Working on a Movie Set.

Yesterday Richard and I did a job for the Bandito Brothers production company. I have never worked on the film set before and I was blown away by the scale of these productions. It was a long day, but a really fun day, and when I was not hiding from the camera so as not to have my ugly mug in any shots, I managed to shoot a few photos of my own.

I my opinion, landing a helicopter here is a bad idea, and it is really a bad idea if I am in it. I dont trust these things.
Richard standing on the spot where the helicopter just landed. Richard and I forgot our lunches. Conveniently there was a ton of blueberries growing on top of the crag.
Sending the cameraman down to a good shooting location.
The cameraman in position ready for the first shoot.
The camera helicopter.
The Navy Helicopter.
Flying low.
Camera man on belay and in position number 2.
Dropping off the "victim"
Hovering below us.
Preparing for the rescue
Lowering the rescuer.
Lowering down a litter.
Victim and rescuer.
Rescue chopper heading out.
Camera man climbing out of his ledge after shooting was over.
Helmet camera mounted on camera man.
This sequence gives an idea of what we were there for. We did some rigging that allowed the camera man to jump off the rock and fall toward the ground. Our job was to make sure he stopped before he got there.
Flying above the trees.
Helicopter with Puget Sound in the background.
My ride out of here.

Photos from a trip to Mt. Baker's Easton Glacier.

I just got back from a trip to Mt. Bakers Easton Glacier. This trip was a 3 day Mt. Baker Summit climb. The weather was a little challenging on this trip, and the summit conditions were some of the worst I have ever had to deal with. These trips start with an early morning meeting and gear check and then a drive to the trail head at Mt. Baker. We then hike in and build a camp just above treeline. Day 2 is usually a skills day covering snow walking, ice walking, ice axe use , and roped glacier travel. Day 3 is summit day and the long hike out.

Fog covering the trees on the approach hike. I shot no more photos worth posting the first day due to crappy weather and zero visiblility.

Fog in Valley below on the morning of day 2.

Jeff and Jeff enjoying the morning.

Fog in the valley.

Dwayne and Alex.

The Twin Sisters range.

Cindy heading up for skills day.

A guy walking on the ridge next to camp.

A second shot because I cant figure out which one I like the most.

Tim and Cindy.

The first hint of light in the morning. This is the first time I have tried using the D300 at 3200 ISO. I like the results.

A little later on the summit trip. The weather is still holding out.

Clouds moving up the mountain. Us too.

Moving around crevasses.

The well beaten trail up the mountain.

Our Summit shot. Fogged lens. Between turning around at the summit crater due to heavy rain and temps in the 30s I put the camera away. It was just too wet to be shooting photos. The camera still got soaked, but there were not ill effects. The other rope team of five very hearty soles chose to continue to the top with Chris. The slightly smarter group agreed to go down with me. I owe Chirs a beer for the seriously rough summit duty.

Today I am still chasing off a case of the flu brought on by a few too many days of work in a row. As always, its still better than sitting at a desk. Even on the worst days.

Mt. Baker Storm Photo

I shot this photo last week. It was shot about 10am on a stormy day. The clouds made for some very dramatic lighting.

Mt. Shuksan

Here are some photos from Mt. Shuksan. I did a guided climb of the Fisher Chimneys route last week. Once again we dealt with thunderstorms. The warm weather is really creating some difficult summit days in the cascades with thunderstorms building at any time of the day so they are completely unpredictable. Ferns on the approach hike.
Craig
My tent set up with Mt. Shucksan in the background.
Thunderstorm building at 5:30am? That's unusual.
Mt Baker and thunderstorms.
The border peaks, and Mt. Slesse.
Climbing hells highway.
Interesting patterns on the glacier.
The summit shot.
Standing in the wind.
Summit
The first signs that a storm might be in the works.
Less than a half hour later things got real bad.
I shot no pictures between the above picture and this one. Things were fairly full on. Hail lightning, thunder, rain, hair standing on end, all while descending the Fisher Chimneys. Note: The Fishers Chimneys are not fun to descend in the rain, but they are really not that bad.

Broken Bones and Thunderstorms - A Weekend in the Cascades.

This weekend Susan and I went to the Cascade Pass area to spend a pleasant weekend together climbing a moderate peak and enjoy the weekend together. After the nice hike up to Cascade Pass we noticed some thunderstorms building which is not uncommon for the Cascades this time of year. We decided we should hurry to get to our camp at Cache Col before it started to rain.

Susan hiking up to Cascade Pass. The storm came in a little faster than we were expecting. We set up our tent on the Cache glacier to hide from the rain. After about 20 minutes the storm had passed and we started packing up getting ready to go. I heard an emergency whistle and looked around a bit. There was a guy sitting at the base of a snow slope about 200 yards away. When he started waving his jacket I knew something was up. A lone climber doing the Ptarmigan Traverse had fallen on some rocks above the snow slope landed on the slope and then slid to the bottom of it. His name was Craig. He had pain in his right foot. After a patient assessment the most probable reason for the pain was he had broken some bones in his foot. I ran back to Cascade Pass to talk to the rangers. due to the unstable weather and the fact that the rest of Craig's team was likely on the other side of Cache Col. Susan and I decided to stay with Craig for the night. We set up a camp on Mixup Arm to prepare for the next thunderstorm that looked to be comming pretty fast.

Setting up camp. This storm was bigger and much stronger than the first. It produced massive amounts of rain and flooded our tent. We had quite a few fairly close lightning strikes. It got a little scary, but it was not the worst storm I have camped in.

Susan attempting to deal with the massive amounts of water running though our tent.
Craig and I sitting on pads trying to insulate ourselves from ground current in case of a lightning strike nearby.

Susan sitting on her pad trying to insulate herself from the ground.

Our tent location just after the worst of the storm had passed.
Weather moving through cascade pass.

Me. (My wife will not allow me to post blog entries without pictures of myself)

Craig spent the night in our tent as he only had a bivy sack with him. We decided he would enjoy the night more in a tent than a bivy.

Waiting for the evac.
The NPS arrived the next morning to get Craig and his broken foot out.

Scoping out the scene from the air.

NPS over the Cache Glacier.

NPS chopper scoping out the landing zone.

High flying rangers.

NPS Rangers in flight.

NPS Rangers being delivered.

NPS rangers packaging Craig for a short haul to Cascade Pass.

Craig being packaged.

NPS rescue chopper.

Lift off of litter and attendant.

Craig being short hauled down to Cascade Pass.

After Craig was flown out our weekend could continue. We hung out for a while and enjoyed the view and slowly packed up our gear. We had just been informed by the ranger that the Cascade Pass road had washed out in the rains last night and we would likely be stuck here for another day. Neither of us really cared since all we would miss was a day of work.

Moma Ptarmigan. She wandered through as we were packing up our camp with five chicks. Moma and chicks really did not seem to care that we were there.

Ptarmigan

Ptarmigan with the Torment Forbidden Traverse in the background.

Some of the local vegetation.

A marmot.

We did not climb anything yesterday. We were both a little tired. Instead we hiked up to Cache Col and watched a team climb the route were were originally planning to climb.

A group on the summit of Mixup Peak.