Excerpt from the Article:
If you were to guess whether there have been more people on the surface of the moon or more people who have completed a through-hike of the Grand Canyon, which would you choose? You’d be right if you guessed that more people have been on the moon! Pretty fascinating and inspiring to think about the types of difficult challenges humans can accomplish. Combining backpacking and photography isn’t easy, to be sure, but the rewards are pretty high.
Recently, on a three-week backpack in the Arctic mountains of Norway and Sweden, I had a chance to enjoy incredible nature, had a wonderful adventure, and even made a few photographs. I’ve been backpacking there for more than twenty years, and a few thoughts have become clear in my mind that might be useful if you’re considering doing more backpacking with your photography.
I really enjoyed this article on backpacking and photography, Dusty. You’ve given me a lot of food for thought!
I am curious how you break down your through hikes in terms of how many hours per day you can allow for making progress on the trail, sleep, campsite prep, food prep, and, photography?
Greg
Appreciate it Greg, good to have food for thought…and food to eat…whilst backpacking…!
Yeah, lot of planning mixed with a lot of adapting and flexibility when it comes to backpacking. The main thing is just keeping safe, making sure you have enough food and water access and can manage the terrain and conditions (considering your gear/clothes/fitness). Beyond that, it’s looking at the map and thinking about where you’d like to spend time photographing and try and time those locations with the weather forecast. On the most recent Arctic backpacking trip, was a fairly big decision to change plans and hike the planned loop counter clockwise. The weather timing worked out better that way and the hike in that direction turned out to be much more manageable than clockwise. Some things are hard to judge in advance. And even though I’ve backpacked up there for over 20 years now, it’s not always clear about the difficulty of the river crossings, mountain passes and such. With long days up north in summer, it’s fairly easy to have flexibility with time, and as a result not a need to get too granular around a daily routine. With backpacking, photography naturally takes a backseat. But the upside is the adventure and the possibility of making new images and getting to some unique and compelling places that aren’t often visited.
