It’s closing weekend in Jackson; winter turned suddenly to spring just two days ago and this funny project – which started on a whim as a curious experiment, and quickly got a little out of hand – is finally finished. Hope you enjoy:
Music:
Thomas Newman – Any Other Name
Pink Floyd – Time (Pretty Lights Remix)
More on my influences for the video here.
Here’s a great video of urban explorer Steve Duncan poking around in the unseen wilderness above and below New York City. I heard an awesome NPR story about these guys about a week ago, and this video by Andrew Wonder came my way today (thanks, KP). It’s 26 minutes long and well worth watching.
The new Alpinist is out, and issue 33′s Mountain Profile features the Grand Teton. I’ve been waiting to see the magazine for a few months now; with anxious excitement I walked into Teton Mountaineering this afternoon to check it out, and let out something of a yelp when I flipped to the Grand article – the opening double page spread is a shot of mine of Teewinot and the Grand from a few years back. I had the good fortune to climb the Grand this summer for the first time, and this is one of my favorite shots from these past few years – finally seeing it in print is a GREAT way to return to Jackson.
Here’s a scan of the spread:
The cold waters of the Pacific around San Francisco – more specifically the Farallon Islands – are among the best habitats in the world for great white sharks. Unfortunately this isn’t a post about sharks, though I did search for shark diving outfitters this weekend and henceforth will be actively scheming up ways to make that happen. After spending a morning filling my head with visions of 18 ft. monster great whites chasing cute little seals through the kelp forests for breakfast, I decided to head to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a dose of undersea awesome. Apparently every family living between Vancouver and Tijuana felt the same urge; the triple threat of shooting handheld in super low light, three to thirteen-inch plexiglass between camera and sea creature, and hundreds (if not millions) of screaming, whooping children (myself included) made for challenging photo conditions. Midway through the afternoon I had to retreat to the solace of the cafe for a cheeseburger and a calming beer, then back into the teeming fray for more. Some images:
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Aquariums have always captivated my imagination, and Monterey Bay is no exception. It’s as close to being a part of the ocean as an aquarium can get – Wikipedia says they pump “2000 gallons per minute of Monterey Bay ocean water, night and day, through the 100+ exhibit tanks. During the day the water is filtered for viewing clarity. During the night, raw (unfiltered) seawater is pumped through exhibits, bringing in food in the form of plankton. Waste ocean water from the aquarium is returned to the Bay. This design makes the aquarium ecologically essentially part of the ocean in the Bay, and allows the culture of organisms such as Giant Kelp which are not suitable for ordinary saltwater aquariums.” Monterey Bay is also the first aquarium in the world to successfully keep great whites; the Outer Bay exhibit regularly hosts young white sharks, and though Outer Bay was closed this time, I WILL be back next time a baby Jaws comes to stay.
edit: now featuring jellyfish video:
jellyfish from tristan greszko on Vimeo.
With some free time on my hands, I came back to Jackson after the Grand Canyon on something of a spontaneous whim, with one plan in mind – to climb Grand Teton. It would’ve happened last summer, if not for my busted shoulder, but that injury kept me from climbing (and living) regularly until this spring.
The Grand is a mountaineering icon – though the summit at 13,770′ isn’t particularly high in the world of tall mountains, the peak’s complex, convoluted structure and huge variety of routes make it quite an adventure. Oh, and it’s kind of visible from the valley. As with many big mountains, the stories and personalities of the those who pioneered the routes to and from the top are equally compelling – Glenn Exum leaping across the abyss at the top of Wall Street (in football cleats) to the ridge that now bears his name, Bill Briggs’ 1971 ski descent that marked an important moment in the birth of ski mountaineering outside of Europe…
My limited window for the climb meant that we’d have to do it in a single day – about 14-15 miles round trip, and over 7,000 vertical feet, straight up, from the valley floor to the summit. A good friend, former co-worker, Exum guide, and crazy man Zahan Billimoria agreed to take me up if he had a spare day when he wasn’t guiding, so when he called me on Sunday night, telling me to get my gear together, I was pretty excited (understatement). We left the Lupine Meadows trail head (6,740 ft.) at about 4:30 am, climbing the trail in the dark until sunrise in Garnet Canyon (9,100 ft.) lit the high peaks with incredible, fiery morning light. Garnet Meadows is stunning spot, with Garnet Creek raging down the canyon through massive boulder fields, Middle Teton forebodingly looming overhead, 3,700 feet above, and the summit of the Grand another thousand feet above that – towering so much higher that your perspective blocks the summit from view behind the lower ridges and pinnacles. We reached the Lower Saddle (11,600 ft.) between the Middle and Grand around 8 am, refueling and gearing up for the climb. After that, it was straight up a climber’s trail towards the Upper Saddle, every step gaining ground on the summit. We made a right turn and scrambled up Wall Street, the end of which is home to the famous, aformentioned move over several thousand feet of exposure, where the only rule is that you must look down, to gain the boulder ledge at the beginning of the Upper Exum Ridge. In-cre-di-ble. From there, the climbing was fun and grippy with unbelievable views, up pitches known as the Golden Stair, Wind Tunnel, Friction Pitch, and V pitch. Z put me through a harder little bouldering move near the summit that I thought was going to be the end of me, but I made it though just fine and it was an easy scramble up a knife-edged arete to the summit at 13,770 ft. from there. We left the summit around noon, downclimbed a bit to the rappel station, made the 120 ft. free-hanging rappel to the Upper Saddle, and on down, down, down back to the Lower Saddle by about 2:15 pm.
We rested and lounged in the sun at the Lower Saddle for a bit, and then made the long descent back to Lupine Meadows. At 5:30 pm, thirteen hours, many miles and thousands of feet after we started, I was in the car driving back home. I couldn’t help but look back up at where we’d been, with a deep sense of satisfaction and something of a new perspective. The day was an epic of epics, an adventure of a lifetime, a milestone surpassed, and I can’t wait to do it again.
Here are some shots (all from my Canon G9 point and shoot), and below, a quote from Everest luminary George Mallory about his own adventures in the mountains:
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‘The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, “What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?” and my answer must at once be, “It is no use.” There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever… We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.’
George Leigh Mallory, 1922
I just got back from nearly a week in Yosemite National Park – four days working for Canon’s Photography in the Parks Workshops, and two days of running around on my own. Yosemite has been a focal point for environmental conservation and protection for almost 150 years, and it’s easy to see why. Yosemite is, in a word, spectacular.
John Muir, the famous 19th century environmental advocate and founder of the Sierra Club, said of Yosemite “It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.” Ansel Adams, seeing Yosemite for the first time at 14, wrote “the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious… One wonder after another descended upon us… There was light everywhere… A new era began for me.” Indeed, Adams would go on to marry into a Yosemite family and business (the gallery is still in operation today) and make some of his most famous photographs while living in the Yosemite Valley for some 30 years.
So just a bit about the Canon program – if you’re in the Grand Canyon, Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, or Acadia at any point this summer, be sure to check it out. They let you try out Canon camera bodies and lenses and give a bit of instruction, all for free, and run a photo contest for images taken in the National Parks. It was my first foray into teaching people about photography and how to use their cameras better, and I got to use some funny lenses that I probably wouldn’t otherwise own (17mm tilt-shift and 100mm macro). The link above has a whole lot more info.
Anyway, enough of that, here are a few photos:
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I also made the hike to Half Dome one morning, and it ranks up there with a few trails – Angel’s Landing in Zion, South Kaibab in the Grand Canyon, and a handful of hikes in the Tetons and Yellowstone – as an all-time epic. It’s 7-8 miles and nearly 5,000 vertical feet from the Happy Isles trailhead to the summit. The trail passes two massive raging waterfalls (317 ft Vernal Fall and 594 ft Nevada Fall) on the steep, wet Mist Trail, traverses up and around the back side near Little Yosemite Valley, and then makes a final, precipitously exposed ascent up Half Dome with the help of cables installed by the NPS. All of these are from my Canon G9 point and shoot, and I rarely convert images to black and white, but I think these turned out quite nice:
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I also made the hike to the top of Yosemite Falls, which is the largest waterfall in the US at 2,425 feet, but I’ll save writing about that for another time. Thanks Yosemite, I’ll be back soon.