On Sunday, June 6, 2010, it was sunny and warm here in Juneau and I decided to hike up Mt. Roberts and stop at the tram. I made it to the tram and neither felt like stopping nor going back down the mountain, so I kept going. I made it to the cross (if you’re not familiar with Mt. Roberts, there’s a large cross planted in the ground a decent hike away from the tram) and still neither felt like stopping nor returning to the bottom. This cycle continued until I found myself first on top of Gastineau Peak and then finally, legs burning, on Roberts Peak, 3,819 feet above the world around me. 500 photos and couple of sore legs later, I present the 23 best of the pack below. Enjoy!
I attended this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and WOW. People everywhere. 75,000 – 100,000 to be exact. Amazing to see 2x to 3x the population of Juneau all in one place. The people-watching opportunities were equally amazing – for example, I saw a hula-hooping unicorn, a blue man, and a panda bear. And I hadn’t even had anything to drink. Proof of the blue man can be seen below.
The weather was awesome and my burned shoulders are evidence of that. 90 degrees every day, sunshine, and a nice breeze in the evening.
There were a ton of great bands playing, but I won’t go into too much detail here. I’ve written reviews of the three days at Coachella over on the website for CTRL-ALT-Juneau, my radio show (which you should listen to if you like any of the bands that played at Coachella!). Suffice to say it was a great music festival – enjoy the photos!
I just returned from a short trip to Vancouver, WA, for the sole purpose of getting some snowboard time in at Mt. Hood Meadows.
One word: AWESOME.
This was definitely one of the better personal trips I’ve taken. In fact, I was having so much fun that I didn’t want to come home. Great people, great mountain, great food, great scenery… Couldn’t have asked for more. (Well, maybe a tiny bit of fresh powder would have been nice, but I’m not complaining.)
I did manage to get a 360 degree panorama from about 7,000 feet up Mt. Hood, but it needs a little bit of massaging before I can post it. Keep an eye out for it next week!
Eaglecrest held its annual Winter Spectacular last evening, complete with a torchlight parade and a fireworks show that rivaled July 4th’s! The weather looked like it might rain on the parade, so to speak, but it held off long enough to not make the show completely miserable. I didn’t get any shots of the torchlight parade, but I did get ideas for next year… Just wait.
A few months ago, I bought these little shot glass-shaped silicone molds that let you make shot glasses out of ice. Naturally, I thought about how this could be made into a photo… Well, I ended up making it into a series of about 110 photos, shot once a minute, then compressed down into a 20 second clip. The result? A real Jägerbomb! I was a little unsure exactly how the shot of Jägermeister was going to make its way through the ice, but found out about halfway through – it was a quicker escape than what I thought it would be. It was a fun little project in any case and I’ll be doing more with this idea in the future.
First Alaska post of the new year! I spent a beautiful afternoon at Eaglecrest watching brave skiers and snowboarders doing crazy things that would likely land me in the hospital… I’m content to snap a few photos. Of course, Pittman Ridge is an awesome place to see something you just can’t see from Juneau – the other side of Douglas Island. It’s amazing to be at a spot where you can see Admiralty Island and beyond on one side and the Mendenhall Valley on the other. Definitely reminds me why I love living here.
December 30th, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s 2009 were spent in Seattle, WA, wandering around and enjoying the last little bit of my holiday break before heading back home to Juneau. Seattle is an awesome place for street photography and the Public Market Center at Pike Place is always full of color, patterns, and interesting people. It was definitely a great place to punctuate 2009 and usher in 2010!
I spent Christmas with my parents in Tumtum, Washington. It’s a town of about 200 people located 45 minutes northeast of Spokane, WA. Basically, it’s out in the boonies! There’s a lot of land to explore, but being that it was cold out and I wasn’t in a very adventurous mood, I stuck pretty close to the house. It’s amazing being so far away from city lights just how much more of the night sky you can see – this is evident in some of the night shots below.
