crawling through a tight spot.
Here's the two of us just below the summit of the peak. (The actual summit block only fits one person at a time.)
The next day, we climbed the jewel of the Sierra: North Palisade. You can see it in the center of this photo. I don't have any photos of the climb because I decided to leave my camera at our basecamp. It was just too heavy for the technical climbing that we had to do. Suffice it to say that it was a great climb and the exposure of looking a thousand feet down to the glacier made it like a fun day at disneyland.
After it all was over, we headed off to the hot springs outside of Mammoth. It's like a little spot of heaven on Earth.
Finally, here's some scenics of the Palisades that I shot from our basecamp. I was pretty much dead tired after all of the hiking and climbing, but I figured since I brought the dumb thing (my camera), I might as well use it. And I'm glad I did. :-)
Labels: Personal Work
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