Large-format camera equipment is heavy. When I leave the road for a five-day wilderness photo shoot, my pack weighs
70 pounds - about half my body weight. As my knees approach the half-century mark, it's become increasingly clear that
I need help to reach the remote wilderness valleys where many of my best photos have been made. In the summer of 2005,
I enlisted a former semi-pro mountain bike racer who is 15 years younger and four inches taller than I am to help me pack
my gear into Sunlight Basin, 16 miles from the Vallecito Campground trailhead in the Weminuche Wilderness near Durango.
The difficulty of the approach was compounded by the enormous piles of avalanche debris that blocked the trail in six places.
An unrelenting series of fierce storms the year before had brought down the biggest avalanches in a hundred years. The
avalanches had snapped off hundreds of trees two feet in diameter and piled them up like a giant's game of pickup sticks.
The approach took us nearly two days. Our second morning in Sunlight Basin dawned stormy, but the rising sun found a
hole in the clouds and spotlighted 14,082-foot Windom Peak, (on the left) leaving 13,995-foot Sunlight Spire and 14,059-foot
Sunlight Peak in deep blue shadow.
To order an 11x14 loose, matted-only or framed print of Stormy
Sunrise Over Windom and Sunlight Peaks, please visit my product catalog by clicking the link beneath the appropriate
thumbnail below.
|
