I am back home after my 3 week trip to Peru! Due to the huge amount of photos I took, I did not have time to post all my blog entries while I was down there, so I am going to post them in a belated fashion over the next week or so. The first one here is from a day trip to Laguna 69, a beautiful alpine lake at ~4600m elevation (~15,000 feet) in the Cordillera Blanca.
Unfortunately most of our views of the high peaks that day were obscured by clouds; however, they parted for just long enough for me to snap this photo of (I think?) Nevado Chacraraju (6112m, 20,052 ft).
Laguna 69, looking like a slice of paradise in a harsh, icy environment.
Next up: a heap of photos from an 11-day trek around the Cordillera Huayhuash! This one will take some time…
I’ve been on quite a nomadic streak lately. With only a few work projects in the queue, and with the dirty Colorado snowpack rendering spring snowboarding and mountain photography fairly useless, I was feeling antsy and decided that my month of June would best be spent elsewhere. So several days ago I spontaneously booked tickets to Lima, Peru!
A delayed flight from Montrose, followed by a mad dash through the entire Houston airport, got me to the Lima flight just in time for the final boarding call. After spending a night at a hostel near the Lima airport, I enjoyed a wild ride in a taxi to attempt a 45 minute ride to the bus station in 30 minutes through traffic. My first lesson in Peru: the driving is absolutely nuts. Traffic lanes and stop signs are mere suggestions. My cab driver was an undiscovered NASCAR champion (who knows how many of them there are in Peru). He probably cut off 30 different cars during the race, including several large buses. We got to the station 10 minutes late, but I was still able to jump on board just before the bus pulled away! Not only that, but I scored a front seat on the top deck, enjoying a panoramic vista for the entire scenic 8 hour drive to Huaraz! (The picture above was taken from my seat on the bus).
Now I am finally relaxing in Huaraz, at the foot of the mighty Cordillera Blanca, which is plump full of 20,000+ foot glaciated peaks (though they may not be glaciated much longer, unfortunately). The picture above is of some kind of big ceremony in the Plaza de Armas. Notice the huge Himalaya-esque snowcapped peaks looming in the background.
Though fairly exhausted from the two days of traveling to get here, I didn’t get much sleep last night, since my hotel room happened to be on the other side of the wall of some kind of nightclub where an energetic and likely coca-leaf-chomping Peruvian band played for a full 10 HOURS STRAIGHT, from 8pm to 6am. They started out great, but by about 3am the music had devolved into a mind-numbing mishmash of lumbering two-note bass, frantic off-key organ keyboard, ceaseless vocals, and excessive cowbell. Though thoroughly annoyed and desperate for sleep, I couldn’t be too mad since the whole situation was such a classic gringo cliche. Needless to say I’m staying at a different place tonight.
Tomorrow I’m going on a day trip to a lake in a high glaciated cirque, then on Monday I am headed out on a 10-day trek around the Cordillera Huayhuash, another high rugged range south of here. I will join a group of 4 or 5 other people, and we’ll have the full deluxe support of burros to carry our gear and a cook to prepare meals! After that, 5 or so more days to do another shorter trek in the Cordillera Blanca, probably based from the smaller, more mellow town of Caraz.
Here’s a couple shots from inside Lehman Caves, in Great Basin National Park, eastern Nevada.
Both shot handheld (no tripods allowed) with the Panasonic GF1, f1.7, ISO 1600.
This is what it looks like above ground, with the 13,063 ft. Wheeler Peak (on the right) dominating the scene. We had hoped to climb and ski a sweet 3,000 foot couloir in the morning, but our plans were thwarted by high winds and stormy weather. I will be back here again, next time with my downhill skateboard (you’ll know why if you’ve been there!).
By the way, I was very impressed with the whole northeastern region of Nevada, with its vast pristine sage-filled valleys and rugged snowy mountain ranges. It’s an often overlooked portion of the west, but well worth a visit.
After our great descent down Mt. St. Helens on Saturday, we drove over to neighboring volcano Mt. Adams, found a great spot to car camp, and slept in for 12 hours. The next day was mostly spent relaxing and fueling up on food next to the campfire, then at 4pm we set off with minimal camping gear in order to position ourselves better for the big 8,000 vertical foot ascent of Adams the next day.
By setting up a basecamp near treeline, we were able to knock off about 5 miles and 2,000 vertical feet from the approach (which was longer than usual due to the unplowed snowpacked road). Here’s a shot of Mt. Adams in the moonlight, 6,000 feet higher than the tent.
Though the mountain looks very steep from afar, we were actually able to skin up most of the way up the Suksdorf Ridge on our skis. We started the hike at 5am under perfect bluebird skies, but by the time we got up towards the top, some high clouds started moving in, adding a bit of anxiety and urgency to our hike.
The grueling 6,000 foot hike really started wearing us down towards the top. Due to icier snow up top, we switched to crampons for the final 1,000 feet and slogged up past a couple false summits until we were finally at the summit! The summit towered above all the clouds and we sat up there and enjoyed the panoramic vista, with Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood off in the distances, both looming above the clouds.
Scott McCurdy skis down Mt. Adams. The hard and bumpy ice-snow below the summit soon gave way to softer, smoother snow, and we were able to carve progressively bigger and smoother turns.
Mt. St. Helens was our first goal on our northwestern volcano tour. After a night of camping in the rain, we started the hike at 5am in the gloomy mist, with little expectations other than perhaps a sopping wet “exercise” day in the fog and rain. After an hour or so of hiking, however, our hopes rose dramatically as the clouds above us started to show signs of clearing.
Sure enough, we popped out above the lower cloud deck and enjoyed a spectacular skin up within a cloud sandwich.
Scott McCurdy skins up a steeper portion toward the top. The 5600 vertical foot ascent was surprisingly easy going, and the summit ridge seemed to arrive quicker than I expected.
[+] Panorama from the summit ridge, looking into the steaming crater, which blew its top almost exactly 30 years prior.
Now the fun part! After relaxing on the summit in the calm weather for a while, we strapped on our skis/snowboard and dropped in, enjoying perfect snow conditions – about 2 inches or so fresh firm powder atop silky smooth spring corn snow. Skier: Scott McCurdy.
The skiable terrain on Helens is vast to say the least. We had untracked lines down a huge face that probably 100 skiers couldn’t even track up. The face emptied into a huge gentle gully which snaked down the mountain in one or two big sweeping curves. ~5000 vertical feet of cruisy wide-open terrain, in perfectly smooth and soft spring snow conditions… my dreams of snowboarding aren’t even this good!
Completely stoked on our surprise score on St. Helens, we headed to our next (and bigger) volcano: Mt. Adams.
I made a quick trip out to San Diego this weekend for an old buddy’s wedding. Being springtime there, everything was green and vibrant and flowering, and my last day there was a gorgeous crystal clear day that made my heart ache for my hometown. I don’t have any photos to show for it, except this snapshot of Mission Beach and Mission Bay from the airplane window.
The weather in Colorado, on the other hand, was up to its usual antics. After being held in a holding pattern over the Front Range for a half hour, we finally started our descent into Denver right under the roof of a dark, ominous thunderhead. As we approached the airport the plane was getting tossed around so badly that the pilot gunned it out of there and we flew another holding pattern for about an hour, circling around the thunderhead and watching the purple lightning bolts flashing through the cloud and zapping the runway. No bueno. My photos unfortunately do not do justice to the scene, but regardless, this is something you normally don’t want to be seeing out of an airplane window.
The thunderhead finally moved away from the runway just far enough for the pilot to make a successful landing, but once we were safely on the runway the entire airport spontaneously combusted into flames – or was that just the trippy refractions of light in raindrops? Perhaps the latter. We then had to wait for another half hour on the runway since the entire ground crew staff had been ordered inside due to the lightning danger, and when we finally got into the airport it was a frantic mess of delayed flights and people running for their connections. Good fun!
I finally made it back to the Montrose airport at 1:30am, only to be almost immediately pulled over and ticketed for doing 50 in a 30 mph zone. Sweet! I swear it was 45 in a 35, but what can you do?
And next on tap: a roadtrip to the Northwest tomorrow for 10 days to hopefully snowboard down some volcanos! My recent life philosophy in tough economic times: when work is slow, play fast! (But don’t drive too fast!) I have a laptop now so perhaps I’ll post some pics during the trip.
In other news, I just realized (after two months) that in addition to the article that Cowboys & Indians magazine published about me and my photography in their March 2010 issue, they also published a web-exclusive interview on their website. Check it out: Jack Brauer: behind the lens.
I just posted a bunch of photos from my trip in Utah! Though I was only out there for two weeks total, it truly felt like a full month. It always amazes me how time slows down when I travel. I think that is the secret of living longer… to travel a lot! In that regard, I suppose it’s not all about how long you live, but how well you spend your time while you’re here. (I say that after having the last three days fly by while working on the computer again).
Anyhow, now I’m back home in Ouray, Colorado. It feels great to finally be back home. I’m really looking forward to summer.
My winter season in Jackson Hole has come to a close. Though it’s actually snowing again as I write this, I am packing my bags and am excited to spend 3-4 weeks wandering around in the deserts and canyons of Utah. Tomorrow I drive to Moab where I will put all my stuff in a storage unit, then the adventures begin! My rough plan is to do some hiking and backpacking in the San Rafael Swell, then Escalante (shown above from my last trip there way back in 2001), Bryce Canyon, and depending on my timing and the conditions, perhaps Zion and Cedar Breaks.
My blog will be pretty quiet while I’m gone, but when I’m back home in Ouray in early May I will surely bombard my website with a heap of [hopefully decent] desert photos!
The storm cycle has cleared for the time being, and we enjoyed a beautiful bluebird morning up at Teton Pass, scoring three powdery descents before noon. This late in the season, you’ve got to get the powder early on sunny days! Rider: Jason King.
