The Golden Hour

One of my favorite things about Alaska is all of the low angle light. Here are a few pictures from last weekend's excursion.

WHAT WHAT?!

I found these pictures (courtesy of Endless Adventure International's Facebook Photos) of what appears to be an alpacka product, but it looks more like a "packayak" than a packraft. Anyone know what it is, how it paddles/rolls, and where I can get my hands on one?

After doing a little research it looks like alpacka redid the line and have extended the stern's by 11" on all the models and made the bow pointier, but they are still working on the whitewater packraft. So I guess my real question is if this is one of the new alpackas with the extra 11" or a whitewater prototype? Either way it looks pretty sweet.

Secret Stash

After a dry spell in my BC skiing, I was pretty stoked to get out for three days this weekend. Although temperatures have been hanging around -10 F at the ridge tops, the hardy few that have been getting out there have been treated to empty slopes. On Saturday I got out with Jeff, and Ian for a day at Lipps where we only saw one other group of two. The skiing was pretty good considering we haven't had snow for a little while.

On Sunday I got out with Rob for an epic day! We got an early start and skied 4 laps, totaling 6,600 vertical feet of skiing. 5,500 feet of that was nice powder! We were even able to get back to Anchorage by 5pm so that I could work up my first video from my GoPro.



I went back out today to the secret stash that Rob and I hit up on Sunday and did three more laps with Karl, Jeff, and Andy. After a 10 lap, 14,000 foot weekend in the back country I'm worked. Time to recover for the next weekend.

A New Year, a New Adventure

2011 is here, and we are on to a new adventure. I've got a few goals for this next year. First of all I recently acquired a GoPro Helmet cam so I want to get up to par with taking video and really share my adventures with everyone. With the lack of kayaking footage coming out of Alaska, I really want to get some more out there. I've also got a big list of rivers I want to run this year including: Disappointment Creek (in a kayak), the Tiekel, the Kiagna, the Nellie Juan, Upper Willow (I've really got to get in there this year), and last but not least Devil's Canyon. I've also got a couple true first descents picked out for a packraft (no more of this first packraft descent stuff, time for the real deal). I can't possibly invision how else to get into these creeks than one hell of a hike. We'll just have to see what happens. I'll be lucky to get all of that done.

Here are a few parting shots from the last month of the old year.

November Skiing

Well it took a little while longer than I had hoped to get these out because I wasn't super stoked with the photos. The light was pretty flat this day I had a hard time getting anything other than grey. In the afternoon as the clouds started to break, I started to get some dramatic skies and low angle light. I've got a few landscapes that I've yet to work on. Anyways, after a bit of editing, and a little break, here a few few photos from early November. The skiing was great for two weeks.... and then the rain came.

We'll see what's in store for the weekend. Unless I start hearing good reports about the ski conditions I think Karl and I are going to head out and go ice climbing on Saturday.

Kid Around the Corner

After bumbling around Sunday morning figuring out how daylight savings time and our prearranged meeting times aligned, Karl, Cassie, Steffie and I drove two hours North of Anchorage to climb Kid Around the Corner. Typically Kid Around the Corner is a convenient climb with a short approach, three pitches, and then you can walk off back to the car. This was not the case. In the early season you have to hike up the bluff to the top of the climb, then rappel down the climb in order to climb back up because Caribou Creek is not frozen. Despite the extra work the climb was a blast. The ice was good, but thin and hollow in some parts, which made for some stressed, but non technical leads.

Besides starting the winter off with a bang, I was really excited to get back home and get my pictures worked up in Lightroom. It took a little bit of learning and experimenting to get used to the software, but for the most part it wasn't too bad to learn Lightroom. I feel like I can get around no problem in LR, but I still feel like I have hardly scratched the surface. I think that part of the learning curve for me are all the tricks that correspond with color photography editing, as all of the photography I've done has been black and white and in darkrooms. As far as color photography is concerned I really like that I can play with different colors individually inorder to make different things really pop. I think that one of my favorite features in LR is the nondestructive history. It is fun to see the progress though working up a photo as well as being able to go back and start fresh.

Anyone still there?

There is still someone on this end of the blog. Is anyone still listening?

Well things have finally started to turn around for this poor blog. I actually have a computer (that works), and I've got an internet connection. I'm always trying to be out and doing something and if I'm not doing anything I'll try to be editing photos and posting them up here. Recently I've realized that what I really want to do is go on awesome adventures with friends, and share those adventures with my family and friends that couldn't make it. So in other words, this blog is up and running again, so please stay tuned.

The biggest reason for getting this computer was to be able to use my camera to its full advantage. I've spent the last month trying to get caught up on old pictures (deleting duplicates and bad pictures, and doing simple edits). Once I got caught up, today, I installed a demo version of Adobe Lightroom to use for my DSLR. I thought that Lightroom would be pretty intuitive and that I could crank out a bunch of pictures today to share with you guys. But it has proven to be a little more tedious that I thought. I was able to get one picture done though.

Here are a couple pictures I've finished up from the Klondike this year. For those that don't know the Klondike is one part road trip, one part 100 mile running relay, and one part party thrown into a school bus and shaken for three days.

Stay tuned as the snow is here, and the ice has formed. I'm heading out tomorrow with Karl, Steffi and Cassie to go explore Kid Around the Corner up Caribou Creek. On that note, I'd better get my points sharpended, gear together, and camera in the bag.