Mountain photos and adventure journals from Colorado.
After three completely sedentary weeks at the computer, this last weekend I was desperate for some wilderness action, so I headed out on a backpacking trip in the Great Sand Dunes. My initial plan was to do a simple three day hike up and back the Sand Ramp Trail along the eastern side of the dunes. But on the first night I was feeling ambitious and decided to hike all the way around the dunes! Read more about the trip below, and be sure to check out my gallery of photos from the trip.
This evening I had my first real photo shoot with the Sony A900. What was almost an amazing sunset over the entire Sneffels Range turned out to be nothing too exciting. But nevertheless I put my new camera through the paces, and I must say it was frustrating!
My first impression is that the user interface sucks. Of course every camera takes some getting used to, and I probably will get comfortable with it eventually, but still I think it’s safe to say that the Olympus interface is WAY more intuitive. When I first started shooting the Oly E-420, it immediately “clicked” with me, and I loved it. Not so with this Sony, which I find has dials all over the place and strange series of button presses to make it do what I want, like a Simon Says interface. I can only hope to get better at it.
On the positive side, the viewfinder is amazing – so large and clear and bright that you can see every little thing in the composition, and manually focus by sight. It also makes it really easy to use graduated neutral density filters.
Climbing in the Ouray Ice Park.
Yesterday a sparkling new Sony A900 24mp SLR camera arrived via Fedex, with a few lenses, so today I figured I’d go take it for a spin. What better place to go on a cloudy day than the Ouray Ice Park, just a few blocks from my house? See a few more photos below.
I spent a fortune on this digital setup, and I have high hopes. During the last year I’ve lost my enthusiasm for lugging around 20+ pounds of large format 4×5 gear and film, and I’ve been spoiled by the light weight and ease-of-use of the little Olympus E-420 digital SLR setup. With the recent generation of high megapixel SLRs, like the Sony A900, a new option emerges that could possibly be the ideal compromise of weight and image quality. Combined with the ultra-sharp 24-70mm Zeiss lens, the 24mp images are very impressive indeed, and in fact from what I’ve seen so far, I’d say that detailed 50″ prints are certainly in the realm of possibilities. Though this is a hefty camera compared to the Oly, requiring a heavier tripod also, the whole setup is still less than half the weight and bulk of the 4×5 system. I plan on adding a more in depth review of the camera here after I’ve had more experience with it.
Rider: Mikel Goicoechea
My good buddies from Boulder just made a trip out here, and yesterday we had the old snowboard crew back together again. I’ve made countless turns with these guys, so it was great to show them the goods and slash some pow again.
Parker McAbery snowboards down the guts of a big gulch.
Today four of us did an exploratory hike up to about 12,400′ on a high windy ridgeline. We ended up riding a pretty heavy duty 2400′ line that we had scoped out from across the valley yesterday. The last two days have been a lot of fun, exploring new terrain and learning more and more about every nook and cranny of these mountains (sometimes the hard way).
Unable to resist the gravitational temptations, today we gobbled up the fruits of our garden. The virgin powder has been tainted, forever scarred by our serpentine tracks… at least until the next dump.
Rider: Mike Bryson.
Skier: Pete Harris. Today I traded my Thursday for my Saturday (one of the perks of running my own business), and met up with my GJ ski buddies to harvest more of the recent powder. I took them to my favorite mountain, and we plucked a couple more fresh chutes.
[+] Rider: Parker McAbery. This afternoon we got out for a quick lap to sample the fresh snow from the storm that rolled through the last two days. It was gooooood!
Here’s a helmet cam video of part of my ride (the part before the helmet cam crapped out):
Click here to watch the Quicktime video.
Now… back to work.
[+] Another sunny blue-sky day in Colorado. We got out for an early run this morning, and tried out a new line (for me at least). Great line, but the snow is getting a bit hammered by now (by the sun and other skiers). It’s been a strange last few weeks weatherwise… one good storm, lots of sun, and it has felt more like spring than summer. Where did winter go? Come back, winter!
