5 days and 4 nights in the Southern Winds

I have been taking later-summer/early fall hiking and climbing trips to the Wind River mountain range in Wyoming for the last fifteen years. These trips have ranged between week long excursions focused on climbing to simple hike-in-and-set-up-camp for a few days trips with larger groups of people with widely varying levels of fitness. This year, I suggested to Doug, one of my very fit friends, that we try a slightly more aggressive loop hike that would cover almost fifty miles of trail over the most scenic spots in the Southern Wind River range. I just returned from this trek last week and thought I would post a number of the snapshots from this trip.

The Wind River Mountains

The Winds are a relatively unknown Rocky Mountain range that gets little visitation compared to the Grand Tetons, its smaller sibling located about 100 miles to the northwest of the winds. The Wind Rivers are located on National Forest land and there are no large highways that cross it or even come close to the photogenic parts of this mountain range. They look like a large brown lump in the distance when viewed from US-189, which parallels the range about forty miles to the west. These factors account for its relative obscurity. I think it may be one of the prettiest places in the US Rockies. But since you can’t drive a car to any of that beauty, it remains unspoiled and infrequently visited. Here is a google map showing the northwest corner of Wyoming with the location of the Wind River Range annotated. You can see that it is a much larger range than the Tetons:

The hike we decided to take is located in the southern part of the range. The trailhead is one of the most popular launching points for this part of the range and usually has anywhere from 50 to 100 cars in the parking area. But because of the large land area and numerous trails, it is rare to see more than half a dozen people a day on any of the trails once you get out of the immediate area of the trailhead. Here is a google map showing the approximate location of the loop we decided to hike:

Day 1 – Big Sandy trailhead to Skull Lake

The first part of the hike was a relatively easy ten mile trek from the trailhead to Skull Lake. This part of the hike involves mostly rolling terrain through a series of meadows that parallel the higher parts of the mountains just to the east of the trail:

We had pretty good weather for the first few hours of the hike, and the picture above makes it look pretty innocuous. However, about two hours after this picture was taken, we had to sit out a pretty fierce electrical storm in a small group of trees that seemed to offer the best protection from any nastiness from the lightning.

After a good soaking, we arrived at our destination for the first night at Skull Lake and were treated to a very pretty evening sunset. Here is a picture of Doug near the lake as the sun was going down. He is the silhouetted figure on the right of the photo. This is also when we discovered that the pump on my water filter had failed. (Note to myself and any other hikers: check your equipment before leaving the house!). So it was going to have to be careful water source selection along with boiling less trustworthy water sources the rest of the trip. I hoped our stove fuel would be sufficient to prepare food and sterilize all the lake water we would need to drink on the trip.

Day 2 – Skull Lake to Grave Lake

This day dawned sunny and we were able to pack all of our tents and gear completely dry. Our goal today was to make the pull over the Continental Divide via Hailey Pass and then continue down the other side to camp at Grave Lake. So far, all of our campsites had pretty ominous names! We had been over Hailey Pass about seven years ago, and my recollection was that it was a very windy place. We took the left hand fork of the trail at Maes Lake and headed up toward the pass. A waning moon was setting over Ambush Peak, and presented a nice opportunity to take this picture:

Did I mention windy? It began to appear that our previous experience was no anomaly. The prevailing winds this time of year are from the southwest, and the configuration of these mountains appear to be a natural venturi. The higher we got, the more intense the wind became. I took this picture crouching on the lee side of a some talus blocks looking back toward Ambush Peak:

The closer we got to the top of Hailey Pass, the more crazy the wind situation became. By the time we reached a pair of small lakes named Twin Lakes just below the pass, the wind was easily over 50 miles per hour and gusting to 75. I have been in some intense wind on Mount Washington in New Hampshire and been through four hurricanes here on the Gulf Coast, and this was approaching hurricane velocity.

When we reached the actual top of the pass, the wind was scary. My combined body weight and pack was about 200 pounds, and twice I was lifted completely off my feet by a gust of wind and dumped on my butt. Needless to say, we slowly and carefully made our way down the very steep scree on the north side of the pass and worked our way down the east flank of Pyramid Peak and Mt Hooker. As we got lower, the wind velocity gradually dissipated. I felt safe enough to take this picture looking west toward Tower Peak and Glissade Peak:

We made camp about halfway along Grave Lake and were treated to an amazing sunset looking back toward Mount Hooker.

Camp on Grave Lake

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Sunset over Mt. Hooker

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Day 3 – Grave Lake to Valentine Lake

This day began with low clouds and gusty winds. We began hiking after breakfast, and the first snow flurries began. At first, the precipitation consisted of snow pellets, or graupel. We hiked the rest of way around Grave Lake and over the small mountain separating it from the South Fork of the Little Wind River valley. We turned south down the valley and the snow increased. After perusing the map, we decided to drop our packs and hike about two miles up the Washakie Pass trail to get access to some streams that were sourced high in the mountains and very unlikely to contain sheep shit induced giardia bacteria. We had seen some bear tracks, so we thought it would be a good idea to remove our food from the packs and hang it in a tree for the time we were on this side hike. The snow became more intense while we did this:

We got to the stream we had located on the map and filled our water bottles. We met a nice couple coming down the east side of Washakie pass, and their description did not make it sound any more appealing than the Hailey Pass we had negotiated the day before. We hiked back to our packs, stowed the food and began the hike toward Valentine Lake. The snow and wind began to increase. The trail crossed the South Fork of Little Wind River. The river was not terribly deep, but it the water was up slightly and it was wide. I had fallen in this creek trying to boulder hop a few years ago, and I decided that getting wet socks and boots in the middle of a snowstorm did not sound too appealing. I remembered that the hideous, but lightweight Crocs I had brought as camp shoes had pretty decent traction, so I removed my boots and socks and stowed them safely in my pack. I rolled up my pants and waded the creek. I put my socks and boots back on after crossing the creek. I tied the Crocs to rock and hurled them back across the creek to Doug so he could cross the same way. Here is a video of him crossing:

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

We hiked uphill from the creek toward Valentine Lake. The snow continued to fall and the visibility was poor. The lake is not visible from the trail, and we had to carefully look for an outlet stream from the lake crossing the trail as our sign that we needed to head south through the trees to find the lake. We found it and were able to find a small but usable campsite near the lake. The weather cleared up long enough to take a few good pictures, and then the snow began again. We got one more break in the snow that allowed us to cook our dinner.

Looking for Valentine Lake in the snow

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Valentine Lake during a break in the snow

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Setting sun over Valentine Lake as the snow began to stop

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Chilly night at Valentine Lake

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Day 4 – Valentine Lake to Cirque of the Towers

We woke up to clear skies and cold temperatures. Fortunately, we were able to pack up most of our gear with very little moisture on it and after breakfast began the big hike over the Lizard Head Trail. This section of trail is about 8 miles of hiking that is all above 11,500 feet and well above timberline. This was certainly the diciest section of the hike because of the extended exposure above timberline. It would definitely not be a good place to be stuck during an electrical storm. As it turned out, we got to the pass and the weather was very cold and windy, but we had no snow and no lightning, so we had to tell ourselves that 25 degrees and 25 mile per hour winds was a pretty good alternative.

The view from this trail is spectacular. The wide open nature of the trail allowed us to peer west into the high peaks of the Wind Rivers and beyond into the plains. Here is a view on the trail up to the Lizard Head Trail looking down at Valentine Lake:

Looking down on Valentine Lake on the way up to Lizard Head Trail

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A cold and windy Lizard Head trail

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Low temperatures and wind make dressing warmly a must:

Bundling up against the cold and wind

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After a few hours hiking, we started down the very steep and loose trail toward Lizard Head Meadows, which is in the valley formed by the North Popo Agie River. We hiked up this valley toward Lonesome Lake and the Cirque of the Towers. We were able to catch a glimpse of Dog Tooth Spire through the trees as we descended back below timberline:

Dog Tooth Spire

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We ended our day with another climb up into the high valley that sits above Lonesome Lake and below the spectacular peaks of the Cirque. We pitched our tents in beautiful meadow below Warbonnnet Peak:

Camping below Warbonnet

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After dinner, we walked up to Jackass Pass to take some pictures in the long light of evening:

Looking south from Jackass Pass toward East Mount Temple and Deep Lake

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Looking north toward Pingora and Wolfshead Peak

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Dusk falls over our camp in the Cirque

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Day 5 – Leaving the Cirque for the trailhead

We awoke to a clear cold day with the morning alpenglow hitting the top of Watchtower:

Early morning alpenglow hitting Watchtower in the Cirque

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We took the shortcut across Jackass Pass and boulder hopped around the west side of Arrowhead Lake. We were almost out of food and begin to envision the cold beer waiting for us back in town. We raced down the pass to Big Sandy Lake and then knocked off the last six mile slog from the Lake back to the trailhead in short order. As we began the drive over the 35-40 miles of dirt road back toward Pinedale, we looked back on the range from 20 miles away:

The Southern Wind River range from the west

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The beer was very good.

A great time with a great group of people

I spent this last weekend Asheville, North Carolina conducting a quick-as-lightning one day workshop on making digital negatives with the QTR RIP. The workshop had the usual challenges and ups-and-downs, which seem to be the only constant anytime you do your show “on the road”.

But what was great was the group of people taking the class. This group of photographers are all part of that hard-core subgroup of photographers whose primary means of photographic expression involves the use of the wet-plate collodion process. As in tintypes or ambrotypes. This is a daunting process that is at once both easy and terribly difficult – but it was the primary means of photographic expression from the 1860s until the invention of the gelatin dry-plate in the 1890s. Chances are that any photograph you have ever seen from the American Civil War was made using this process.

This group of photographers met when they all took a class at the Scully-Osterman studio in Rochester, New York several years ago. They got along so famously at that class that they now have an annual gathering where they get together for a week in the summer and spend it making photographs, talking, drinking good scotch, making fun of one another and generally having a good time. Naturally, they immediately dubbed their group “The Masterplaters”. Which appeals immensely to my arrested-development sense of humor.

It is energizing and refreshing to be around a group of funny, smart, and creative people who all support one another. What a privilege to just hang out with the group and absorb all the great energy that they generate.

I snapped a picture of two of the members of this group. They bicker and argue like brothers. And no one believes it for a moment. Monty and Prifti:

These guys look tough, but they are only a danger to each other

I have spent some time in the last few days modifying the appearance of this site once again. After viewing the site on an iPad, I realized that there are a whole new set of factors to consider in web design.

In that spirit, I am going to add a series of articles this site that trace the history of my website, and will culminate in a series of posts on how do go about doing it yourself. The capabilities available today are incredible, and there have been significant advances in just the last year in the reduced effort it takes to create a sophisticated and flexible website.

No giggling, please

This is a test of making a wordpress app blog post directly from my iPad. I know, I know….

Well, anyway, it appears to work. Sort of. It is very limited. Some text and anything in the photo library.

An Iceland landscape. Nifty desktop image, eh?

Shame is overrated

I was recently sent a link to the work of a photographer who is relatively new to the scene. I was immediately struck by the fact that almost all his work looked very familiar. All of the photos made it appear that he had intentionally gone out to find Michael Kenna’s tripod holes and do a rephotographic project of a good chunk of Kenna’s ouvre. But without any postmodernist irony involved. Just blatant copying. I am not going to mention the copyist’s name for two reasons. One is that I hope he will eventually see how lame his exercise really is. The other is that I don’t want to drive any traffic to his site, even for those who just want to shake their heads in amazement.

But for your enjoyment, here is one of the more interesting examples of this copying, because the original Michael Kenna photograph is itself a copy in a way of a photograph taken by Bill Brandt. But to his credit, the Kenna example is not a blatant copy, and even so, he gives full credit to Brandt by naming the photograph “Bill Brandt’s Snicket”.

Here you go:

I am writing this little piece as a reaction to a post my good friend Kerik Kouklis made on his blog in the aftermath of his visit to Fotofest 2010, where he participated in one of The Meeting Place portfolio reviews over a four day session. In his post he talks about the persistent desire from the reviewers for a compelling narrative for the work being shown.

The more I thought about it, the more layers there are to what he experienced. But first, let me give a very brief overview of what the Meeting Place is and how it operates. The short description is that it is a venue to initiate a dialog between the producers of photographs and the people who might have a use for them. The producers of the photographs span the gamut from recent graduates of top art schools to starting-late-in-life hobbyists with a box full of prints that friends have told them are ‘good’. Likewise, the reviewers range from high-powered internationally recognized museum curators to magazine publishers to calendar and greeting card publishers to private collectors who just love to look at photos. The unique thing about The Meeting Place is that it is essentially an all-comers event for both photographers and reviewers. The wild variety this lack of selectivity engenders is a perfect mirror of Houston itself, a city that prides itself on its lack of zoning and its ‘You’re all welcome’ laid-back attitude.

What does a reviewer want?

I just finished telling you that there is no single species of reviewer at the Fotofest Meeting Place review. And then I go and write a heading with the implied premise that there may be one thing that they all want. But hang with me. Here is what I think they want: They want to be part of whatever ‘conversation’ that a given photographer is having with herself or himself.

The Translator

One way to be such a component is to serve as a ‘translator’. If the photographer is saying something with his or her work that is complicated, emotional, difficult to grasp, the reviewer can add value by restating this in a structured way that can be reduced to a few pithy statements. And because it is difficult to tell a story if there is no coherent story to tell, the reviewer can be at a loss if there is not some reasonable unifying thread that ties the work together. In this role, the review adds value by being a verbal intermediary between the artist and the potential audience. But again, there has to be something that can be crafted into a verbal narrative.

The Enabler

Another role the reviewer can play is to act as an enabler, a personal intermediary between the photographer and someone they feel might be interested in the work. They might introduce photographer A to gallery owner B because they believe it is something the gallery owner might be interested in using. Yet again, this introduction requires a verbal description of the work to be effective and potentially enticing to this third party who has not yet been a part of the dialog between the photographer and the reviewer.

The Gatekeeper

Another role the reviewer can play is as a gatekeeper or screener. I view this role as somewhat akin to what a good interior designer would do with a client. They pare down the possibilities and are able to present to a third party a subset of the work they review. They throw out the junk, in other words. This can be anywhere from just weeding out a few ‘stinkers’ from an otherwise good portfolio to just trashing the whole portfolio. And again, if the dialog is to continue and a relationship developed, the reviewer will feel the need for a set of verbal reasons for the selections made. And this is most easily accomplished by a storyline of some sort.

The first portfolio review I attended at Fotofest about six years ago, I made the mistake of taking a portfolio of ‘greatest hits’. The work was all in a similar vein: semi-urban naturalistic landscapes. But it was just a pile of pretty(I like to think, anyway) pictures. The reviewers had no job to do other than nod, and say ‘ummmm… pretty’ or ‘I don’t like that one as much’.

The second time I went, I took a more coherent body of work that had a story behind it. Probably not a good story, but a story nonetheless. It had some visual and semantic coherence. It was actually the Telos portfolio. Here is the interesting part: I got reactions this time. Some were positive, some were negative, but the point is that I gave the reviewers a job to do. They were able to verbalize what they thought I was trying to do and wrestle with it. And engage me in a dialog about it. Which is where they feel like they are adding something to the process. And they were able to create a verbally articulated reason to either hate it, love it or throw it back.

Hasselblad with a cheap homemade lens

One of my experimental jags lately has been using a homemade lens on my medium format camera. The two element design of this lens leaves a lot to be desired: it is sharp only in the center of the image and has severe curvature of the focus plane, which allows only one part of the photo to be truly sharp. But I think the effect can be arresting, especially with casual portraits. Here are three pictures of the fellow photographers I spent last weekend with in Placerville.

Kerik Kouklis, who lives in Placerville

Matt Magruder - an Austinite photographer

'Ike' Eisenlord, a Minneapolis photographer

A weekend in Placerville

I am having a great time with four of my photographer friends in Placerville, California. Kerik Kouklis kindly offered both his home and his family’s tolerance for four of us out-of-towners during a fun midwinter weekend. Bill Schwab, Ike Eisenlord, Matt Magruder and I all showed up on Kerik’s doorstep on Thursday evening. We spent a great time shooting wet-plate collodion tintypes on Friday. Kerik has a great selection of silly props, and everyone got a chance to take turns as both models and photographers.

Kerik explaining to Bill the basic parts of a camera - body, lens, etc.

The pace was exhausting. Occasionally we had to get up for beers.

Kerik: I'm not kidding Matt, just stick your head in the box and I promise there is a really good looking girl in there

Field Marshal Fog directing his minions to the next great photo

Uber-photographer Bill 'The Hunk' Schwab signs yet another autograph for one of his groupies

I decided to work a half day on New Year’s Eve, 2009, and that morning woke up to the first nice winter fog we’ve had in Houston. I drove by Lake Woodlands, and decided it would be worth stopping for a few minutes to take some pictures. The water was like glass. A few members of the Woodlands Rowing club were out on the water in their skulls working up a sweat. Birds calmly flew around. The quiet during these heavy fogs is amazing. I felt as if I could hear somebody sneeze from a half mile away.

The newer digital cameras are inexorably pulling away from the capabilities of traditional film for night photography. Particularly if you shoot in color, the ability of digital cameras to properly color balance all the artificial light sources is a huge advantage in using digital for taking nighttime photographs. The super-sensitive sensors now available on even very small cameras give us the ability to walk around with no tripod and take some very high quality photos that contain very little objectionable noise (digital grain). Here are a few photos I took with a GF1 at ISO 1600. All of them are handheld, and all were exposed using the manual exposure setting on my camera.