At the end of the day on the river, I often leave with a strong feeling of respect for the unwavering force of water whose wrath I've managed to survive one more time. It's a shame that pictures cannot really convey fear.
Australia often looked to me like another planet. I was mesmerized by this root which seemed to be considerably larger than the entire tree. It was later that I realized such trees are commonplace.
I can find my way around the river, but it would not be nearly as much fun without my brother, whose superior whitewater skills often come in quite handy.
A perfect sunny day in June. We're set for a 3 day hike around Three Sisters. There one thing we didn't know: there was still 3-4 feet of snow on the ground and no tracks in the snow to indicate the trail. Under such predicament, we covered only a third of the planned route before we had to turn back with honed navigation skills.
I followed this glacier as high as I could get without crampons, and set up a base camp from which I explored for three days. It rained pretty much all of the time. Finally giving up any hope that it would stop raining I descended into Whittier soaked to the bone. Back in town, the locals told me that they've just had the sunniest 3 days they've had that summer, and proceeded to ask why I looked so wet!?
The closest I've ever come to sunbathing on the beach. We setup the tent on this secluded beach and stayed there for two days -- it would have been more had we not ran out of water. Dinner comprised of about 4 pounds of clams that we dug from the sandy bay bottom full of stingrays. It was then that I learned that large clams, although prettier, are considerably more rubbery than the smaller ones.
Even though I've just returned from months in Alaska, I had one of the greatest 5 days hiking near the Glacier Peak with a very good friend of mine followed by some fun time in Seattle. Little did I know that few years later I would end up in the Pacific Northwest on a more permanent basis.
After spending a sufficient number of nights in your tent, you get pretty attached to it. At times it is you only protection against the elements. You end up taking better care of your tent than your apartment.
Emus are my favorite birds, despite the fact that they're quite dumb. They're also about three times faster then me.
The rock was pretty chippy, I had no equipment, but it was such a perfect overhang that I had to check it out. Eventually, the reason kicked in and I climbed down right about where this picture was taken.
We started hiking pretty late, so our trek stretched into the night. The trail was etched in a fairly steep slope, so we couldn't stop till we found the river bed. After a rather tasteless dinner under a flashlight the whole thing just didn't seem worth the effort. At least not until the next morning, when the morning rays peaked through the river corridor.
There are certain colors that distinctly belong to only one thing. For me, the glacier blue is one of them. I climbed down into a wide crevice just so that I would be at the right viewing angle. Incidentally, the color is not nearly as nice when it's sunny. Glaciers look best when the sky is overcast. This turns out not to be a problem in Alaska.
Description to come.
After a bit of hiking through a rainforest, we came across these beautiful, fairly stagnant lakes. I should have known better, but I swam in it. I made sure that I didn't drink any water, but surely enough by the evening I was having the worst fever shakes in my life. For the entire day, I laid in the shade completely delirious with fever and dehydration relying on my partner to provide me with large quantities of filtered water that my body didn't seem to retain. I had no idea what to do if my condition did not improve. Fortunately, the next day I was feeling well enough to stumble my way out of there.
This is as clear as the path gets in the Australian rainforest. You get the feeling that if no one passed through for a year, the entire trail would be fully reclaimed by the forest.
This was at 12,000 feet and the edge of the crater was still way in the distance at almost 18,000. Most of my memories of this climb are somewhat murky as I was out of shape, and oxygen was nowhere to be found. I do remember opening my mouth wide towards the wind in hope that I would somehow get extra few molecules of oxygen which would propel me to the edge of the crater.
The picture really doesn't do it justice (I should get a better camera) but this iron rich rock provided a striking contrast to ubiquitous green which in this case covered even the vertical wall.
We've all seen them on TV and in the Zoos but you really get a different sense of the 'roo' when you watch them from up close. This one had strikingly human mannerism -- perhaps he was trying to mimic my crawling in the attempt to get close.
I really love avocados, but these avocados from Chiapas (lower left corner) have a palatably sublime flavor and texture. They are more spherical, and have a much harder shell than the Haas variety found in the US markets.
I spent four days walking along the rocky coast of the Seward bay, equipped with my camping gear and -- a tide table. Certain portions of the trail are passable only on low tide, which turned my return trip into an almost comical chase with oncoming waves.
Australia was the first extended trip I've done with Jovan. Spending this much time with someone you know so well in very different contexts really added a new dimension to our days in the "bush".
In Southeast Alaska it almost always rains. And if it doesn't the sky is covered with low clouds that make you feel like the heaven is collapsing down on you. But on this summer day the clouds were nowhere to be found. It took the whole day to climb this peak from the sea level, but the glory of the sunset view was certainly worth it.
There is a window of, perhaps, 2 weeks when alpine meadows flower in this part of the High Sierra. Unknowingly, I happened to arrive just at the right time in late summer when this meadow was in full bloom. It looked especially awesome from a low angle when all colors would merge into an eye-piercing mosaic.