Macchapucchre (Fish Tail Peak)

This incredible mountain is named Macchapucchre, which means "Fish Tail" Peak. Dave and I had been hiking all day long on what was a very foggy day 20 of that 25 day trek. We had just arrived at our destination for the night when the skies began to clear. I looked up, and immediately saw the moon rising over the top of this beautiful peak. What I wish the photo could depict is the immense speed at which the wind was moving the fog out. The fog in this picture was clearing rapidly, but I was happy to have snapped this shot with a little left in the bottom of the frame. I think it adds a little something to the shot.


This second photo is also of Macchapucchre, however it was taken around 5:30 AM the following day. Dave and I rose early so that we could catch the stunning sunrise on our hike up to Annapurna Base Camp. Annapurna is one of the 14 peaks in the world whose elevation rises above 8,000 meters (known as the 8,000m peaks). It is the 8,000m peak with the fewest ascents (meaning the least amount of people have stood on the summit of this peak than any other 8,000m peak, including everest, or K2!). Hiking to the base camp of the majestic Annapurna was one of our ultimate goals for this trip. What I find a funny about this story was that when we actually saw Annapurna (see photo at right), we weren't as impressed with how it looked compared to the awe inspiring beauty of its lesser, almost un-known sister peak, Macchapucchre, a lowly 6997 meters above sea level!

Gangapurna

I snapped this shot on my 2006 trip to Nepal. This mountain is called Gangapurna. This was easily one of the most amazing places that I have ever been to. My friend, Dave DeFranza (the guy in this photo), and I were just about 11 days into a 25 day trek into the backcountry of the Annapurna region when I took this picture. I'm almost embarrased to say that it was taken with a little Sony digital camera. I've since invested in a Nikon D40X 35mm SLR, but in Nepal, that little point and shoot didn't fail me.

Dave's one of my best friends, and I jumped at the opportunity to meet up with him in Kathmandu in November of 2006. Dave had been heading westward from Japan after the end of an english teaching job and we coordinated our meeting date and time. Lucky for me, Dave is a great adventure traveller who can pretty much "make anything happen." As the story goes, he was travelling through Tibet on his way to the Nepali border when he found out that no foreigners were allowed to cross the border checkpoint at all. Dave acted quickly and hastily made friends with a local Buddhist Lama who wanted to practice his english (and who conveniently was also travelling to the border). When it came time to cross the border, the Lama vouched to the military guards that this "white man" was part of his travelling group. Whether or not it was that or the wad of money Dave handed the border guard on his way across, I'll never know, but he did make it to Kathmandu 2 days later to meet my arriving flight.

The Beginning

Hey guys and welcome to my Blog. I'm pretty new at this kinda thing, so bear with me. Sooooo, I decided to start a blog, because, I've heard about them and read them for a while and, well, I think the idea of blogs are neat. They are kind of like a digital diary for the world to read. I don't keep a journal or a diary of my own, I never have. Instead, I have always enjoyed taking pictures of places that I have been to, rather than writing about them and I was never one to write out my thoughts or feelings on a day to day basis. My goal here in this blog is to try and remedy that, and to attempt to show the world what life is like through the eyes of a grad student/wildland firefighter with a passion for travel and photography.

I'm a very (read: very) amateur photographer, and I love taking pictures. Most of my photos are from my travels, and some of them are from my job as a firefighter. one of the things I intend to do in this blog to tell the story behind some of, what I consider to be, my better photographs. All too often I find myself looking at a photograph and wondering what the back story was. A lot of people now-a-days post pictures to their facebook or flickr accounts, but those sites don't really allow for you to find out much about the picture other than the location it was taken. I like to hear about the trials and tribulations the photog might have gone through to squeeze off that cool looking shot, or what is is like in that part of the world and maybe you do to! I will be posting some of my more memorable pictures throughout this blog with all the behind the scenes info. Other than that this blog will be about anything and everything I find interesting about life, and my journey through it.