Well, yesterday I got home from North Carolina and another fine Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography Weekend. Bill Owens, listmeister Doug Brewer, and I were the only PDML’ers to make it this year. Despite the highly variable weather it was another great outing.
I drove down on Thursday and spent the night at my friend’s vacation cabin in Ashe County, about 50 miles from GFM. The drive from Pittsburgh took only six and a half hours, thanks to a considerably quicker route I found. I was able to get settled in by 5:30 and relax for the evening. I spent Friday morning scouting around for locations for a future project I want to shoot in the area, then drove to GFM on the Blue Ridge Parkway at an unusual (for me) leisurely pace. It was really wonderful to *not* have deadlines and tasks looming ahead of me for a change! I reached the Mountain around 10:30 on Friday morning and checked in at the main office. Really nice people at this place. Definitely part of the charm. I notified them I planned on camping on the ridge for the night so they wouldn’t have the rangers sending out a search party for me! Found Bill Owens’ pop-up camper in the campground but no sign of Bill or his wife, so I went down to visit a privileged friend who actually has a cabin on the property. Around lunchtime, people started to show up, including Steve Tinetti, an *official* customer service rep from Pentax Colorado! He brought all kinds of nice toys with him; big lenses, macro lenses (FA 200/4.0) and a new (film) *ist. Apparently we missed getting a digital *ist-D by only a week. The first two had arrived in Colorado only a week before GFM and were still being used for getting brochure shots and, doubtless, fondling by Colorado staff. If they’d come in *two* weeks before, one of them would probably have made it to Grandfather. Alas, things didn’t work out that way :( The film *ist, by the way, seems like a very cool camera. The AF is great, particularly the focus point selection. A group of us went to get some photos of the animals at the nature center half way up the mountain. Thanks to Pentax, we had a 300/2.8 and a 600/4.0 with which to frighten children. With all this of Big Glass around, I armed myself with my 15mm f3.5, just to be deliberately contrary! On Friday evening I loaded up my climbing pack with tent, sleeping bag, some food and a couple of litres of water, one camera body (MZ-S) and three lenses (Pentax A-20/2.8, Tokina 28-70/2.6-2.8 and Vivitar 70-210 Series 1) and a small tripod. I’d been concerned about carrying this load, but I was pleased to find it much lighter than the all-camera-gear load I usually have in my Lowe Nature Trekker AW! Then Nico Reinbold, another GFM regular, drove me to the uppermost part of the Grandfather Mountain road and I set off along the trail. The trail on the upper part of the mountain is pretty tough, having many sections that are only traversable without ropes and harnesses because they have ladders and cables permanently bolted to the mountain. I was pleasantly surprised to find the going easier than I remembered it from last year. A year ago I was struggling with a torn tibialis posterior tendon in my left leg. This year I was fully healthy and, despite my having just done a marathon a week previously, this made a tremendous difference. (Well, duh.) I reached Attic Window Peak (about 5950 ft altitude) around 5:45 p.m. and started looking for the campsite. I discovered they had built a platform for tents so I’d be off the ground, a very good thing considering the rain that had been forecast. The location was also fairly well sheltered considering how high up on the mountain it was. After setting up camp I climbed to the top of the peak (only about 50 meters away) and spent an hour or so getting some spectacular (I hope) sunset shots. It was a bit scary at times because it’s quite exposed up there and the wind was pretty aggressive. The 70-210 proved almost useless because the small tripod I’d brought couldn’t hold it steady enough in the wind and long shutter speeds were necessary in the fading light. I’m hoping for good things from the 20mm and 28-70 shots, though. The wind picked up even more through the night. I got up in total darkness at 5:00 on Saturday morning, dressed and found my way back up to the top of the peak by flashlight. I could see flashes of lightning in the distance on the western horizon - where the wind was coming from at around 60-70 mph. Sunrise photography was clearly going to be out of the question. I hustled back to my tent and the storm arrived around 6:00. If it hadn’t be weighted down my me and my gear, the tent would have blown right off the mountain, even though the campsite wasn’t very exposed. There were plenty of very bright lightning flashes and subsequent deafening booms of thunder, but I don’t think there were any lightning strikes on the mountain. By 7:30, the worst of the storm - the thunder and lightning - had passed by, but it seemed as if the rain was set to continue for a while so I packed up my gear and then took down the tent in the rain. The trip back along the trail, about 2 miles, was pretty exciting. There are places with a lot of exposure and the wind was truly violent. Loaded with a heavy pack I had to be very careful in the more dangerous spots. Still, I had no reason to hurry and by taking my time I avoided any big scares. By the time I’d climbed down the last of the tough sections, the rain was gone and shortly thereafter (9:00 or so) I met Nico coming along the trail looking for me. Back down the mountain to the campground at the picnic area I changed and had some breakfast and we got a group together to hike the Profile Trail on the other side of the mountain, where I know some good spots along the streams that run through that area. Steve from Pentax came along and we spent a pleasant afternoon in the ever-improving weather climbing the trail on the North side of the mountain and getting some great shots with the expensive Pentax glass he’d brought. I’d missed the first of the weekend’s speakers (Dick Ginkowski) because I’d been on the mountain Friday night, but I got to hear Vinny Colucci and Michael Reichmann on Saturday evening. Vinny gave a presentation on tripods and related equipment, a good change from the usual camera/lens kind of talk. Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape fame gave a talk on digital photography. He had some stunning shots to show and I wished he’d spent more time talking about how he got these shots and less talking about gear. Still, I think most of those present appreciated it. Saturday night the wind was so bad it was taking down trees near the camping area and the rangers were making people move their tents away from certain areas. Bill Owens offered me a spot in his camper and I accepted instantly. He makes good home-brewed beer, too :) After the day’s activities, I slept like a log despite the howling wind outside. The nature photography program continued on Sunday morning. I was the "warm-up" speaker so I had to get up to the nature museum early and set up my prints. While I was waiting to begin someone asked Tony Sweet if those prints were his. "No, but I wish they were" he said, proving that he is not only a great photographer, but a consummate bullshit artist as well! (He’s a really fun guy - a real hippie - and I was disappointed not to have the chance to talk to him more.) I showed my photos and gave a short talk and then went into the basement to help Doug Brewer judge the slides in the photo contest. I was sorry to miss Tony Sweet’s presentation but Doug was suffering through a sinus infection and needed help. He ended the day with a fever of 104 degrees and a trip to the hospital (he’s reportedly doing much better now). We had a lot of talent entered in the photo contest and some great images. Very tough judging in some instances. It's really encouraging to see people doing work this good. We got the winners picked out and organized just after Tony finished his talk and Q/A session. All in all it was a terrific, if tiring, weekend. Hoping for a bigger PDML turnout next year. Start making plans now (this year’s program sold out weeks in advance). -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
