April 4, 2010

April has arrived.  The days pass quickly.  Our time in Alaska seems to be limited.  We have a full summer ahead of us, but when I look back at how quickly the first quarter of this year went, it isn’t hard to imagine how quickly that summer will disappear.

Skiing will be coming to an end soon.  It is strange to think that each run on the North Face could be my last.  This time of year, the conditions can deteriorate quickly.  In spite of the approaching end, I enjoyed another unbelievable ski day on Thursday.  Kris stayed home to continue resting her back.  The new snow was not the conditions she felt she could ski easily.  I was in no hurry to get there since I didn’t expect great things.  My first couple of runs were better than expected, less skied up, more untracked snow, but it wasn’t deep enough to completely bury the icy chunks.  My skis clunked and scraped, not in a disruptive way, just in a disturbing way.  It was shaking my confidence.

I decided to try the north facing slope all the way around on High Traverse.  It was quite pleasant, untracked snow.  Even the required run to the bottom of the mountain was enjoyable as the temperatures down low were well above freezing and I have always enjoyed slushy snow.  With that success on north facing snow, I realized I hadn’t been on North Face for quite some time.  I dropped into my favorite line.  It was already mid afternoon, but I was still finding untracked snow.  The massive amount of snow that has fallen over the last several weeks has filled in many of the cliffs and allowed me to take what would be extremely aggressive lines earlier in the season.  I made three more runs down, finding unbelievable snow on some of my favorite steep sections.  It seems like a contradiction to be skiing great powder with summer so close.

After three days in a row, I took a rest.  I had just finished another stretch of six out of seven days which was also eight out of ten.  My knee seems fine, just a little weird.  I contemplated skiing on Friday only because we are going to Las Vegas and won’t be skiing for several days.  Instead, I decided to attempt a photography project that had been on my mind.  I want to capture the significance of the massive tidal swings on Turnagain Arm.  I realized that I could chase low tide up the arm, stopping at numerous locations to capture images, on Friday evening and then repeat the process on Saturday morning to chase high tide.  If I could capture the same images at high and low, even I would see something that I hadn’t ever seen, a direct comparison of high and low. 

I think this is a great project, but I had two flaws in my execution.  The first was my inability to duplicate the shots.  On the first pass down the arm, I was scoping locations as I went, rushing to stay ahead of the changing tide.  I took dozens of shots and sorted out the good ones when I got home.  Unfortunately, duplicating the exact perspective was impossible.  Even though I had printed the images, I couldn’t remember exactly where I took each shot.  I need to mark the ground.  I was also unable to duplicate the focal lengths.  I had used a zoom lens and for the shots at the extreme end of the zoom, my only problem was duplicating the position of the camera.  For shots in the middle of the range, it added a challenge that had me iteratively moving and zooming in a futile attempt to duplicate the shot.  And of course, I was racing the tide as well.

The second flaw was that the lighting between evening and morning is too different.  Even when I got close on the perspective, the lighting difference made a completely different image.  The lighting change was more significant than the tidal change, even though it was a 32 foot difference in water level.  I did not get the results I wanted.

The flaws can be fixed.  I need to mark my exact location, use a tripod, note the tripod height, and note specific targeting information from my viewfinder for each shot.  I need to use fixed focal length lenses or stay at the ends of the zoom lenses.  And I need about a week to complete the project to allow the tides to shift to where I can take the same picture at the same time for both low and high.  The new challenge is that a lot can change in a week this time of year.  Snow on the mountains melts.  The position of the sun changes some.  Vegetation will start to grow.  And of course, I can’t rely on the weather.

We rode our bikes on Saturday evening.  I was feeling the need for some additional outdoor activity after dinner so I suggested a quick bike ride.  Kris was concerned about how long it would take us to get ready, but unless it is a serious ride, I can pretty much hop on a bike and go for a ride.  So we took our commuter bikes for a quick ride on the greenbelt.  It was mostly clear and dry.  The black asphalt warms up in the sun.  In a few places, they had not been able to clear the snow all the way down to the asphalt.  We had to ride carefully through the slushy, uneven, and slippery stuff, but it reminded us of riding in mud on a mountain bike. 

And now I am descending into Seattle to make our connection to Vegas.  It was an early morning, but I didn’t even sleep much on this three hour leg.  I think being well rested all the time may make a difference for the occasional disruption.