Hunt like a girl

A 3:30 am wakeup. A rumbling drive up a dirt road. A silent walk to a predetermined outlook, then a frigid hour or so watching light creep across the sky and land. This is at the core of hunting, when you take out the guns and animals and meat processing.

I spent a few days with Laura Palmisano and Katie Richman during the fourth elk rifle hunting season in Colorado. Richman is a seasoned ungulate hunter, and this was Laura’s second year with an elk tag. Although the animals didn’t show up where they expected, they did bring some firewood home.

Laura Palmisano and Katie Richman layer up for a sub-zero morning trudging to and waiting for elk in a meadow in unit 521 on Grand Mesa in Colorado.

Katie Richman talks to Ryan Strand, who owns 100 acres of land in unit 521, about the dead elk they found that morning that had been decomposing.

Katie Richman and Laura Palmisano head out for an evening of hunting on private land on Grand Mesa in Colorado.

Laura Palmisano adjusts her grip on her rifle while waiting for dusk, the time when elk are most active.

Katie Richman points in the direction she expects elk to walk from when the sun sets.

Laura Palmisano looks across the landscape while hunting on Grand Mesa.

Unfortunately Fortunate Lessons in Indian Creek

I made a huge mistake. When I made the mistake I was hanging on a fixed rope from the top of “Neat,” a 5.10 crack where I found my rhythm. Tears washed a week’s worth of dirt off my face and I kicked the sandstone cliff, finally feeling pain in my numbed toes, to get out my frustration. But I had to compose myself because Morgan Foster was starting to climb up “Hayutake,” and I wanted to take advantage of my vantage point from above.

This was the day before I left Indian Creek, the crack climbing mecca in Utah where sandstone buttresses are clustered in a desert valley. Approaching the cliffs involves trudging up scree fields of fallen boulders and the road to our campsite out an unmaintained road at Bridger Jack was an off-road adventure. We had spent the past week relishing climbing sustained cracks, the lack of cell service, golden light that swept across the cliffs each morning and evening and sleeping under the stars. I had taken countless photos of the climbing culture and my friends and family dancing up hand-size splits in the rock.  Sunshine peeking through ominous clouds and perfectly positioned boulders where I could get shots of climbers’ faces gave me the chance to work on photographing a sport that I love. I even had filmed a bunch of b-roll to compile a video about the trip.

Jamming your hands  and feet in cracks is a masochistic hobby, but it’s a fun one. I have a fair share of bruises dappling my legs from gear swinging against my body (I bruise easily), and all climbers get gobies (open sores) even if they plaster their hands with athletic tape. I climbed a variety of routes that had me squeezed under chock stones and 120 feet off the ground. Every time I got back to the bottom I was stoked, even if I cursed my way up because I was jamming my calf in an off-width crack or pulling with only the fingertips of one hand.

I was stoked because climbing requires me to focus. I zone in on the problem in front of me; thumb down, twist wrist, scoot feet up, stand, pull up. A bird nest lies nuzzled in the crack where I squeeze my fist and I reach the top of a climb, look at the landscape spread around me, and break into an ecstatic grin. Pushing my physical limits and appreciating the natural world just makes me happy.

This is all while I’m constantly thinking about how I can document the world of climbing. Experience drives my photography and I want to capture moments that make a viewer feel as if they were there. My photographs are my livelihood and my memories. Which brings me back to my mistake.

As I was hanging from that fixed line, I had just pulled my camera out to start shooting. And then, who knows why, I formatted my card. I thought all was lost and I’d never be able to recover my pictures from the past week, but luckily when I got home I was able to download Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery and retrieve the pictures I had accidentally deleted. The shame I felt making that mistake was replaced by the relief of recovering tangible memories and photos that mark multiple learning processes in my career. Needless to say, even though I now have the software, I will never make that mistake again. Maybe it needed to happen so I won’t make a careless mistake when it really matters. What an unfortunately fortunate lesson.

And here’s a few photos from a week of sand and stone in Indian Creek:

Robert Warren climbs “Elephant Man” (5.10-) as a warmup on his arrival for a week-long climbing trip in Indian Creek, Utah on March 21, 2014.

Morgan Foster organizes his rack before a day of climbing on March 22, 2014. Indian Creek is known for its sustained cracks that can require as many as ten of the same sized pieces of protection.

Notes flutter in the breeze of an oncoming rainstorm on a message board in Indian Creek, Utah. The messages are essential for climbing partners to meet up because there is no cell service in the area.

Morgan Foster tops out on “Crack Attack” (5.11-) in Indian Creek, Utah on March 26, 2014.

Morgan Foster approaches South Six Shooter on the morning of March 28, 2014. South Six Shooter and North Six Shooter, in the background, are two solitary towers that stand northwest of the cragging buttresses in Indian Creek.

Climbers show off their hands wrapped in athletic tape after a week of climbing. Tape protects their hands from major scrapes while jamming hands in cracks.

Robert Warren and Michelle Brugiere, who live in their VW van about a third of the year, camped below the Bridger Jack spires. Vans, camper trucks and a variety of other liveable vehicles are common in Indian Creek campsites.