just a bulb some glass and a piece of paper.

It has kind of gotten routine. Open image. Adjust in Camera Raw. This move. That move. Yaddee yaddee yada. Blah blah blah.

But today I was just scrolling through some photos and came across this one -

Eh.

A shot I took of Mount Conness across Tolumne Meadows in Yosemite when Julian and I were scrambling up above Lower Cathedral Lake on a backpacking trip last summer. Way back when I had posted it (it was actually the first shot I posted from our California vacation) a guy I know here at REI commented had I tried it in black and white?

Nope. I had not but thought maybe some day I'd get to that. Well, today I did.

And it made me realize wow how lame it has been the routine. Of open image. Adjust. Blah blah blah. On auto pilot. Here I found myself actually thinking. Sort of pouring over and through the shot kind of mesmerized with the different contrasts and light among the peaks and the trees and the sky. You know sort of like hunkering over a negative on a light table. Under an enlarger in a darkroom peeling back the layers looking where to dodge some exposure. Burn in a little more. Develop a test strip only to do five more trying to get the exposures just right before committing to a full size sheet of paper cos you didn't want to waste any.

There on the left of the frame. The peak in the far background not catching any light. The one in front of it in the sun and the one in front of it partially in shadow. Three different contrasts – shades of grey – all right there. And on Conness the south face partly shadowed and partly lit up by the sun it all going on at the same time. The other smaller peaks around it all caught in different levels of contrast. I went over it methodically sort of dodging and burning slowly like I would in the darkroom.

Then the sky. Then the trees in the foreground some lit up but the shadows heavy as the sun slipped lower on the horizon. It was cool. Opened up the shadows giving them less exposure. Burning in some midtones giving them more. Dodged some highlights. Here and there. Making sure they were bright but not too bright. Delicate. All a balance. Then adding the different tones to give the image some depth like it would have if it was a silver gelatin print bathed in stinky but all too nostalgic chemicals. Not too warm but just slightly.

All to end up with something like this ...

Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park, California © 2009

And I remembered for a little while I guess that spark of excitement over a photograph. What it was like to care a little bit more. Nothing really just a photograph afterall. But to be hunkered in the dark a red light over in the corner running back and forth the smell of chemistries in the air just a bulb some glass and a piece of paper.

one foot in front of the other and other such ramblings.

"It's amazing what you can do when you put one foot in front of the other."

Leading the last bit to the top of Desolation Peak.

So while heading up to Desolation Peak I was thinking of the last couple of trips. Three thousand feet up. Another thousand and a half to go. Darryl huffs those words in between steps up and and up. The last couple of climbs have been well I dunno. Uneventful. Which is just a different way of saying boring I suppose. So reading back through the reports they seem well I dunno. Uneventful. I'll just say it: boring. Comparing the two Buckner reports one to me at least seems impassioned and purposeful. The other mundane maybe even forced. The difference? Well, we were stopped on Sahale both attempts. We had just about the exact same weather although it was a little better on the second go. Clouds raked over Cascade Pass below us both times. We basked in the sun above. Oh yeah. On the first time out we saw a helicopter circling around the Taboo glacier on Torment. And two days later I found out an experienced climber had died in a freak accident. A chunk of ice on the bergschrund broke off underneath him and he fell in to the void.

That's the closest I've ever been to a climbing accident. I've read about plenty. I know plenty of people who have been much much closer. Involved in some cases. Or brought into them just by being there. I've even known of a couple people from a climbing class I took years ago who have since died climbing. So I know that cloudy evening after hearing the news a couple days later I felt like I had been punched I guess. That guy had twenty-five years experience. Twice my own. A wife. A daughter. Nobody's safe.

But that's all just playing it up really. Unless we stay inside our drywall boxes all our lives we're not safe so to speak. But that's too obvious. Duh. Regardless the news impassioned my writing and I felt a sense of purpose to that one. I look back on Constance and Buckner [remixed] and nothing. Of course it was cool being there. Of climbing. Of mountains. Well more so Buckner than Constance. By a factor of at least a hundred. But that was it. Nothing else exciting to report. So why did I bother?

When it's a boring read to me I can only imagine how boring it is for someone else. So what? So I look back on some other at least to me impassioned posts. That first Buckner report. A solo trip into a fantasy world. A trip with my brother to the Winds. Rambling on about blisters. A night alone next to the Grand Canyon. Those are interesting to me. I can look back and remember why I wrote them. Most of them were started with pen and paper. A small notebook I carry with me on climbs and backpacking trips and stuff to jot things down so I don't have to rely on a faulty memory after I've returned. All of them are tagged 'journal' cos they were written from that.

So is it as simple as that? That I shouldn't feel obligated to write up every trip I take? So we try to climb a mountain. Big flippin' deal. So what. If nothing exciting happens I should not force myself to write ten thousand words on the ordeal. And not only if nothing exciting happens. If I am not inspired to write I shouldn't. There. Done.

So what the heck is this post about? To write ten thousand words about how I should not write ten thousand words? About nothing? Hopefully not. That's not the plan at least. The plan well I got hiking up those four and a half thousand feet to a lookout tower atop a little-known peak called Desolation deep in the North Cascades wilderness. I was thinking it before Darryl opened his mouth and said what was on my mind. I've thought it before. The whole concept that seems rather quite amazing of how after only a couple of hours (on our own power - that is essential) we can find our surroundings totally and incredibly changed. From power-boating along a lake staring up at mountains surrounding the place in every direction to two or three hours later looking down on that very same landscape. How? Duh.

By putting one foot in front of the other.

It's not hard. Well, for some maybe more so than for others. But really it's not. Every half an hour we climbed a thousand feet. And that seemed pokey under the circumstances (those being the facts I was carrying less than ten pounds and wearing trail runners on a great trail - much different than thirty pounds in mountaineering boots over snow). So a couple hours after being dumped at the boat landing on Desolation we were looking way down at Ross Lake and across to a pretty fantastic scene spread out around us as we made the last steps to the lookout and the summit. Two hours. Maybe two-and-a-half.

What else could I have done in that time? Watched a movie. Worked of course. I dunno lots of things. Some productive. Others not so much. Not the point. With a little effort and a couple of hours I changed my perspective. I would have loved the chance to sit down against my pack leaned up on the lookout. Look around. Pull out my journal and write something for real. Whatever was on my mind. Not anything forced cos I felt I had to say something about some trip or other. But something real. Unplanned. Just rambling. Cos rambling sometimes is the best.

lenses and stuff.

I am kind of stubborn about some things. I mean all things. So I have always sort of cast off the idea of multiple lenses. Oh and I'm sort of cheap too. Like as in I have one lens why would I need more? But recently a shot taken of Buckner's north face from clear across the Eldorado icecap on the summit of Klawatti Peak made me change my mind. It was an impressive shot and had to have been taken with a long lens.

So after much debating I decided to up my arsenal of lenses. Well, I didn't really have an arsenal. I had the 18-55mm kit lens. Plastic. But it worked fine and was sharp enough. Trouble is there is no way I could ever get a shot like that of Buckner with just that lens. That and I was getting bored of taking the same kinds of photos cos I was limited to such a narrow focal range.

So I looked into the options. There were a lot of them. Kind of staggering actually.

There was of course going with the über-expensive Canon L lenses. At over a grand each I was quick to dismiss that option given the fact I take photos purely as a hobby and there is really no reason for me to spend that kind of money on a lens. Now something for my house - that would be a different story ...

Next up was the über-zoom option - a lens with an extreme focal range like 18-200mm+. That would be convenient cos changing lenses I am assuming will be somewhat of a pain while hiking or climbing. Trouble with that is all the reviews of those sorts of lenses said the same thing - that those ultra-zoom lenses tend to lack sharpness at the wide-angle end of their range, which I would use a lot. So that was out.

Then I found the perfect lens - the plastic (and cheap) complimentary lens to my 18-55 - the 55-250mm (and on a crop-sensor 20D like I have that's a focal range out to 400mm in 35mm/full-frame speak). The reasons as I saw them were pretty simple -

• plastic build to some = crappy; to me = lightweight and in the case of the 55-250 half as much as a comparable L lens (something like 14 oz. vs. 24) and I shoot 95% of my stuff in the backcountry after having hiked or climbed in for miles so every ounce counts
• cheap - like I said, I don't take photos for a living - I wanted something good but affordable
• IS - image stabilization - helps cos shooting at long focal lengths means you have to up the shutter speed to keep from getting jitter/unsharp photos (when shooting handheld the rule of thumb is 1/focal range-th of a second; i.e. @ 200mm you should shoot at least 1/200th second) so this should help since that is not always possible when stopped down
• one reviewer remarked that if you liked the sharpness of the 18-55 (I do - it's fine from my hobby perspective) you would similarly like this lens

Sold. Picked it up off of someone on craigslist. So that gave me a range from 18-250mm.

Trouble is I have really wanted Canon's 10-22 ultra-wide lens for a while. And some dude was selling it on craigslist for a hundred bucks cheaper than I have ever seen it listed there or anywhere else before. Of course I shouldn't be spending money on lenses, but at the same time I have a bunch of trips planned this year (Dusy Basin in Kings Canyon NP to say the least) and it would be cool to have a really wide-angle lens. I had already read all the reviews - it's a sick lens. Basically an L in sharpness and contrast but without the red stripe around the lens barrel.

So I bought it. Ugh.

But now I have a focal range of 10-250mm (16-400mm in 35mm/full frame format) which is pretty impressive and should work for just about everything.

-----

So after using them for a couple of trips into the North Cascades (climbing Mt. Buckner and hiking up Desolation Peak) I am actually surprised at the fact I have found way more use for the telephoto than the wide. I think to the extent that it will be the lens primarily mounted to my camera but we'll see how it goes.

Regardless, that should do me for a while. Oh, except now I need a new camera bag to fit the longer lens (well, for what it's worth I had made one I found at a garage sale last quite awhile) ...

slices in the ice.

Buckner is on the right; Boston on the left with Ripsaw Ridge connecting them.

18 june 2010. So we were trying again for the steep remote north face of Buckner buried in the heart of the North Cascades. We were trying again cos last August there was not enough snow to climb it. So we were back now in June. Turned out last year's snowpack dwindled quickly so that by July routes normally climbable a month or two later were not. Glaciers were cracked open. North faces bare down to rock. And this year's snowpack with the winter that seems to be dragging out through June has left the mountains caked heavy with the stuff. The meltout is slow. We found cornices resembling enormous tidal waves high on Sahale. A belay up steep ice to the Sahale-Boston col with no runout dropping far below to the Davenport glacier. A quick shout to a pair of climbers trying for Sahale from the Quien Sabe and Boston Basin. Then turning around.

Buckner alludes me still.

.....

I found Matthew sitting in the sun outside The Original Bakery in West Seattle where I was supposed to pick him up from him having taken the ferry over from Vashon. He had finished his coffee and was reading the paper catching up on the World Cup apparently while no doubt enjoying the unexpected warmth and sun. I slumped in a chair across from him to soak it up myself for a bit before we crammed back in the truck for the long drive to Marblemount and up the Cascade River Road. We were really in no hurry.

Our plan was to grab a permit for the Sahale glacier camp that evening which we knew was only maybe a four-hour climb and near the summer equinox we had light until ten o'clock or so. Then we'd get up around four the next morning to climb Sahale, traverse around Boston to gain access to the upper Boston glacier, descend the glacier to the base of Buckner's north face, head up, summit and drop down the south face into Horseshoe Basin across the Davenport glacier and back up to our camp to grab our stuff and haul it back to the car. It would be a long day. A very long day. No really. A very long day. Most of the descriptions of the descent route included the word 'grueling.' I assumed that was no coincidence.

But eventually we surmised we should go and we jumped in the truck to hit up northbound traffic on I-5 to Mount Vernon. It was absolutely gorgeous out I remember thinking. Unexpected. I think the forecast had said mostly cloudy or something to that effect but the forecasts have been wrong for the past couple (or few) months so I have not really been paying much attention to them. It's just a really weird year weather-wise and has not made any sense. And I am quite sick of it. But this day was beautiful and we were enjoying it.

We made the turnoff before Marblemount on Ranger Station Road to have Ranger Joe grant us permission to camp at Sahale. Matthew and I talked about the whole permit system sitting on the tailgate of Stuart a bit later at the Marblemount Drive-In (formerly Good Food and to prove it or more like confirm my suspicions to such I by chance found the old Good Food sign stashed around the side of the building). About how we understand the need to limit the number of people staying in certain areas but on the other hand about all the times we have been to those areas to find them nearly deserted. And the fact that most rangers seem more like police officers treating everyone with just a bit of smug and contempt rather than helpful backcountry experts eager to talk about and share these wild lands as one might expect.

We finished our greasy spoon food in the sun then got back in the truck for the long twenty-two mile haul to the Cascade River Road's end a couple miles shy of Cascade Pass. I've been down that road a few times. It would get old if it didn't gain access to some of the most spectacular mountain country in the world. Mountains jagged and rugged in every direction. The higher you climb the better and further the views. Eldorado. Forbidden. Johannesburg. Torment. Formidable. Magic. Spider. Mixup. Sahale. Buckner.

More than I could possibly ever know or explore.

And glaciers. Glaciers. Glaciers. Inspiration. Cascade. Quien Sabe. Forbidden. Klawatti. Eldorado. Boston. The largest non-volcanic glacier in the lower forty-eight. Looking at a topo map of this place nearly gives me the shivers. The blue and white contour lines denoting them set in lovely contrast against the brown and green of the rest of the landscape. I decided a few weeks ago I want to find a huge map of the Cascade Pass region of the North Cascades to frame and hang on my living room wall. Seriously.

All that to say the drive is not bad. Neither one of us had really packed before we left. I had just thrown all my stuff in my truck and Matthew was borrowing a pack I brought for him so we dumped all our gear into the bed to sort and weigh and contemplate. To bring or not to bring? Do I need that extra pair of socks? Damn I forgot to bring a t-shirt so I guess I'll wear the cotton one I was wearing. Do we want ice screws? Three or four pickets? Decisions decisions. Finally we stuffed our packs and shouldered the load that seemed quite manageable (among our gear I was carrying my three-something-pound two-person tent and trying out a Neo Air nearly microscopic sleeping pad) and left the truck for the trail.

It was warm as we set up the switchbacks to Cascade Pass just after three-thirty. The pass is visible from the parking lot and I remember eyeing a route directly up underneath the shadowy and imposing and downright ugly north face of Johannesburg up and up to the pass. It looked like it could go since snow still hung around. Maybe for the way back.

The hike up to the pass was enjoyable. I started out ahead but quickly fell behind as I stopped to shoot clips of video. Mostly to record the sounds and quiet of the forest. Trickling water off soaked logs. Small waterfalls along the way. A grouse in the distance. Just quiet and still forest air. A few times I'd glance up and see Matthew a few switchbacks above.

I had time to think to myself. Nothing remarkable or revolutionary mostly a reminder of sorts is all. A reminder about why I like to do this sort of thing so much. The sweat and the sacrifice I guess. The sweat from pushing myself. Up and over high mountain passes. Along nerve-wracking steep snow ridges and rock faces. And the sacrifice of some comfort to gain access to these places rugged and pristine that defy description but that are beautiful beyond any. When the light spotlights one peak basking in alpenglow while behind dark clouds brew setting it off. Or the spectacular sight of a rainbow dropping out of skies hit by the setting sun against seemingly invisible rain drops scattered beyond.

There is something wholly unique about hiking and climbing in these North Cascades. About how you start so low and end up so high. In forests dripping from rains seeming to melt in the sun. Filtered sunlight striking a trail switchbacking up and up. The soft crunch of boots on dirt and mud. Every so often a peek through out beyond to mountains rising high above river-carved valleys overflowing with green. To finally break out above as the trees and mud give way to rock and ice. The soft crunch of boots to a hard crunch of crampons. The sounds of climbing gear clanging against itself that lend a sense of seriousness to this outing something more than just a simple hike.

We made it to the high camp a little before eight o'clock. Everything was under snow so we stomped a rectangle in it and used some pickets to flatten it out before setting up the tent. Matthew fired up his trusty Whisperlite and we melted some snow for soup and hot drinks and water for the next day. I took some telephoto shots of the layers and layers of peaks as the sun slipped lower in the sky towards twilight. Then we climbed in the tent for some dinner before wrapping up in down bags bundling up against the cold mountain air for the night.

4:22 a.m. 19 june 2010. Matthew woke first and unzipped the tent fly. It was already getting light and a cold breeze through the tent whipped us into action. We quickly munched on some breakfast before tying into boots and harnesses for the climb ahead. The snow crunched under foot as I headed off towards the summit of Sahale for Stage One. This was the easy part. Or so I thought.

I reached the spot where we had bivied last August this time around completely covered in snow just a few rocks barely poking through. And then up the steep now snow-filled gully towards the summit and the Boston-Sahale col that we had made short work of last summer now looking at the last pitch while Matthew caught up I shouted down maybe we should break out the rope and set up a belay. It was only maybe sixty or seventy feet but it was awfully steep and there was maybe only thirty or forty feet of runout before a sheer and exhilarating drop to the Davenport glacier far below.

When he reached me he uncoiled the rope while I drove in a picket and an ice ax to tie myself into. I said I didn't mind leading and grabbed his pair of pickets and my second ice tool and set off on a running belay. I got maybe only twenty feet or so underneath an overhanging rock cliff where the snow had begun to unconsolidate and melt out unpredictably. It kept giving out underneath my weight and I'd slide down towards the drop. Snow and ice I kicked up scattered down the slope and quickly disappeared over the void. I backed down some to place a picket in something more solid before trying again. I didn't like it. 'Matthew want to give it a try?' I resorted shouting down to him. I pulled the picket on my way back down to him and traded him spots only this time setting up a true belay for him as he headed up in my footsteps. After some time he got past where I turned back and led the rest of the pitch to the top of this snow field where he could peer over and beyond to Boston and the corniced ridge that lay between us and what we assumed were the upper reaches of the Boston glacier.

We talked strategy. He saw a climber pop up below on the Quien Sabe having made their way up from Boston Basin and shouted a greeting. Could we get past the corniced ridge? Well could we safely get past the corniced ridge. We agreed someone might be able to but neither one of us was feeling super confident about it. And so after maybe fifteen minutes - around eight in the morning - we turned around.

I belayed Matthew back to me then on further down. He placed an intermediate picket on his way down for me and as the slope mellowed off he shouted up to take him off belay. I followed as he belayed me down. Took the rope from him when I reached him and he quick set off back to camp while I descended only as far down as where we had bivied last year to sit on the one exposed rock and soak up the view. Cloud caps swirled over the north flanks of Buckner and I strapped on the telephoto lens to shoot some photographs. I took some video. Just hung out there by myself taking it all in.

And thinking to myself.

Like Constance had we given up too easily? Was our redline so-to-speak a few notches lower than it was years ago? Or were we just being smart? Safe? It seems a fine line and to me then at that moment at least a little fuzzy. Even the snow the last twenty or so feet to Sahale's summit was unconsolidated and crap enough to make Matthew nervous so we didn't even try to go for that. We probably could have pushed ourselves. The thing about this climb was where we turned around was sort of the part where up until that point we were not committed. We could easily get back to our camp and on down Cascade Pass and home. But just past that spot maybe somewhere along that corniced ridge I don't know we might have crossed that point and been committed to going all the way up and over Buckner. I know that weighed heavy on my mind. Maybe Matthew's too.

And it would have been a long day. Possible but long. We had climbed Eldorado in a single sixteen-hour day car-to-car. We had a couple of long days on Stuart. But that point of commitment being on either side of it makes a big difference. We trust each other's judgment in the mountains. That's why we climb together. Neither he nor I are trying to push the other too much.

So as I sat on that lonely rock soaking up sun and mountains I was just glad to be there. In that spot. The valleys to the west below filled quickly with clouds but the sun beat down from where I sat. I watched them rake over Cascade Pass exactly how they had last August. I watched Hidden Lake disappear from view swallowed whole. I watched Matthew a mile or so away and a couple thousand feet lower ambling around camp.

Nine o'clock. The clouds were climbing up Sahale Arm. Fast. Time to gather my stuff and head down to join him. It didn't take long and I was walking up to the tent to toss my pack on the ground before packing myself up so we could head back down.

We glissaded the steep slope leading up to the camp and ten minutes later found ourselves engulfed in the clouds we had eyed from above. Whiteout. Luckily our tracks had not completely melted out so it was a simple task of just following them all the way back along the arm to Cascade Pass where we finally broke out of the cloud layer to grey and dull below. No more sun for us that day.

Like we had discussed we opted to head down what Matthew named the Cascade Pass Direct route back to the truck. Instead of taking the trail and its thirty-seven switchbacks we'd just shoot straight down for the parking lot that we could see from eighteen-hundred feet above. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately I apparently dismissed my instinct and replaced it with dumbness and just followed a set of boot prints we could see going down down down. About seven or eight hundred feet down - halfway - the boot prints just stopped at a rather large cliff. Matthew thought we might find the person responsible for them camped out in a tree well or something cos there certainly was not a second set heading back up. And there was no getting around this cliff even after a short debate of possibly trying to setup a rappel off some trees or rocks or something to the void below.

So up we climbed to within four or five hundred feet of the pass in order to head over closer to under Johannesburg where the snow dropped at a reasonable angle all the way down to the parking lot. We had to mix it up with some slide alder and blossoming devil's club but what North Cascades climb is complete without that? Eventually we found a way that would go and once the slope eased we plopped down and glissaded most of the way to the parking lot. One more thick patch of alder and devil's club and we broke out to the clearing where a couple of picnic tables were perched for people to enjoy a lunch on a nice day under the constant waterfalls and crashing ice avalanches of Johannesburg's infamous mile-high north face.

We breezed past them. Dumped our stuff next to the truck. Changed. Chilled for a bit before heading back down for a shake at the Marblemount Drive-In. For whatever reason Matthew always has to have a shake post-climb. I am not complaining. Just saying. Same lady working the window. I missed the sun at seven thousand feet. We told ourselves next year. July. We'd be back. August was too late. June to early. I want to walk across the Boston glacier weaving around crevasses. I want to climb the north face. I want to glance down leading up to the shadows cast by Ripsaw Ridge the crevasses of the glacier slices in the ice far below. I want to stand on the summit of Buckner. Maybe more so than any other peak I have ever climbed. Some day. Definitely some day. Just not this day.

But it's okay. It's okay. Buckner will still be there. Waiting.

matters of the least importance #1.

Five days until summer. Yes, summer.

This morning ... I could see my breath. Yes, my breath. In the rain.