gdanmitchell
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Gregg B. wrote:
The two places required either 14 or 22 miles hiking (round trip) to get to. I'm not a professional hiker (if such thing exists), so I struggled a bit getting up there; to 11K feet elevation carrying over 40 pounds of camping and photography gear. But once there, the reward was tremendous (except those blood hungry mosquitos biting even with the repellent on)...
One thing I've learned is that I need to get a much better hiking gear. My backpack along is almost 7 pounds (my friend's backpack was only 1.5 pound. Yeah, it costs a lot more but it's incredibly lighter and yet has the same capacity). The same applied to my sleeping bag and other things. I also didn't have time to adapt to this high elevation. This was my first hike to little above 11K feet......Show more →
Schlepping the gear — assuming multiple lenses, a relatively large-is camera body, and a solid tripod — is going to slow you down no matter how you slice it, I'm afraid.
It is definitely possible to lighten your gear weight though. I have an old (and very sturdy) 7 pound internal frame pack that I carried over some pretty high passes (such as Whitney Trail Crest, Forester, Muir, Pinchot, Glen, Baxter...) back in the day. But I lightened up considerably over time, and the heaviest pack I'll carry these days is about four pounds... and I'll use lighter packs for some shorter trips.
One challenge though, is managing a lot of heavy and potentially bulky photo gear with the lighter packs. They tend to be a bit smaller/tighter, and the materials are often lighter and a bit less able to stand up to things like lashing tripods on the outside.
And the darned camera gear is just plain (by backpacking standards) large and heavy. I think really carefully about what lenses I'll carry, sometimes getting it down to two or even one zoom. I use a lighter tripod than what I use in the front country, and it is fitted with a lighter ball head, too.
The trick for many people is finding an accommodation between the desire to cover ground and travel though and over very difficult places versus being fully prepared for serious photography. For many years I had gradually decreased the amount of photography gear I was carrying because it was interfering with my ability to go to the places I wanted to go to and to cover mileage every day. Eventually, by the mid-1990s, I was down to one small handheld camera and I may have even taken a camera-less trip or two.
But I soon resumed the focus on backcountry photography and came to an accommodation wherein I no longer expected to cover a ton of distance or climbing in a day. I'm more likely to go to a place and base camp there for a while. This means that I'll have a day or two of pain getting there, then some period of relatively unencumbered photography, and a slow walk back out. The basecamp idea also means I don't have to deal with camp business during the good light times of the day.
Don't necessarily rule out pack animal support either. For years I never indulged, but over the past decade+ I've done one trip most years on which we were supported by packers who brought in the heaviest of the gear and dropped it off. Unless you are 20 years old, super fit*, and super dedicated... this can be quite useful.
EDIT: I earlier wrote that I didn't know the location. Actually, I know the _exact_ location and more or less your precise camera position. ;-) That hike has a few challenges including the fact that after the first mile or two there is a pretty stiff climb. And once you reach the lake at what seems like the halfway point (and cross its outlet stream) the remaining hike always seems longer and to involve more climbing than I expect. I have a few stories about this place... My last visit was in 2019, when the group of photographers I work with most summers got packed in and spent a week photographing there. This group has been photographing the backcountry for 20 years almost every summer, and I've been part of it since 2008.
(I'm still coming up short on the peak in the last photograph. It has the general contour of one that I know, but it is in a different place and isn't quite that vertical. Hmmm...)
Dan
* When I was in that young and fit stage of life I was known for heading out on two week backcountry trips with 75 pounds on my back, including camera gear and many (!) rolls of film. No more.
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