Archives #3
June 2012
Cool thing #6 about being unemployed; continued....
In my hunting through the kodachrome static of ancient hard drives I found this little gem. Years ago, a month or two before I left Maine and ventured west, I shot an assignment for a book project on the Appalachian Trail (AT). The idea of the book was pretty cool. It proposed to show the entire 2200 miles of the AT in a single day worth of photographs. A select handful of landscape photographers, outdoor photographers, and adventure photographers were tasked with shooting a small section of the trail. Everyone would shoot from sun up to sun down on the given day. You had literally 24 hours to cover your assigned section. The book would then show the entire length of the trail from Georgia to Maine in that same 24 hour window. A pretty rad and ambitious undertaking!
Photographers were selected and contacted and low and behold they wanted me. To this day I have no idea how they picked me or how my name came up but came up it did. I was super excited to participate.Then I got my assigned section. I was asked to cover the Maine-New Hampshire border to Highway 26. My heart sunk. Big bloody groan. You gotta be kidding me I thought! This section of trail contains the most difficult mile of the ENTIRE trail and the most uniformly steep mile on the whole dang trail. It is rumored that more people give up hiking the AT during this first section in Maine then anywhere else. Imagine! After four or five months of hiking you hit Maine and decide to toss in the towel. Thats how disgustingly gnarly this one little section of the AT is. Not to mention it would take an entire day to hike in to the assigned starting point and another entire day to hike out. No wonder they picked me. They needed a pansy, someone dumb enough to agree to lug pounds and pounds of camera gear through this ridiculously difficult 15 miles of trail. Is it too late to change my mind?
It was too late to back. It was mine. So out I went. I'm not gonna lie. It was brutal. Epic but brutal. June 1st was the assigned day. June 1st in many places is a pretty good day to be out and about hiking the Appalachian trail. June 1st in Maine however, especially above the tree line, is when the snow turns to mud. Pure hell. Pure hell. So with that in mind, out I went.
Thankfully I survived the ordeal. Barely. In fact survival was really the only thing on my mind during the whole day. Taking pictures was an after thought. I just wanted to get through it. The night before it was well below freezing. I slept with my cameras & a dozen rolls of film (yes film, remember those days haha!) inside the sleeping bag to keep them warm. I woke up well before sunrise to make sure all was in order. I had to chip ice off the nearby brook in order to pump water for coffee and oatmeal. Brutal. But epic. I fought through thigh high snow drifts in every saddle and braved 30mph winds climbing over the Goose Eye. It rained. It snowed. It sleeted. Brutal. But epic.
June 2012
Cool thing #6 about being unemployed; continued....
In my hunting through the kodachrome static of ancient hard drives I found this little gem. Years ago, a month or two before I left Maine and ventured west, I shot an assignment for a book project on the Appalachian Trail (AT). The idea of the book was pretty cool. It proposed to show the entire 2200 miles of the AT in a single day worth of photographs. A select handful of landscape photographers, outdoor photographers, and adventure photographers were tasked with shooting a small section of the trail. Everyone would shoot from sun up to sun down on the given day. You had literally 24 hours to cover your assigned section. The book would then show the entire length of the trail from Georgia to Maine in that same 24 hour window. A pretty rad and ambitious undertaking!
Photographers were selected and contacted and low and behold they wanted me. To this day I have no idea how they picked me or how my name came up but came up it did. I was super excited to participate.Then I got my assigned section. I was asked to cover the Maine-New Hampshire border to Highway 26. My heart sunk. Big bloody groan. You gotta be kidding me I thought! This section of trail contains the most difficult mile of the ENTIRE trail and the most uniformly steep mile on the whole dang trail. It is rumored that more people give up hiking the AT during this first section in Maine then anywhere else. Imagine! After four or five months of hiking you hit Maine and decide to toss in the towel. Thats how disgustingly gnarly this one little section of the AT is. Not to mention it would take an entire day to hike in to the assigned starting point and another entire day to hike out. No wonder they picked me. They needed a pansy, someone dumb enough to agree to lug pounds and pounds of camera gear through this ridiculously difficult 15 miles of trail. Is it too late to change my mind?
It was too late to back. It was mine. So out I went. I'm not gonna lie. It was brutal. Epic but brutal. June 1st was the assigned day. June 1st in many places is a pretty good day to be out and about hiking the Appalachian trail. June 1st in Maine however, especially above the tree line, is when the snow turns to mud. Pure hell. Pure hell. So with that in mind, out I went.
Thankfully I survived the ordeal. Barely. In fact survival was really the only thing on my mind during the whole day. Taking pictures was an after thought. I just wanted to get through it. The night before it was well below freezing. I slept with my cameras & a dozen rolls of film (yes film, remember those days haha!) inside the sleeping bag to keep them warm. I woke up well before sunrise to make sure all was in order. I had to chip ice off the nearby brook in order to pump water for coffee and oatmeal. Brutal. But epic. I fought through thigh high snow drifts in every saddle and braved 30mph winds climbing over the Goose Eye. It rained. It snowed. It sleeted. Brutal. But epic.
Border Sunrise.
Welcome.
Infamous Mahoosuc Notch, most difficult mile on the AT.The trail goes under numerous boulders making you crawl and squeeze through on your
belly, pushing your pack in front of you. Brutal. But epic.
Moonrise, Speck Pond.
The famous Grafton Notch birches, highway 26.
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