Man, we're wearing out! Must be about time to head home. Our last day in Joshua Tree we headed to the Hall of Horrors for a few climbs that were recommended to us. We started out heading up a couple "R" rated routes, which mean there's not enough places for protection to be very safe, and a fall would likely result in injury. We felt they were more like "X" rated, as a fall meant you'd definitely hit the ground and die. These could EASILY be well protected and very nice climbs, but Joshua Tree National Park does not allow the installation or replacements of bolts for climbing anymore. Kinda lame.
Here's Kelsey running it way out on Zardoz 5.8R.
We climbed a couple other nice climbs, and then moved over to Exorcist 5.10, which worked us over good. The crack is too thin to use as a typical crack, and there's just hardly any feet at all.
But the top offers loads of relief for the weary climber!
Now we're working our way through California! More to come, but not for very much longer.
If you're climbing near the bay area, i have friends who would love to meet and climb you. They've been drooling over both threads!
Thanks! I think we've got our schedule packed though, and judging by how badly beat we are from yesterday, we need a day or two off. The offer is much appreciated though!
Yesterday we met up with Marc in Santa Barbara and he showed us around one of the local climbing areas, Gibraltar Rock. The drive up the mountain offers stunning views, and what looks like it used to be a spectacular neighborhood. Unfortunately this is where the recent fire swept through, and many of the homes were burned to the ground. I've seen fires before of course, but I haven't seen one where so many homes were lost at once. It was a bit eerie driving up to the rocks.
Of course another perspective is the incredible blessings for some people. I read a letter to a local paper about three firefighters in one engine company who put in a ton of effort and managed to save a whole street from the flames.
We managed to reach the rocks, and Kelsey took the lead up a nice easy 5.6 crack. Marc followed up to get on our static line and get some footage of his own!
For several hours, a group of folks went gliding by one by one. We tried fitting them into our climbing shots, but I personally was largely unsuccessful.
We put a lot of effort into this climb, The Nose 5.11b. The issue for us was the crack is just a tiny bit too thin to fit our whole hands in, forcing us to try to jam with just our knuckles. I took a few tries and eventually made it, but nobody else managed to. Tracy refused to try, even though her thin hands may have made it a cakewalk for her. Here's Kelsey working into the crux!
Tracy did make her way to the anchors by another means. Here she is floating over Santa Barbara.
Marc put in a good effort as well.
Not even bending under the pressure of the paparazzi!
After flailing away for a while, we made our way up and over the rock to the other side, where Marc showed us to a spectacular crack climb.
Marc had it all right, the climb was incredible. I flailed on one move until I gave up and took another route, but Kelsey and Marc got on after me and Tracy and put in some good effort. Here's Marc, as the sun starts going down.
This is the move that stopped me in my tracks. I dunno... maybe sitting in the kia for days and days has sapped my strength!
Kelsey's hands were chewed to pieces (check his thread!!!) so climbing more crack must have been pretty painful.
These little flowers may have turned out a bit red, but everything was definitely heavily painted in the sunset light.
Here's a stitch from the base of the route (T-Crack) to the top. Kelsey is standing on top of the move I didn't make.
Nature paints a beautiful picture at dusk.
Thanks again Marc for showing us the climbing! We're taking a nice break at Kelsey's Brother's in San Fran before we head north to my parents'. Hope everyone is still enjoying these!
I am thrilled Kelsy made the mantle forgot what a pain that move was.
Thank you for a great day in the hills. Oh and BTW I owe you two slings, as they are still hanging from my steady cam
I hope to post the interview with you guys once I get a bit of time to edit it!
Safe travels home!
Still am blown away that you made the nose in two triesthumb
Heh, no worries on the slings, we've got extras and they're cheap. Kelsey literally jumped right through the mantle without slowing down, made it look way too easy. He says the rest of the climb was a bit harder. We're looking forward to seeing what you got!
San Francisco has been a great town for the two days we've been wandering around. Yesterday we hit up Chinatown, but didn't bring the cameras out of the bags all day, for some reason. Today we checked out Alcatraz, and then dropped in on Smugmug headquarters and were definitely impressed by the huge and beautiful images all over the walls. If you haven't been there, it's an awesome place for any photographer to check out! Plus, the people are pretty nice too.
While wandering around in Chinatown yesterday, I found a nice Mexican who offered me a deal I couldn't resist on a brand new 70-300mm sigma. That brings my life's list of lenses up to two. I was stoked as soon as I took the first shot, and even more stoked today, shooting BIFs on the foggy ferry to The Rock.
I've never really been able to reach out and touch birds like this. I think I'm going to have fun with this! I may even get hooked and have to go bigger!
Leafy vines cover a large portion of the ancient concrete walls on Alcatraz.
Evidently one of the reasons for closing the prison was the sea air corroding the walls.
Access is still limited to almost everywhere your imagination wishes to be set free to explore.
I got kind of obsessed with this water tower. I found it quite picturesque.
I found my shots inside the cell block to be a little tougher, but I salvaged a few that I like!
The low light in the cell block evidently helped in the escape of the three criminals who made it out at least as far as the ocean and were never seen again.
One window of this type was even breached at one point, but the escapee was caught shortly after.
Views are pretty discouraging and limited from the yard.
On the inside, things look a little bleak.
But out in the fresh air, the place really is beautiful.
Nature is making some good progress at taking the island back, even with all the activity going on.
I thought this was striking. It's the view arriving criminals get to see overhead before they're stuck inside for good.
So that's today in pictures! It was quite educational in more than a few ways. I tried to process these in a different style than my usual, making me think quite a bit and getting some different results that I like a lot. Hope you all enjoyed them as well!
Before we took off from San Francisco we had one or two things left on the agenda. First up was Lombard Street, something we'd seen once or twice online. Of course we had to take the kia down it, just like everyone else.
And lastly, we had to drive over the most famous bridge we know of.
We stopped for a moment to take advantage of the miserable light. I stitched this from six images, for some reason I don't recall right now.
More to come soon, I've got one last pano stitching as I type this! Hope you guys like really big trees.
While driving north along the coast at one point, Kelsey spotted a bird sitting just off the road. We turned around and checked it out, and found some type of raptor hunched and hobbling around. He wasn't moving fast or really trying to get away from us at all, so we shared a few words and took some pictures.
I've never really gotten this close to a bird of prey in the wild. It was pretty cool.
We headed on down the road, stopping briefly to report the injured bird to a state parks person who promised they'd contact the proper people. Then we moved on and pitched our tent under the giant redwoods. While connecting a tent pole, I spotted a tiny face peering at me from the foliated forest floor.
We played around some with our new friend, then we hit the sack. Having driven in at night, the morning swamped us in all sorts of new and awesome things! Here's a moss covered tree.
Our diminutive SUV wannabe is positively dwarfed by these forest giants.
Here's a stitched pano of the road, although because I turned and look up as I shot, you don't get the same "towered over" effect.
We found it kind of tricky to shoot the redwoods, because it's hard to get a whole tree into a picture.
Kelsey takes his shot at the inside of one tree.
I stitched a couple 360 panos. This one really shows the "big"ness of the place, because at full size you can see Kelsey wandering along a trail. He's less than a pixel at this size. We've got so many panos from this trip, we're planning on printing a couple. This should be a cool one to hang on the wall!
In several places you can walk alongside the fallen redwoods. This one came down in '94, with a couple other trees at the same time.
We took a little offshoot road that got us up a hillside and into a massive grove with some really cool sights.
Clovers are all over the place, but this one struck me as especially intriguing.
Ferns are all over too!
It wouldn't be hard at all to turn some of these trees into quite comfortable living arrangements. This one is almost as big as our apartment. Seriously. It even has more doors AND windows!
Now this morning we're about to begin our two-thousand five-hundred mile drive to Anchorage, and our trip to the smugmug shootout and back will be over. Stay tuned for at least a couple more posts!
Hey John! I haven't checked in on this thread in a while so I would stop being jealous of you guys. I'm in Mountain View CA now with a little extra time at the hotel so I figured it was about time to check in since they said you guys were at HQ not too long ago. All I can say is WOW! You've been to so many great places and shared with us so many great photos and stories. You could easily write a book about this epic journey of yours. Tell Tracy and Kelsey I say hi and I've still got my rope wrist band on. Take care and get home safe.
Hey John! I haven't checked in on this thread in a while so I would stop being jealous of you guys. I'm in Mountain View CA now with a little extra time at the hotel so I figured it was about time to check in since they said you guys were at HQ not too long ago. All I can say is WOW! You've been to so many great places and shared with us so many great photos and stories. You could easily write a book about this epic journey of yours. Tell Tracy and Kelsey I say hi and I've still got my rope wrist band on. Take care and get home safe.
Thanks Nick! Tracy says to tell you you're awesome. Saw your print on the wall at smugmug and I have to say I'm inspired to try something that big now myself. We may very well make a book, we've been trying to think of how we'd do that and include both of our pictures and make it something worth having.
No new pics today, but I figured I'd drop in and say hi.
With all those miles, it's nice to see gas price less than half what it was a couple months ago.
Cuong
Yeah that's a good thing... but up here in Alaska where we MAKE the gas, we're still at 3.50! That's a dollar less than it was when we left, but we did miss Texas a little for their 1.79 prices. :cry
We haven't told everyone yet about our new car. We got a few hundred miles into Canada and the transmission on the Kia died completely, so we were set back about sixteen hours while we slept and found a replacement. Of course it's cheaper to just replace the whole CAR than it is to replace a transmission, so Kelsey found us a nice Mazda minivan. We swapped all our gear over (with nothing even hanging off the outside anymore), slapped a smuggy sticker on the front, and drove off into another night! It's so much better than the Kia, we probably should have done that way earlier. It's up to Kelsey to post up some pics though, I neglected to get any good ones.
So anyway, we're home now! I'm trying to put together an animation of the trip up the Al-Can highway, but in the meantime, here's our stop at Liard River Hot Springs late at night while it was snowing.
The wind was blowing a bit in the parking lot, and temperatures were somewhere around zero, so we bundled up as much as possible in the car, and then jumped out and ran the half mile to the spring by headlamp.
It was less windy when we got there, but still snowing.
This is really not something you get to do every day.
Somebody had to do this, of course, so Kelsey stepped up.
And took the icy shower!
Here's a seven or eight minute exposure, actually two shots stitched and with some minor corner cloning. Tracy is the red smudgey ghost and I think I might be the head and shoulders one.
Every now and then we had to dunk our heads to warm up, but Tracy didn't want to get her hair wet, so she wound up with some steam frost instead.
So the trip is over, and it was of course fantastic. We're working on catching up with life now. Hope everyone enjoyed this thread! I'll post up again when I finish the pics of driving.
Tracy looks lovely with that hair. Your epic adventure is something that many dgrinners will remember for a long time.
Cuong
Thanks a ton Cuong! Just noticed I uploaded a non-edited shot of Tracy, so I fixed it up with one with better colors. We had a lot of fun this trip, and I'm definitely happy to share all that with everyone else!
And finally, to finish off my pictures, here's an animation of the drive from Portland, Oregon to Wasilla, Alaska! The last picture is of us jump starting my car at my buddy's house so me and Tracy could get home to our apartment. Enjoy!
So the trip is over, and it was of course fantastic.
I haven't been commenting along the way, but both of these threads have been an incredible read with some truly great pictures. Three cheers well deserved. Now it's time to settle in for the winter and compile that book!
Thanks so much for the compliments everyone! It's great to hear that people like my shots!
I just made an interesting discovery when I transferred these photos to my desktop computer... on my nice LCD monitor most of my recent photos are way oversaturated. Are they oversaturated for you guys here? I'm thinking I'm going to get them all on that computer and adjust everything properly. It's a lot of work, but I can't just sit here knowing my photos aren't as good as I want. Just wanted to know what everyone else is seeing first.
It's taken me three days to get through it all. I am completely overwhelmed by your narrative and remarkable images. congratulations on a journey well traveled.
I hope you're able to profit a bit from your photos. certainly several are worthy of publication in various periodicals.
Thanks so much guys! I've been meaning still to take a picture of our road trip map for posting. I'll get around to it sometime, especially now that I've told you all about it. Life is pretty busy catching up here at home, but we've got a couple new adventures planned out already, so we'll be posting NEW threads, finally.
So now that I'm home and settled, I'm considering starting work on a photo book, probably not just of this trip, but including it. This is probably covered elsewhere in the forum, so I'll do a search for it, but does anyone recommend a certain photo book publisher as the best way to go? I'd love to make something really high quality of course, and include several years of photos and the stories that go with. I'm even willing to do my own layout and such if that beats the common pre-packaged deals out there. Just figured I'd ask here, since people seem interested!
Comments
Here's Kelsey running it way out on Zardoz 5.8R.
We climbed a couple other nice climbs, and then moved over to Exorcist 5.10, which worked us over good.
But the top offers loads of relief for the weary climber!
Now we're working our way through California! More to come, but not for very much longer.
www.morffed.com
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
Heading up 1 or 101?
Thanks Ian! We took the 101 this far (San Francisco), and we're planning on hitting up the coast road for the rest of the trip to Oregon.
Thanks! I think we've got our schedule packed though, and judging by how badly beat we are from yesterday, we need a day or two off. The offer is much appreciated though!
Yesterday we met up with Marc in Santa Barbara and he showed us around one of the local climbing areas, Gibraltar Rock. The drive up the mountain offers stunning views, and what looks like it used to be a spectacular neighborhood. Unfortunately this is where the recent fire swept through, and many of the homes were burned to the ground. I've seen fires before of course, but I haven't seen one where so many homes were lost at once. It was a bit eerie driving up to the rocks.
Of course another perspective is the incredible blessings for some people. I read a letter to a local paper about three firefighters in one engine company who put in a ton of effort and managed to save a whole street from the flames.
We managed to reach the rocks, and Kelsey took the lead up a nice easy 5.6 crack. Marc followed up to get on our static line and get some footage of his own!
For several hours, a group of folks went gliding by one by one. We tried fitting them into our climbing shots, but I personally was largely unsuccessful.
We put a lot of effort into this climb, The Nose 5.11b. The issue for us was the crack is just a tiny bit too thin to fit our whole hands in, forcing us to try to jam with just our knuckles. I took a few tries and eventually made it, but nobody else managed to. Tracy refused to try, even though her thin hands may have made it a cakewalk for her.
Tracy did make her way to the anchors by another means. Here she is floating over Santa Barbara.
Marc put in a good effort as well.
Not even bending under the pressure of the paparazzi!
After flailing away for a while, we made our way up and over the rock to the other side, where Marc showed us to a spectacular crack climb.
Marc had it all right, the climb was incredible. I flailed on one move until I gave up and took another route, but Kelsey and Marc got on after me and Tracy and put in some good effort. Here's Marc, as the sun starts going down.
This is the move that stopped me in my tracks.
Kelsey's hands were chewed to pieces (check his thread!!!) so climbing more crack must have been pretty painful.
These little flowers may have turned out a bit red, but everything was definitely heavily painted in the sunset light.
Here's a stitch from the base of the route (T-Crack) to the top. Kelsey is standing on top of the move I didn't make.
Nature paints a beautiful picture at dusk.
Thanks again Marc for showing us the climbing! We're taking a nice break at Kelsey's Brother's in San Fran before we head north to my parents'. Hope everyone is still enjoying these!
www.morffed.com
I am thrilled Kelsy made the mantle
Thank you for a great day in the hills. Oh and BTW I owe you two slings, as they are still hanging from my steady cam
I hope to post the interview with you guys once I get a bit of time to edit it!
Safe travels home!
Still am blown away that you made the nose in two tries
Muench Workshops
MW on Facebook
Heh, no worries on the slings, we've got extras and they're cheap. Kelsey literally jumped right through the mantle without slowing down, made it look way too easy. He says the rest of the climb was a bit harder.
www.morffed.com
While wandering around in Chinatown yesterday, I found a nice Mexican who offered me a deal I couldn't resist on a brand new 70-300mm sigma. That brings my life's list of lenses up to two. I was stoked as soon as I took the first shot, and even more stoked today, shooting BIFs on the foggy ferry to The Rock.
I've never really been able to reach out and touch birds like this. I think I'm going to have fun with this!
Leafy vines cover a large portion of the ancient concrete walls on Alcatraz.
Evidently one of the reasons for closing the prison was the sea air corroding the walls.
Access is still limited to almost everywhere your imagination wishes to be set free to explore.
I got kind of obsessed with this water tower. I found it quite picturesque.
I found my shots inside the cell block to be a little tougher, but I salvaged a few that I like!
The low light in the cell block evidently helped in the escape of the three criminals who made it out at least as far as the ocean and were never seen again.
One window of this type was even breached at one point, but the escapee was caught shortly after.
Views are pretty discouraging and limited from the yard.
On the inside, things look a little bleak.
But out in the fresh air, the place really is beautiful.
Nature is making some good progress at taking the island back, even with all the activity going on.
I thought this was striking. It's the view arriving criminals get to see overhead before they're stuck inside for good.
So that's today in pictures! It was quite educational in more than a few ways. I tried to process these in a different style than my usual, making me think quite a bit and getting some different results that I like a lot. Hope you all enjoyed them as well!
www.morffed.com
I like what you did with Alcatraz too - the yard shot shows how daunting it must have been to be locked in there
Jase // www.stonesque.com
Before we took off from San Francisco we had one or two things left on the agenda. First up was Lombard Street, something we'd seen once or twice online.
And lastly, we had to drive over the most famous bridge we know of.
We stopped for a moment to take advantage of the miserable light. I stitched this from six images, for some reason I don't recall right now.
More to come soon, I've got one last pano stitching as I type this! Hope you guys like really big trees.
www.morffed.com
You guy must be from outta town
Hopefully, you made it to the Lost Coast and if you did, that you enjoyed your visit
I've never really gotten this close to a bird of prey in the wild. It was pretty cool.
We headed on down the road, stopping briefly to report the injured bird to a state parks person who promised they'd contact the proper people. Then we moved on and pitched our tent under the giant redwoods. While connecting a tent pole, I spotted a tiny face peering at me from the foliated forest floor.
We played around some with our new friend, then we hit the sack. Having driven in at night, the morning swamped us in all sorts of new and awesome things! Here's a moss covered tree.
Our diminutive SUV wannabe is positively dwarfed by these forest giants.
Here's a stitched pano of the road, although because I turned and look up as I shot, you don't get the same "towered over" effect.
We found it kind of tricky to shoot the redwoods, because it's hard to get a whole tree into a picture.
Kelsey takes his shot at the inside of one tree.
I stitched a couple 360 panos. This one really shows the "big"ness of the place, because at full size you can see Kelsey wandering along a trail. He's less than a pixel at this size.
In several places you can walk alongside the fallen redwoods. This one came down in '94, with a couple other trees at the same time.
We took a little offshoot road that got us up a hillside and into a massive grove with some really cool sights.
Clovers are all over the place, but this one struck me as especially intriguing.
Ferns are all over too!
It wouldn't be hard at all to turn some of these trees into quite comfortable living arrangements. This one is almost as big as our apartment. Seriously. It even has more doors AND windows!
Now this morning we're about to begin our two-thousand five-hundred mile drive to Anchorage, and our trip to the smugmug shootout and back will be over. Stay tuned for at least a couple more posts!
www.morffed.com
Jase // www.stonesque.com
SmugMug Technical Account Manager
Travel = good. Woo, shooting!
nickwphoto
+1
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
We're hovering at close to 17,000 at the moment, and we're still on our way home!
Thanks Andy! That does mean a lot coming from you!
Thanks Nick! Tracy says to tell you you're awesome. Saw your print on the wall at smugmug and I have to say I'm inspired to try something that big now myself.
No new pics today, but I figured I'd drop in and say hi.
www.morffed.com
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Cuong
Yeah that's a good thing... but up here in Alaska where we MAKE the gas, we're still at 3.50! That's a dollar less than it was when we left, but we did miss Texas a little for their 1.79 prices. :cry
We haven't told everyone yet about our new car. We got a few hundred miles into Canada and the transmission on the Kia died completely, so we were set back about sixteen hours while we slept and found a replacement. Of course it's cheaper to just replace the whole CAR than it is to replace a transmission, so Kelsey found us a nice Mazda minivan. We swapped all our gear over (with nothing even hanging off the outside anymore), slapped a smuggy sticker on the front, and drove off into another night!
So anyway, we're home now! I'm trying to put together an animation of the trip up the Al-Can highway, but in the meantime, here's our stop at Liard River Hot Springs late at night while it was snowing.
The wind was blowing a bit in the parking lot, and temperatures were somewhere around zero, so we bundled up as much as possible in the car, and then jumped out and ran the half mile to the spring by headlamp.
It was less windy when we got there, but still snowing.
This is really not something you get to do every day.
Somebody had to do this, of course, so Kelsey stepped up.
And took the icy shower!
Here's a seven or eight minute exposure, actually two shots stitched and with some minor corner cloning. Tracy is the red smudgey ghost and I think I might be the head and shoulders one.
Every now and then we had to dunk our heads to warm up, but Tracy didn't want to get her hair wet, so she wound up with some steam frost instead.
So the trip is over, and it was of course fantastic. We're working on catching up with life now.
www.morffed.com
Cuong
Thanks a ton Cuong! Just noticed I uploaded a non-edited shot of Tracy, so I fixed it up with one with better colors. We had a lot of fun this trip, and I'm definitely happy to share all that with everyone else!
And finally, to finish off my pictures, here's an animation of the drive from Portland, Oregon to Wasilla, Alaska! The last picture is of us jump starting my car at my buddy's house so me and Tracy could get home to our apartment.
www.morffed.com
Great to meet you in UT and more importantly, thank you for taking us along on such a wonderful journey
a trip of a lifetime that I'm sure you'll be talking about for many years to come...
Cheers, Jase
Jase // www.stonesque.com
I haven't been commenting along the way, but both of these threads have been an incredible read with some truly great pictures. Three cheers well deserved. Now it's time to settle in for the winter and compile that book!
I just made an interesting discovery when I transferred these photos to my desktop computer... on my nice LCD monitor most of my recent photos are way oversaturated. Are they oversaturated for you guys here? I'm thinking I'm going to get them all on that computer and adjust everything properly. It's a lot of work, but I can't just sit here knowing my photos aren't as good as I want.
And thanks again guys!!!
www.morffed.com
It's taken me three days to get through it all. I am completely overwhelmed by your narrative and remarkable images. congratulations on a journey well traveled.
I hope you're able to profit a bit from your photos. certainly several are worthy of publication in various periodicals.
thanks for sharing
Moderator of: Location, Location, Location , Mind Your Own Business & Other Cool Shots
www.morffed.com
www.morffed.com