Monochrome

Thin Ice

Washington · USA

Sunrise and some decent cloud action on Mt. Adams from Trout Lake, where a raucous gander of Canada geese honked like New York cabbies in sweltering rush hour traffic. Except it wasn't sweltering at all--quite the opposite, in fact, and me without my gloves because I'd washed them the night before and they stubbornly refused to air-dry in time. Ultimately no fingers or toes were sacrificed in the making of this image, but at the same time I'm not sure I'm totally ready for the cold season to come.

Still, I can safely say I was a bit more ready than was TJ Thorne, a talented if paradoxical brotog who rode shotgun with me on this bone-chiller of a morning. On the one hand, dude's virtually a mountain goat, nimbly scaling sheer canyon walls and navigating slippery creek bottoms with nary a moment's hesitation. Get him on some well-trodden trail, however, and suddenly he's more gravitationally challenged than a one-legged penquin.

Case in point: A few minutes before this capture, I was set up a bit off to the left composing a shot between some lakeshore reeds, while TJ was a few yards to the right of the frame hunched down near the ice shelf. All of a sudden I heard a small splash and an expletive (can't remember which one--when you ride with TJ, it's all one big four-letter wordfest...). Fearing the worst, I called out to find out just what was happening (but notice that I didn't abandon my camera to check on him--I mean, it's not like we're related or something). Turns out, his tripod had slipped on the ice, and his setup slid down the ice shelf and skinny-dipped briefly in the frigid water before he could rescue it. Thankfully, he'd caught it in time such that not too much of the internals of his equipment were affected, and his autofocus regained functionality after warming back up for a few minutes in the car. What a relief...

I was really, really worried about his camera.