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Leaving Behind
The Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana, United States
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My hands were shaking. As the tripod slowly tipped over and started falling head first into the gully, I was as white in my head as the fresh snow blanketing the canyon. I could not believe what was unfolding before my eyes. It was surely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, scrambling the steep slopes of fresh power in pitch black, I lost track of the number of times I was thinking to myself “what the hell am I doing here?” With one wrong move or a step of unstable snow I could fall down into the open trenches and my body might not be discovered for days.
Though the tripod did not scream nor made a loud bang bouncing down a few hundred feet, I was shouting roars of despair in my head. With all that effort tuning into a complete fiasco, I was in a state of shock. Though I had the most powerful camera and lenses the world has seen, without an excellent support, they are no more than big lumps of extra weight
It took me about 15 mins to jury-rig what could easily be both the best and worst tripod a landscape photographer ever used. The rocks commonly found in glacier are of a peculiar laminate-like structure, so there were a ton of relatively flat rocks that could be put together into a relatively steady platform.
With the unimaginable incident and following problem-solving struggles to seek the best possible outcome, I could still get up to 80-90 percent of what I could have gotten with a proper tripod. There was a momentary sign of relief but I was yet not ready to unwind.
Shaken to the very core, the trip had to be cut short. A originally 3-day long outing had to come to a stop only after one day, and I was still a long climb and an arduous hike away from safety.
Wind on the Hill
Assiniboine Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada
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The scramble was not too bad. At least in my own twisted world of countless ordeals, I should add, it was not the worst by any means. Nature could be rough at times. It’s not always fun and games. And facing a bad weather is often a gateway to a dramatic moment.
The first problem was, I was not by myself. I had a group of people who cut out a week of their extremely busy schedule and entrusted me with a “quality time” in the great outdoors, thousands of miles from their home. They are business partners, and most of all, great friends.
The winds were constantly throwing us off our feet. On a narrow passage along the ledge that leading up to the peak, we were being tossed around like fallen leaves.
