We are relaxing in the lovely Bavarian town of Oberstdorf in southern Germany after having trekked for the last 7 days through the Allgäuer Alps, a fantastic mountain range which runs along the border of Germany and Austria. Read more about the trek and see more photos below! Continue reading “Allgäuer Alps”
Here’s a mostly-random, not-at-all-comprehensive collection of pictures taken while wandering around the old city of Prague in the Czech Republic this week with Claudia, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend. Good times! Continue reading “Strolling Around Prague”
Earlier this week Claudia and I arrived in Germany! We are spending a few weeks in her hometown of Dresden visiting her family and friends and soaking in the ambience of this beautiful city.
But this is just the beginning of our journeys here; we have all summer long to spend trekking around in the Alps! Our plan is to not have a plan – which is the best way to travel. But we do have lots of ideas. The rough outline will be to head south to Bavaria and spend some time in the German Alps. From there we’ll continue into Austria, then possibly down into the Dolomites in Italy. We’ll be back in Dresden at the end of August, then back to the Alps again for September, maybe to the Mt. Blanc area?
Basically, we’re just going to wing it and travel as fast or slow as we feel like. Of course whatever we do will surely involve a lot of hut trekking and photography, with some fun via ferrata climbing here and there to spice things up. For the next three months we’ll be living out of two backpacks and a roller duffel bag, mostly utilizing the efficient train network here to get around.
In an effort to minimize my “eLife” during our travels I won’t be posting blow-by-blow photo trip reports of every trek, nor fully-processed landscape photos, but I will be posting snapshots and short journals from each adventure. So check back often to see what we’re up to!
Auf Wiedersehen!
Unlike other mountain ranges in Colorado, the San Juans have a volcanic history. Around 35 million years ago this region was home to several dozen stratovolcanoes, similar to those in the present day Pacific Northwest. Then, starting about 30 million years ago the volcanism here was characterized more by massive circular calderas. Many of the mountains in the San Juans owe their uniquely rugged shapes to the eroded volcanic ash (tuft) that was deposited by all of this volcanism.
In the Uncompahgre Wilderness, with its craggy peaks rising out of vast tundra-filled basins, one can visualize this volcanic history more than in any other part of the range. While the specific geology is certainly more complicated, it’s easy to imagine Wetterhorn Peak and Uncompahgre Peak as the eroded lava plugs from ancient volcanoes.
14,015 foot tall Wetterhorn Peak feels kind of like a volcano when you’re hiking up it – it towers over the surrounding landscape. Here Claudia ponders geology during the spicy exposed scrambling section towards the summit. Continue reading “Wetterhorn Peak”
On Friday Claudia and I went backpacking to a lesser-known basin in the Sneffels Range.
Summer is in full swing in the mountains! Except for a few lingering patches, most of the snow is gone and the tundra has come alive with its vibrant green grasses and early summer wildflowers like these Spreading Globeflowers (I think that’s what they are called).
Sunrise light on Potosi Peak (13,786 ft.) – June.
We woke up at 3:30am to hike up to a high saddle from where I shot the sunrise light on Potosi Peak, one of the giants of the range. (For reference on how little snow we have this year, check out the photos from skiing/snowboarding down Potosi’s north couloir in June a couple years ago).
Our goal for Saturday was to hike up Whitehouse Mountain, a seldom-climbed mountain on the northern end of the Sneffels Range. Continue reading “Whitehouse Mountain”
Here’s a random photo of the day for you: the old Box Canyon sign overlooking Ouray last night. I wonder, did they run out of room for the Y, or forget the tilde over the N?
On Saturday we ventured into the Sneffels Range for a quick overnighter backpack trip. Summer is in gear, and the aspens have their freshly sprung brilliant green color. We were surprised at how much snow has already melted away up high, and how green the tundra has already become! Though we brought crampons and gaiters with us, we never even needed to use them.
Taking advantage of a clear weather forecast, we camped all the way up at 12,900 feet on a high sub-peak of Sneffels. It’s a rare treat in Colorado to be able to camp up high like this without fear of thunderstorms! We brought the winter tent in case it was windy, and hauled up extra water in a dromedary bag.
Sunset light illuminates the 14,150 ft. summit of Mt. Sneffels, as seen from a high ridgeline in June.
Of course, the main reason I wanted to camp up so high was for the killer view of Mt. Sneffels! I’ve shot sunset from this high point once before, five years back, but I was excited to come back and actually spend a night up here.
There’s still snow up in the high peaks, but around Ouray everything is green and warm! Summer is here.
Baffin Island: A Skier’s Journey EP2 [Season 2] from Jordan Manley Photography on Vimeo.
This last weekend we drove out to Cedar Mesa, Utah for one last desert camping trip for the season. We arrived a few hours prior to sunset, found a nice spot to car camp, and eventually lit a little fire to enjoy. After being glued to the computer the last few weeks, the fire, stars, and open space were balm for my soul! The next morning we would wake up early and embark on a three-day backpacking loop through Fish Creek and Owl Creek Canyons.
For this trip I decided to leave my workhorse Canon camera and lenses at home, instead opting to travel light with only my new little Fujifilm X100S large sensor compact camera. These three days in the canyons provided a good opportunity to get to know the X100S. Since it’s a popular new camera I will write a “mini review” of my first impressions below, and this post will be more of a camera report than a trip report. All these photos were taken with the X100S, but please note that some are stitched panos and most of them are adjusted in photoshop to some degree.
The photo above is a two-shot stitch taken with the X100 28mm wide-angle conversion lens (the X100S has a fixed 35mm equivalent lens, and the 28mm conversion lens screws on top of that). Continue reading “Cedar Mesa with Fujifilm X100S”
