I was checking the weather forecast obsessively for weeks. Hoped that for my day off work weather will turn decent. When I checked the forecast the evening before the day, it looked promising. Mixed weather with sunny spells but with a chance of snowing. Nice! Let’s get lost in the wilderness.
With my large format packed and film loaders loaded with black &white, colour negative and also colour slide film, I was ready to start the trip. I met my friend Daniel who joined me for the walk. He checked my backpack in his hand and looked at me as I was crazy. “Do you want to carry all this all the way up to the Jacobs Ladder?” Yeah, sure I said smiling.
We started to walk towards the Jacobs Ladder and stopped at the bottom to take a few shots. This was the first time that day when it started to snow. I was doing my shots and I have completely forgotten to close my backpack. When I returned to it it was full of fresh snow. Not a great start to the trip. I managed to do 2 exposures of the bridge with overhanging low clouds and then we moved on and started to walk up to the clouds.
We aimed to walk to Kinder downfall via Kinder Low. As we reached the top of the Jacobs Ladder we had to decide because the fog was very low and visibility was only a couple of meters. We decided to keep walking and see.
Top of the Kinder Low
We reached the trigger point on Kinder Low and I was truly fascinated by snow formations and patterns on the rocks. I started to prepare my camera but it was very challenging. Strong wind and hail made everything I was doing twice as hard. I had to change my lens to 90mm and as I was doing it I left my bag open AGAIN! When I realised that it was too late and it was full of snow for a second time that day… If you tried to take a large format in snow blizzard you know what I am talking about. Daniel helped me with the dark cloth otherwise it will be blown away. In the end, I managed to do 2 exposures, hoping at least one of them will be sharp enough.
Lost
The weather turn for the worst and we made a decision not to go to the Kinder downfall and turn back. We started to walk and suddenly met the person walking opposite us. He asked where we are heading and told us we are going the completely wrong way! We were lost. I took out my phone and looked at the map, Daniel did the same with his GPS. It was clear that we lost the sense of direction in a couple of minutes. At this point, it was snowing heavily and visibility was around 1 meter, all paths invisible under the snow. I was glad I am not alone. We checked GPS and phone and eventually found our way back.
I did not take any more shots that day. We reached our cars and had a nice warm cup of tea. What an adventure! We had all this day: hail, rain, snow & wind and I loved it. Wouldn’t ask for anything else.
Do you love to be out in the wild? Why? Let me know in your comment below!