Gordon Gauntlet

There is something about being caught in a snowstorm that I love. I don’t think I’m unique in the outdoors community in this regard. It’s a beautiful sensation, an isolation from the rest of the world, where the white envelopes you, cold and heavy and tangible. Chunky flakes of snow drift past, occasionally picked up and whipped by a churning wind, biting into your face as you retreat deeper into your mountain clothing. Sound becomes muffled. Your world shrinks to a small sphere beyond which all is lost to the grey. Nature reaches out and wraps around you, and for a few minutes, you might very well be the last person alive on the planet.

Of course, on a ridgeline at ten thousand feet overlooking a glaciated valley, these rarified senses tend to be usurped by one specific, very pertinent question: How the heck do we get down from here?

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Bow Hut or Bust

I always have mixed feelings leaving the parking-lot at the start to a backcountry trip. On the one hand, there is an element of excitement, of anticipation, and that sweet jangling of nerves that gets the heart beating just a bit faster in preparation for the exertion and excitement that’s on its way. On the other hand, there’s a touch of fear, because every trip has an element of the unknown. Unknown terrain, unknown conditions, and even on a trip that you’ve done forty times before, that unpredictability that is as inherent a part of mountains as the snow, ice and rock that makes up their physical form. And let’s face it, if it wasn’t for that, most of us would probably stay at home…

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An Offering

Taken inside one of the temple complexes around Siam Reap in Cambodia. With this shot I wanted to capture the range of colours, textures and light that presented themselves. Daylight was coming through the stone doorway and catching on the smoke, casting contrast onto the face of the statue. I liked the bright hues clashing with the dull cold rock. The different elements- the hard stone, the ethereal smoke, the soft material, the flickering candle- the image presented a little bit of everything to me. It was shot hand-held on high ISO to reduce the camera-shake and it’s still not sharp as I might have liked, but for the fairly extreme light conditions, the little G9 did a decent job.

Looking Ahead

I realise that with my recent departure from Papua New Guinea I have been remiss in keeping my website updated. This is largely because, with my return to my Mac in Melbourne, I no longer have access to Lightroom or Photoshop, and therefore at the moment find it hard to access and edit my pictures. This will change very soon I assure you. I have no intention of letting this site become another piece of jettisoned flotsam in the murk of cyberspace.

With that in mind, a brief preview of three pieces I plan to post in the near future, written following a ski mountaineering trip a little while back:

Wapta Wanderings Part 1: Bow Hut or Bust

I always have mixed feelings leaving the parking-lot at the start to a backcountry trip. On the one hand, there is an element of excitement, of anticipation, and that sweet jangling of nerves that gets the heart beating just a bit faster in preparation for the exertion and excitement that’s on its way. On the other hand, there’s a touch of fear, because every trip has an element of the unknown. Unknown terrain, unknown conditions, and even on a trip that you’ve done forty times before, that unpredictability that is as inherent a part of mountains as the snow, ice and rock that makes up their physical form. And let’s face it, if it wasn’t for that, most of us would probably stay at home…

Wapta Wanderings Part II: Gordon Gauntlet

There is something about being caught in a snowstorm that I love. I don’t think I’m unique in the outdoors community in this regard. It’s a beautiful sensation, an isolation from the rest of the world, where the white envelopes you, cold and heavy and tangible. Chunky flakes of snow drift past, occasionally picked up and whipped by a churning wind, biting into your face as you retreat deeper into your mountain clothing. Sound becomes muffled. Your world shrinks to a small sphere beyond which all is lost to the grey. Nature reaches out and wraps around you, and for a few minutes, you might very well be the last person alive on the planet.

Of course, on a ridgeline at ten thousand feet overlooking a glaciated valley, these rarified senses tend to be usurped by one specific, very pertinent question: How the heck do we get down from here…?

Wapta Wanderings Part III: Yoho Dreaming

It’s an elusive dream. You’re floating, just beneath a cloudless sky. Beneath your skis is a crisp sheet of cold, light snow, flawless, split into two by your blades, barely a whisper as it churns out behind you, your wake. The air is so clear you feel you can reach out and touch the peaks in front of you. The wind bites into your cheeks, the legacy of speed. Your heart is hammering, your chest heaving. Beneath you stretches out a vast sloping field of untouched powder, just waiting for you, and it’s all yours, acres and acres and acres of it, gleaming so white in the sunlight that it hurts to look at…

Maunganui Seaside

I took this from the boardwalk at Mt. Maunganui (known locally as “The Mount”.  It’s one of New Zealand’s more popular beachsides, and a good surfing spot too.  Gorgeous scenery, beautiful white sandy beaches and decent waves hitting the shore conspire to make this yet another fantastic little location that Aotearoa has to offer visitors and citizens alike.

I deliberately underexposed the tree in the foreground to turn it into a silhouette against the bright sand behind, doing the best I could to expose the background fully.  It was shot with a polarizer to make the most of the contrast and the colour of the water behind.  I’m not sure if the shot worked artistically as well as I’d hoped, but it did turn out technically as planned.

Rocking Planet Rock

I can safely say I have never seen quite such a plethora of fish than that which I saw at Planet Rock on Saturday.  I couldn’t begin to number them.  In this small sliver of a shot you can see- what- three hundred?  Five hundred?  I haven’t even tried counting.  And there was a solid three-dimensional wall of them, like a gigantic underwater swimming-pool jammed full.  An immense living morass of sleek flitting fish.  My only regret for the morning’s exploits was that a smudge in the middle of my underwater case on the inside of the glass ruined most of my shots.  You’ll have to bear with me on the few that I’ll share here.

Here you can see Jan doing his thang.  A graceful and experienced diver, Jan’s pretty much lost track of how many dives he’s done, but it’s over 2,000.  Most of them here in Madang Harbour.  He’s also a darn good underwater photographer and a true artist with Photoshop.  When he puts his stuff up on RedBubble I’m sure buying some.  Here’s an older shot of him cruising along the bottom of Madang Harbour, sans smudge and with a bit more light.

A pair of barracuda were gliding in a lazy circle like a pair of cruise missiles looking for something to bomb.  They’re cool fish.  Very benign to be close to, but with those maws they look like mean buggers.  Like sharks they’re so streamlined and graceful.  We had a shark out there on Planet Rock, too, but I didn’t get a photo.  We only caught distant glimpses of him up near the surface, a big Grey Reefer, perhaps eight feet long, just that unmistakable silhouette up against the light.  It’s a wonderfully eerie and humbling experience being close those ancient predators.

Overall, Planet Rock has to be one of my favourite dive sites, and I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to get a better range of photos out of my time there.  I’d say next time, but sadly as my time in PNG draws to a close, that next time may be a very long way off…

Glimmer

A steamy tropical dawn as the sun rises from the Bismarck Sea off the northern coast of equatorial Papua New Guinea.  I took this photo two minutes from my front door, standing on the seafront at the Lodge.  The things I will miss from Papua New Guinea are outweighed by those I will not.  However this sort of sight is one that I’ll carry with me with fondness for many, many years.

Any Given Sunday

Sunday.  I hooked up with Eunice, who’s the head chef down at the Madang Resort.  We’d been talking for a few weeks of doing a dive outside the Harbour, where folks do most of their diving.  I poached a car from the office, we loaded up with four tanks of air, an esky with ice and sandwiches, and set off down North Coast road.  Destination?  We weren’t really sure…

But we had a few places in mind, and figured we’d play it by ear.  Just over an hour out of town is the village of Kubugum.  This is where boats leave for Karkar Island six days a week.  On Sundays, however, the market is shut and the banana-boats, usually drawn up on shore, are conspicuously absent.  There’s an island out in the harbour, maybe five hundred yards off-shore.  So we found a friendly man and his wife with a little aluminium row-boat who was willing to paddle us out there.  We didn’t know what we’d find around the island, but we thought we’d give it a go anyway.

We loaded up.  It was a 10-foot boat, teeny-tiny.  Into the boat climbed Eunice, myself, the man, his wife, two tanks of air and associated breathing and diving aparatus.  And six children.  There was a hole in the hull about the diameter of a kitchen tap.  Water came through it at a similar rate.  There were two little plastic tubs with the lids cut off.  One little girl stamped her heel over the hole in the bottom of the boat and two more bailed out the boat for all they were worth while the man and his wife paddled us across the channel with leisurely strokes.  I comforted myself with the knowledge that if the boat did in fact sink, I had an hour’s air supply with me under the water.

Pulled up on the island, we pulled on gear and got straight in.  The water was warm and once away from the sandy shoreline, quite clear.  There was a reef shelf about ten metres deep, then a nice drop-off that sloped gently away into the ocean.  Fish life was copious, and the coral landscapes were exotic and enticing.  It was a wonderful dive, all the more fun for the freshness of it.  Eunice and I circumnavigated the island and ended up where we started an hour later, myself with all of 30 bar left in my tank.

We paddled back across the bay.  This time our leaky skiff was accompanied by three little boys in an outrigger.  If they were wise they’d keep their distance so that when we sank to the bottom, they wouldn’t get pulled down by helpless floundering escapees.  Back on the road, we backtracked a short distance to a little village whose name I don’t even know, looking for a spot called WaraWall.

WaraWall we know as Hole in the Wall.  It’s a sheltered little lagoon bounded by a reef wall, into which time and the relentless surf has worn a great natural archway about five metres across in the lagoon floor.  It’s entirely underwater, and is a bit of an attraction among locals.  Keen snorkellers can swim the little passage out into the open ocean.  The lagoon itself is very picturesque, with a white coral-sand beach and children playing in the surf, while brown thatched huts peek out from the bush at the water’s edge.

After a surface interval we got back in the water, this time fighting the waves on the way out before dropping over the reef wall.  The visibility was perhaps a little lower, but the small network of gullies formed by the reef were a treat to explore.  Sea cucumbers and small reef fish abounded close in, while at the rollover into the Bismarck Sea, we found shoals of Fusiliers, Angelfish, Moorish Idols, Butterflyfish, and plenty more besides.  A highlight was a pair of large Hump-Headed Parrotfish towards the turning point of the dive.  We entered the water via the Hole, finding a beautiful Lionfish drifting with the surge before resurfacing.

What was great about this Sunday was that it really was like any given Sunday out here.  Dive gear notwithstanding, the day cost us twenty-five Kina in access fees and a bit of fuel money.  Sites like this abound up and down the North Coast, and for those of us who enjoy taking advantage of the diving opportunities here, every weekend we spend it out on the water (as those of you who’ve been watching my photos and stories over the last couple of months have realised, with me sounding increasingly like a record stuck on ‘dive’).  When I get back to my other life in Australia, I have no idea what I’m actually going to do with my weekends…

Something Lionfishy

This beautiful Lionfish (Scorpionfish; Firefish; Turkeyfish) was floating in the surge beneath Hole in the Wall on Sunday.  I really adore these guys- such a wonderful display of feathery creativity.  I will sorely miss being able to get close to such wonderful creatures.

An Annapurna Panorama

This is Annapurna South (7,219m), Hiunchuli (6,447m), with Annapurna I (8,091m) off-centre to the right of Annapurna South.  The shot was taken at dawn from the little town of Chhomrong.  Chhomrong sits at about 2,000m, and is most notable because it is built on an incredibly steep hillside so that the top of the town must be 800m higher than the bottom.  No trekker who has ever climbed to the Annapurna Sanctuary will ever forget Chhomrong because the only path through the town is a broad, uneven and seemingly eternal staircase that runs from the mountaintop all the way to the valley floor.  It is brutal on the way to the Sanctuary (downhill).  It is a form of cruel and unusual punishment on the way back (uphill).  My legs have rarely felt so rubbery.

Our Sherpa, Pemba, put us in a hotel right at the top of the town, which gave us a fabulous view of the range.  I was up from four a.m. snapping startrails as the clouds lifted, and I caught this shot as the sun was casting low-angled light on the rugged face.  Don’t let the titchy image size on the screen fool you.  This is actually a three-shot panoramic stitch taken with my 8 megapixel Canon EOS 350D, not a crop, so the image size is enourmous (it was a 250MB Photoshop file post-processing).  It was taken using a tripod, and it was shot using a polarizing filter (as most of my landscapes are), but it managed to come out okay in the stitching process.  Unusually, I have uploaded the entire hi-rez image (there may be a little JPEGing going on), so I invite you to click the photo above to see it in all it’s wonderful oversized glory, and explore the detail of these awesome peaks.