Leading Up to The Summit

Well, every week can feel like a bit of a mountain climb at times.  Work is busy, life is busy and all that just to enjoy the weekend.  The climbing analogy for a work week is that its a long haul uphill to look forward to the end and for me, this analogy has been especially true venturing out to climb a few local summits in the nearby Rockies.  I wrote a few weeks ago about climbing Mr. Allan with my Unicycle and how it needed great perseverance.  I generally love to always take my uni with me, but I knew this climb was not a good fit for having it since there was a fair bit of scrambling and some bouldering to do.  Neither of which fair well with a unicycle on your back.  After doing the trip though now for the first time, I’ll go again for sure, and perhaps with the uni next time just for the fun of it and some scree downhill runs.  That would be excellent to ride on the unicycle!

Anyway, I had a shortened time frame on the weekend as I had plans to get to the lake for some wake boarding in the afternoon so I planned to pack light and move quickly to summit Mt. Yamnuska west of Calgary.  It was an absolutely perfect day and luckily I made it out early to the trail before anyone else so was fortunate to solo the entire trip up without seeing a sole.  Perfect solitude!  Sometimes I wish the hectic days at work could be started out in similar solitude, to clear the mind and get focused back on life, purpose, God and nature.  I guess that is what the weekend will have to be for when you with a lot with other people.  Don’t get me wrong, I love working with others, but sometimes I just really like time to myself and the beautiful world I find myself in.

So as usual, I had some great adventures on this climb as I don’t really do anything in my life like the masses so of course I didn’t stick to the trail, I had to venture off finding new things, getting turned off course and venturing out on slopes that really are not the best places to be.  After a few hours of climbing, some detours and a bit of backtracking I made it up to the summit to enjoy the incredible views with not a cloud in the sky.  Amazing!

Photography

Definitely one of my passions in nature is to capture it and photography, especially natural landscapes I have always had a keen eye for.  I spend a lot of time taking photos on a hike and then move quickly to the next vista to capture it as well.  Some people call me Mr. panorama since I absolutely love panorama photography and take them at every chance I have.  I’ve learned a great deal about photography through my artistic and 3D graphics business/hobby.  I have always used Canon’s digital elph series of point and shoot cameras (since I must be able to easily pack them in my active sporting / hobbies) so I really find myself always pushing the limits of such a simple camera without going all out for a DSLR or something more impressive.  Personally, I like to the challenge of taking great photos with a less than fantastic camera and it drives me crazy to see so many people with camera 10x better and worth 10x more than mine who don’t even know how to run them.  Photography is about knowing your camera in order to capture the perfect photo, its NOT about having a camera that CAN capture perfect photos yet not knowing how to use it.

The digital aspect of photography is really what I enjoy about it.  I love learning and playing with photography software tools and making the photos look their very best with some editing.  Panoramas are perfect examples of this as you just can’t do them without digital editing and the software tools now for it are simply stunning.  Please have a look through these select photos and panorama views and I really want to encourage you to look at what you capture as far as moments in life, how do you remember your adventures and is photography an element that you use to reflect on life and personal development?  I know if it for me so I wanted to share that and a few thoughts on that subject here.  I hope you enjoy it, I’d love to read your comments!

Note: If you are interested in seeing the summit panorama I created it as a full 360° view using quicktimeVR and an interactive summit panorama using Microsoft’s new HDView.  Both available free using those tools.