The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Expo 2020 is what brought me to Dubai in 2022. My first time at a world fair was enjoyable. What does a world fair have to offer?

World fairs also referred to as Universal Expositions or Expos for brevity, have taken place since the 19th century. The Eiffel Tower was built as a temporary structure for the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. Closer to home, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the Space Needle in Seattle are legacies of Expos for which they were built. The interval between Expos has fluctuated, but as of late they are held every 5 years. Cities bid to become hosts, like for the Olympics. Due to their duration, which is now typically six months, Expos are the most attended international events, with the record set by Expo 2010 in Shanghai at more than 70 million visitors.

Expos are a global showcase of human achievement and a great opportunity to improve your understanding of the world. While the first Expos were focused on industrialization and technological innovations, they are nowadays a platform for participating countries to project a favorable image through their pavilions. The bulk of the fair is made of a collection of national pavilions. In the past, joint pavilions have provided space to countries that can’t afford to participate in an Expo. At Expo 2020, for the first time, each of the countries had its own. Showcasing the country’s sights, culture, and achievements, they often feature striking architecture, original art and historic pieces, and quirky features that make them a delight to visit and be surprised.

Expo 2020 was to begin in October 2020 (hence the name), avoiding the Dubai hot season from May to September when average high temperatures top 100F, but was postponed one year due to the pandemic. Not surprisingly given the host city, Expo 2020 is the largest ever, with 192 countries represented and three times the acreage of Expo 2015. Consistent with its policy to build bold attractions to secure its status as the newest world city and boost tourism, Dubai spent $7 billion on this project. When they won the bid in 2013, the site was nothing but bare desert. It now has its own metro station and 80% of the infrastructure is intended to be converted into a sustainable city. Due to lack of space, Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan will scale down to 150 countries, comparable to Expo 2015 in Milan with 145 countries.

Saudi Arabia Pavilion

Switzerland Pavilion

Pakistan Pavilion

The closest experience I had to visit an Expo is the Disney EPCOT theme park, part of Disney World near Orlando, Florida, where one can also see national pavilions and technology exhibits. This is no coincidence, as Disney had contributed many exhibits and rides to Expo 1964 in New York City, then moved them to Disneyland and duplicated several at Disney World. However, a real Expo is more fun to visit. Cultural diversity and sensitivity is higher, and not only because you see more visitors from around the world. Since the national pavilions are each built and staffed by their respective nations, they offer cultural authenticity and opportunities to taste different cuisines. However, the food is quite expensive, like in a theme park, and there can be long lines for popular pavilions. Because nations compete to offer the most memorable visitor experiences, you can see a lot of different cutting-edge and extravagant designs within a walkable space. I didn’t have much free time at Expo 2020, but I’ve included photos from three of my favorite pavilions above. All of them can be visited virtually through interactive 360 panoramas. The Saudi Arabia pavilion was the largest, at 141,000 square feet. Although I am partial, despite its modest size of 36,000 square feet, USA was no slouch, but that will be the subject of the next post. Like in downtown Dubai, photography at Expo 2020 was regulated, with tripods quickly drawing security’s attention. All bags were x-rayed, and on one occasion, I was asked if I had permission to bring in what they dubbed to be professional equipment, even though I had official credentials. However, with one exception, I didn’t try to photograph Expo 2020, instead, I tried to enjoy myself and just made those images along the way.

In addition to the national pavilions, Expo 2020 featured three thematic pavilions built by the host, and corresponding to its three subthemes of opportunity, mobility, and sustainability, linked by a central plaza called Al Wasl’s. Rising at 220 feet, its steel trellis, designed by the firm responsible for the Burj Khalifa, is the world’s largest free-standing dome and doubles as the largest 360-degree theater, where images projected by lasers are visible both from within and outside the dome, making it a great outdoor venue for performances.

I felt that Expo provided an international experience full of ideas and solutions from around the globe. Expo 2020 was historic not only as the largest Expo ever , but also as the first held in the Arabic World. However, that made it a long trip from California. The time difference was exactly 12 hours, meaning that it is the opposite northern hemisphere location on the globe – the flight route was straight north over the pole.

My trip also took place during the pandemic. It was safer than it would appear. First, contrary to widespread opinion, chances of catching the virus on a plane are low. There is no statistical evidence that airline crews have gotten more infections than other occupations. Masks are worn most of the time. In the cabin, the air does not circulate around, but instead enters the cabin from vents above the seats and exits from vents below the seats in a laminar pattern. The ventilation is strong enough that the entire volume of air inside a plane is completely replaced every few minutes by air that is either fresh from outside or filtered to HEPA standards (99.97% of all particles). On international flights, all passengers need to present a negative PCR test taken within 2 to 3 days of boarding. Second, the UAE had one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 in the world. Maybe, there is a correlation with strict public health measures: at Expo 2020, almost everybody wore masks, even outdoors, something I never saw in the San Francisco Bay Area. Staff needed to take PCR tests every two days. Yet, there was the risk of testing positive and being stuck abroad. In addition, I was told that if I extended my stay beyond my official programmed time and I was to test positive, I’d be entirely on my own. In the next post, we’ll see why I visited this particular Expo under those circumstances. Stay tuned!

Part 2 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Besides my impressions from a whirlwind trip to Dubai, this article serves as a tour guide to ten of the city’s most famous and photogenic locations that one could see and photograph in a single long day.

It was my first time in the Arabic world, and despite my short stay, I could understand why Dubai has been rising as a top international travel destination. The city is as futuristic as any on earth. It is a place of superlatives, with the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa), the largest shopping center (Dubai Mall), the largest Ferris wheel (Ain Dubai), the tallest hotel (Burj Al Arab), and a few others that I have missed. It is home to some of the most remarkable contemporary architecture. High-rises can sometimes look all the same, but in Dubai, most feature a distinctive design. At the same time, Dubai has retained an unmistakable Arabic flair, visible not only in the numerous mosques, prayer calls more melodious than I imagined, and building designs but also in the everyday dress of some. All of this makes Dubai a city that defines modern sophistication with an exotic touch.

As Dubai aimed to become a tourist destination, the first-rate Emirates airlines initially enticed travelers to stop-overs. Thanks to its location at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa, its hub at Dubai International Airport is at the time of this writing the busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic. From a practical point of view, Dubai is an easy destination thanks excellent touristic infrastructure and one of the best safety records of any large city – violent crime is extremely rare. Covid-19 PCR tests results were delivered by SMS in less than five hours. The shopping and dining are some of the best in the world. The latter can be explained by the city’s population, which is 80% immigrant, resulting in a rich melting pot of cultures that contribute to a cosmopolitan character. I was surprised by the diversity of city’s mix of attractions.

Jumeirah

My first destination was Palm Jumeirah, a set of artificial islands that from the air take the shape of a palm tree – there is another set of offshore artifical islands shaped like the world. A promenade near the eastern tip on the external shore offers a distant view of the city over the Persian Gulf waters. It is the only place from which one can include Dubai’s two most famous buildings, Burj Khalifa and Burj Al Arab in the same frame. Designed to be Dubai’s landmark and put the city on the global map in 1999, Burj Al Arab was once the tallest hotel in the world (321 meters, four other hotels in Dubai are now taller) and according to some, the only 7-star hotel. At dawn, buildings are dark, so the evening would have been preferable, but I had another destination in mind. On the mainland, nearby Sunset Beach, one of the public beaches near Burj Al Arab, used to have some of the best views of the iconic hotel, but it is now blocked by a new building under construction – seen on the first picture. Things change fast in Dubai! However, there are still two spots with an excellent view. The first is Madina Jumeirah, a lush resort village whose landscaped garden and waterways make you forget you are in one of the aridest deserts on earth, with only about 1 to 2 days of rain per year. The palatial hotels and souk recreate an Arabic atmosphere with traditional wind towers. The second is the Jumeira Beach Hotel. From afar, it resembles a wave complementing the famous sail-like shape of Burj Al Arab. A rooftop bar with an outdoor terrace provides a great view extending from the landmark hotel to downtown Dubai. The Jumeira Mosque, a fine midday destination, is one of the few in this part of the world to be open to non-muslim people through two daily guided tours.

Downtown

The star of downtown is no doubt the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (half a mile high, 828m), which was completed in 2010 and amazingly built in six years. Due to limited time, I skipped the trip to the world’s highest outdoor observation deck (148th floor) and instead looked for views from the ground. In the morning, I found distant views with reflections in Dubai Creek at two waterside promenades: Business Bay and Al Jaddaft Walk where the farther point of view lent to a better relative sense of scale of the towers. For close views, it is hard to beat the fountain pool within Souk Al Bahar at the base of the tower even though the fountains do not play in the morning. However, the Palace Reflecting Pool provides an attractive alternative. You will need a very wide lens to capture Burj Khalifa from near. The widest perspective-control lens, the Canon 17mm TS-E, was barely enough to include it all. Instead of visiting the nearby Dubai Mall, I strolled the Mall of the Emirates. I was hoping for a glimpse of the largest indoor ski area (in the middle of the desert!) but instead spent much time looking for water to stay energized, not a given in a maze of luxury shops. Note that I’ve been strongly advised that deploying a tripod in those places is a quick way to get in trouble with security. Permits for professional photography (which are very hard to come by) will be asked for, and photographers have reported being summarily escorted out from premises. Some even wrote that mere professional-looking cameras triggered the same reactions, but I experienced such difficulties only once and it was not downtown.

Deira

One of the oldest neighborhoods of Dubai, Deira is a world away from the slick skyscrapers of downtown. The narrow streets and alleys are crowded, chaotic, and felt like a meeting of the Mediterranean and India – which they are since the area’s souqs have long been venues for the trade of traditional goods ranging from gold to spices. You’d need hours to get lost in that maze (there are no no-go areas) near the mouth of Dubai Creek, but here are some photos all made within half an hour. As a street photography destination, it works all day, even though the lights of the early evening would be a bonus. Prior to my trip, I was under the impression that Dubai is a very restrictive place for photography. Besides the tripod limitations, drones are now strictly prohibited. In theory, one needs to ask permission before photographing anybody, but in practice, nobody seemed to care. Compared to the norms in this part of the world, Dubai is pretty much an open society.

Marina

Dubai Marina is one of the newest neighborhoods of Dubai and the wealthiest. Bars and eateries make it a popular evening destination. On Dubai’s main thoroughfare, the Sheikh Zayed Road bordered on both sides by impressive skyscrapers, the traffic is always moving, but it slowed to a crawl in the Dubai Marina access roads. Its array of residential towers rising from water reminded me of Miami, but a mosque bordered the canal which is plied by a multitude of restaurant boats. My hotel, the Sheraton Jumeirah Beach Resort was close to the start of three pleasant night walks, the Marina Promenade along a canal, The Walk at JBR (Jumeirah Beach Residence), a sprawling outdoor shopping and dining promenade, and the JBR Beach boardwalk. Towering above it, Ain Dubai is the world’s tallest observation wheel, rising 210 meters, and built with more metal than the Eiffel Tower.

Summary: one-day itinerary with top ten Dubai locations

• Palm Island
• Business Bay
• Al Jaddaft Walk
• Souk Al Bahar
• Mail of the Emirates
• Jumeirah Mosque
• Deira Souks
• Madina Jumeirah
• Jumeirah Beach Hotel
• Dubai Marina

Dubai has an excellent metro system, but it doesn’t reach all locations. If you are trying to visit all the above in a day, you’ll want a car, ideally with a driver.

Sharjah

Sharjah is not a district of Dubai, but a different Emirate – Dubai designates both a city and an emirate, sort of like New York City and New York State. Sharjah and Dubai are two of seven emirates that in 1971 came together to form the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a nation only 50 years old. Although in theory, I could have visited all the locations above in a single day – I did it in a cumulated 14 hours, this did not happen. On my first day in the UAE, in the afternoon I traveled to Sharjah to participate in a discussion panel at the Xposure international photography festival and afterward to a PCR test location. With my 12-hour jet lag – the maximum possible, the difficult acoustics, and the impromptu questions, I initially did not feel at ease in the setting. However, the moderator Elia Locardi, an online acquaintance since the days of Google+ that I was delighted to meet in person, told me I’d done OK and Xposure included me in that video recap:

The Power of Photography… A panel discussion that in and of itself was powerful.

More impactful seminars to come at Xposure 2022.#Xposurexpf #international #photography #festival #Sharjah #UAE #Xposure2022 #welovephotography pic.twitter.com/GLHiT1iqfn

— Xposure (@xposureXPF) February 15, 2022

I was glad to have come as visiting the festival provided me with another measure of the UAE’s achievement. Cities, however impressive they are, can be difficult to definitively compare because each of them is so individual. On the other hand, I’ve been to many photography festivals and fairs, and Xposure was definitively at a scale above anything I’d seen. The photography exhibition consisted of several dozen booths, most of them dedicated to a single photographer. Each of the booths was in itself an exhibit comparable to those put up by best galleries anywhere, with several dozen prints of average print size maybe 30×45 inches (often more), all impeccably lighted and framed. They even recreated a landscaped jungle environment around an exhibit of primate portraits by Mogens Trolle. There were extensive retrospectives by photographers like Steve McCurry, David Doubilet, or James Natchwey. Like at so many locations on that trip, I could have easily spent the day.

Visiting Xposure drove home the point that in the UAE, they dream of big things and make them happen. Standing in the futuristic city, it is amazing to think that less than a century ago, people there still lived in tents. Some will cite easy oil money, but oil currently represents less than 5% of Dubai’s economy. Vision and embrace of the future has to count for something.

My day of touring Dubai was on what was initially supposed to be my “rest day” from air travel – a 16-hour direct flight from San Francisco. It was such a whirlwind tour because visiting the city was not my reason for traveling half-across the globe from California to Dubai, but yet because of the pandemic, it didn’t feel right to extend my stay beyond “essential travel”. In the next post, we’ll come closer to what brought me to Dubai. Stay tuned!

Part 1 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The Alpinist, available online for a month (Update: free stream available) is the best climbing film I have seen. Watching brought back memories of my previous life in the mountains, and a particular apex moment, the subject of this post. In 1993, I adopted the large format camera and by the end of 1995, my longest vacation had been a road trip centered around photographing the national parks. However, at that time, I was still obsessed with climbing. Although it was the lure of Yosemite and its big walls that had brought me to California, my love and best abilities resided in the cold mountains.

From the start, I was more attracted by adventure than by gymnastic exercise – at which I am not good at all. On a large scale, the mountains offered a backdrop more awesome than the cliffs and boulders where the difficulty of rock climbing is pushed to its limits. On a smaller scale, the beauty of translucent curtains of waterfall ice festooned with innumerable icicles felt more otherwordly than any rock wall. It isn’t uncommon to find yourself on a thin freestanding column, surrounded by air in almost all directions. The mountains had been so compelling to me because they represented another world.

One could argue that the experience of the rock climber is more directly connected to nature since he holds directly on the rock, whereas the ice climber relies on tools such as crampons and ice axes. However, our knowledge of the world often comes to us through tools that are extensions of the body and mind. The art of photography also entirely relies on tools for personal expression. I felt that using tools was simply a way to amplify my experience. There was a particular satisfaction in finding the confidence to hang out from the pick of an ice-ax penetrating only a fraction of an inch into frozen water. Besides the biting cold, wind, and the fall of ice chunks, that experience felt connected to the mountains as I needed to develop the knowledge or instinct of the changing conditions that critically affect a climb. Rock walls are unchanged. A quick warm spell can cause a frozen waterfall to collapse. A quick freeze may render the ice prone to shattering. A frozen slope may be firm and safe to climb at night and in the early morning and become dangerous in the afternoon.

The peaks where I debuted in mountaineering were all snowy high mountains. Through pressure and the cycle of melting and refreezing, snow transforms into alpine ice. The slopes in the mountains are generally quite far from vertical, so the climbs are more about endurance and route-finding than technical difficulty. Thanks to modern ice tools, I soon felt confident enough to venture into the 1,400-meter high (4,600 ft) East Face of Mont-Blanc (the last three photos here) where I climbed solo a trio of routes of increasing difficulty, the Brenva Spur, Red Sentinel, and Grand Pilier d’Angle, experiencing an exhilarating sense of freedom and wildness.

In the 1970s, climbers began exploring a more transient territory, low-altitude water ice, which can generally be described as frozen waterfalls. Presenting vertical sections, they are steeper than the gullies and couloirs found in the mountains and feature a more complex and brittle quality of ice, adding up to a considerable technical challenge. Their ephemeral beauty, allure, fragility, and the improbability of the climbs mesmerized me. In the 1980s, I learned ice-climbing from Godefroy Perroux, one of the pioneers of that discipline.

In all fields of human endeavor, committed practitioners aim to leave a mark by making something new. In science, you write papers describing discoveries. In art, you create novel and original artworks. In climbing, you seek to establish new routes. During the winter of 1996, I participated in the fourth ascent of Sea of Vapors, leading the majority of pitches (photo above). Conditions were easier, but the line still had the aura of being considered the hardest in the world when first climbed in 1993, defining what was possible at that time.

Afterward, I felt ready to try a first ascent of my own. The occasion presented itself in February of that year when climber Eric Hirst alerted me of an opportunity in British Columbia. It took two flights from California and a very long day with even Canadian police on the scene. Due to the proximity with The Gift and the peculiar circumstances of the ascent, my partner Kevin Normoyle and I named it The Theft. I won’t repeat details here, they are in Eric’s report and mine, both written shortly after the ascent, and also summarized in the notes below.

On the first picture above taken during the first attempt by either Adrian Burke or Lee Purvis, I start leading the headwall. The second is of Kevin Normoyle looking with some perplexity at the fifth pitch during the second attempt. After having finished that crux pitch in the dark, you can see my excitement of being only one pitch away from completing the climb in the picture of me Kevin took.

The first image above reproduces the notes that I penciled on the last page of my copy of the guidebook West Coast Ice (first edition) by Don Serl and Bruce Kay. The page of the second edition of the same guidebook describing “The Theft” is shown on the second image. In the third, a still from The Alpinist (55:11) Marc-André Leclerc holds the guidebook. The authors noted that “Subsequent ascents will be exceedingly rare”.

Indeed. It took twenty-two years for the line to receive its second ascent. Marc-André Leclerc was the best alpinist of his generation. As now plainly evident to all in The Alpinist, his unassuming demeanor and free-spirited, ascetic lifestyle belied a supernatural mastery in the mountains. Although at a considerably more modest level, I’ve done a bit of alpinism using the same rules of engagement as Marc-André’s: no rope, no communication device, nor prior reconnaissance. In the movie, Barry Blanchard said that this game is only “for the best alpinists on their best days”, but that is true only of cutting-edge routes. The movie shook and moved me because I could relate to Marc-André’s pure-hearted obsession on a personal level. The Theft is listed on his Wikipedia page as one of his notable climbs and his latest before the fatal outing on the Mendenhall Towers less than a month later. I was honored that we had shared the same route – we are to date the two only people to have led the upper column, and that after the second ascent, Marc-André affirmed:

“It must be the best waterfall climb in southwestern B.C. without question.”

Below are distant views of the climb in 1996 on the day before the first ascent and during Marc-Andre Leclerc’s climb in 2018 in more difficult conditions:

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A post shared by Marc-Andre Leclerc (@mdre92)

Of all the climbing sub-specialties, ice climbing suited me the best because the activity was so much about determination, skill, mental strength (some would translate that as “balls”, or according to my acrophobic wife, a deficient sense of danger), willingness to suffer, and less about physical prowess. Yet, I knew that I had already pushed my natural abilities, and therefore my luck. In high school, I was a frail kid who skipped all the physical education classes. It was mostly by sheer willpower that I got into the world of alpinism, but I wasn’t deluding myself into thinking that I was as strong as most of my partners. In the subsequent years, my two closest climbing friends would perish in the mountains, and so would my ice-climbing mentor.

I didn’t plan it that way, but for a variety of reasons, The Theft turned out to be my last water ice climb. Maybe it was wise to move on after such a high point. Surpassing it would have meant taking greater risks in the inherently dangerous environment of the steeper mountains. I let it go. Besides fond memories, I was content that as a person of ordinary ability, I had managed to do something out of the ordinary. The void left by this departure didn’t last long, as it immediately filled up with photography.

Like many, I had high hopes for 2021, but things did not turn out as well as we hoped on both fronts of civic life and the pandemic. The latter is only one of the reasons that this year, I traveled and photographed less than any year going back all the way to the 1990s.

I already spend less time in the field than one would think, as I make a point to work efficiently to honor my time away from family. But as our children are poised to leave the nest in a couple of years, I pledged to spend even more time at home. For a while, that did not mean much. Although at home, I was glued all day to the computer putting together Our National Monuments. This was the first book where I assumed the publisher function from the start, so unlike for Treasured Lands, there was much more to do than writing, working with the art director on the layout and image selection, and preparing the images for pre-press, especially with so many contributors and disparate sources of information. I am grateful to everybody who contributed to this project. Despite all the particular challenges of this year, we managed to launch the book almost in time. If anything, you can take it as a measure of encouragement and inspiration that even in those circumstances, something beautiful and interesting can still be produced.

Although I had meant for the Fall 2020 southwest tour to be the “last road trip”, back then, I had to skip some destinations because massive forest fires had closed large parts of national forests in California. Like for Treasured Lands my plan for Our National Monuments was to depict the parklands in an encyclopedic way, with a selection of locations representative of their diversity. I needed a few more key locations. For that reason, at the beginning of March, I drove back to Southern California for a week. My previous visits to Carrizo Plain National Monument were all focused on the superblooms. This time I sought to depict other aspects of the monument.

I had visited the high-elevation areas of San Gabriel Mountains National Monument during the summer, leaving out the lower elevation front-range for cooler months. Indeed, the weather was perfect for hiking the trails in the San Gabriel Mountains canyons. Last, a late winter visit to Sand to Snow National Monument provided me at last with close photographs of the “snow” part of the monument, the San Gorgonio mountains.

In April, I was originally hoping to travel to Washington, DC to receive the Robin W. Winks Award from the National Parks Conservation Association at the annual gala, but the event was canceled due to COVID, and replaced with a zoom event. In May, having turned in almost final files to the printer for Our National Monuments, and having received two doses of Comirnaty (better known as the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine) I took advantage of the unused flight ticket to travel to West Virginia for a week to photograph the new New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, which pleasantly surprised me as one of the more worthwhile additions to the growing list of our national parks.

For a long-overdue family vacation, my wife and I joined other relatives to walk the final section of the John Muir Trail in early June. That was the place where I had fortuitously started backpacking a quarter-century ago. However, having spent recent years in more arid and lower-elevation lands, I had somehow forgotten how beautiful the High Sierra was – but also how tough those mountains can be. Especially on that trip, photography was secondary to the experience, yet was a welcome challenge.

After that welcome break, it was time to get back into InDesign to update Treasured Lands with New River Gorge for a third edition scheduled to be released later this winter. In the book industry, they say that producing a book is the easy part, whereas the hard part is to sell it. Even though with the Delta variant, I could not hold any live events, online promotion and the shipping of more than four hundred signed copies of Our National Monuments kept me busy. During this time at home, I also got more serious about collecting historic national park ephemera that may make their way into a new project. It has been a very dry year, even by California standards, so it was much relief to see the rains come back in November. With the hills green again, we resumed hiking in our local area close to San Jose, with the most interesting outing a preview of the Cotoni-Coast Dairies extension.

If you’ve read so far, my sincere thanks for your interest in my work. May the new year be all you hope for, and bring back everything we’ve missed in the past two years. I wish you and your family a happy new year 2022 full of happiness, health, joy, peace, and beauty.

Are you looking for new landscapes away from the crowds of the national parks? Are you seeking a more adventurous and out-of-the-beaten-path experience? If so, how about a visit to America’s national monuments?

National monuments: what are they?

Ask a person on the street to name a national monument, and you will probably hear about the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, or memorials commemorating our presidents and war veterans. So what’s in there for those who seek to immerse themselves in nature? In the United States, the term has a more specific meaning and, at the same time, includes features more general than built landmarks. Defined by a 1906 law called the Antiquities Act, national monuments are federally protected areas containing objects of historic or scientific interest. The main difference with national parks is administrative. The President can swiftly proclaim national monuments with only a signature, thus providing expedited protections, whereas only Congress can establish national parks.

As suggested by its name, the Antiquities Act was initially meant to protect native archeological sites. However, the first national monument was Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, a natural feature of geologic interest. Congress had been debating over the Grand Canyon since 1882, but even as commercialism was running unchecked, by 1908, it had not yet acted to protect that quintessential American wonder. President Theodore Roosevelt did, by proclaiming the Grand Canyon a national monument. Since 1906, 16 presidents have used the Act to preserve some of America’s most treasured public lands and waters. Half of today’s national parks were first protected as national monuments.

Two landscape-scale national monuments

While some national monuments fit within an acre, others protect entire landscapes with natural features as extraordinary as those found in national parks. In some sense, those landscape-scale national monuments could be seen as national parks in waiting. An excellent example is Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument located in Southern Utah. At 1,880,461 acres, it is significantly larger than Grand Canyon National Park (1,217,403 acres). Within its plateaus descending in vividly colored stair-steps from Bryce Canyon to the Grand Canyon, the monument protects significant paleontological sites, making it a scientific treasure trove. However, for the visitors and photographers, the attraction is its extraordinary geology of cliffs, badlands, hoodoos, natural arches, and canyons.

Nearby Bears Ears National Monument shares many characteristics with Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument: its location in Southern Utah, its size (1,353,000 acres) larger than Grand Canyon National Park, and wondrous red rock country with even more immense vistas. However, it is primarily a cultural landscape. Hidden in its labyrinth of canyons and mesas are more cliff dwellings and tribal artifacts than any other area in the American West, including some of the most iconic ruins on the Colorado Plateau. Both monuments marked milestones in conservation. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, proclaimed in 1996 by President Clinton, was the first national monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), marking the evolution of the nation’s largest land caretaker towards conservation. The Hopi, Navajo, Mountain Ute, Zuni, and Ute agreed to set generations-old differences apart to petition for the protection of their ancestral lands. In response, in the waning days of his presidency, President Obama proclaimed Bear Ears National Monument in 2016, the first national monument initiated by native people and co-managed by them.

National monuments at risk

National monuments are much less known and visited than national parks, but those two just have been in the news since 2017. In the spring of that year, President Trump signed an unprecedented executive order to review all the national monuments created through the Antiquities Act since 1996 that were larger than 100,000 acres. The review’s objective was to determine if former presidents had abused their power and if the protections curtailed economic growth. It targeted a total of 27 out of the 35 larger national monuments, including 22 national monuments across 11 states, in addition to five even larger marine areas. The public comment period of the summer of 2017 generated 97% support for the national monuments under review. Yet, on December 4, 2017, the President ordered size reductions to the two national monuments located in Utah mentioned above.

In January 2018, I resolved to take action the only way I knew, by hiking and photographing the 22 land-based national monuments in the review. I found a broad cross-section of natural environments, covering a significant portion of the American landscape. Totaling about 11 million acres, they ranged from the north woods of Maine to the cactus-covered deserts of Arizona. Besides their vastness and diversity, their natural features rivaled those in our beloved national parks. Vermilion Cliffs National Monument’s Paria Canyon is more than twice as long and every bit as impressive as Zion National Park’s Virgin River Narrows. The monument also houses unique world-renowned rock formations like The Wave and the White Pocket. Giant Sequoia National Monument protects more sequoia groves than Sequoia and Kings National Parks. The Sonoran Desert portions included in Ironwood Forest National Monument and Sonoran Desert National Monument are as beautiful and representative as those in Saguaro National Park, if not more pristine.

I spent months in repeated visits, immersing myself in those sacred lands and discovering remnants of cultures imprinted on the ancient landscape. So many of those monuments were previously unknown to me. I reasoned that those areas were vulnerable because the general public did not know about them and thus was not moved to defend them. This inspired me to publish a book that could help conservation organizations raise awareness of those lands. To amplify the call for conservation, I invited those who advocate for these national monuments to present their perspective. I am so grateful to 27 local citizen associations caring for those national treasures for contributing their voices, to former Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell for her foreword, and to Ian Shive for his photographs and words that give readers a glimpse of the almost inaccessible marine national monuments in the Pacific. The result is the first photography book entirely dedicated to America’s national monuments. While it includes only a subset of them (the 27 monuments at risk from the review), those comprise the vast majority of the large, park-like monuments. Our National Monuments: America’s Hidden Gems is the first in-depth portrayal of those parks less traveled.

Freedom to roam

After spending a big part of the previous quarter-century photographing the national parks, I was surprised by the freedom offered by the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) national monuments. Freedom from crowds, from rules, and expectations.

The national parks, set for “benefit and enjoyment of the people,” are generally equipped with a convenient infrastructure of roads, visitor centers, lodges, campgrounds, and interpretive trails. Set up for mass tourism, they can bring in mass visitation. For example, this year Arches National Park was frequently full and closed to new entries by 9 am. People instead head to nearby Canyonlands National Park, but even there, securing a spot at sunrise for the iconic Mesa Arch requires arriving well in advance. Next year, you will need a reservation to enter Arches National Park. By contrast, when I photographed three of the better-known natural arches in nearby Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, I had the entire place to myself. Despite a dozen visits to Death Valley National Park, I could never find the Mesquite Sand Dunes devoid of numerous footprints from other visitors. At Cadiz Dunes Wilderness in Mojave Trails, I saw many animal tracks but no human footprints, aside from my own.

During the worst days of the pandemic, national parks locked their gates. Embodying the principle that public lands are always open to the public, national monuments never closed, providing much solitude and solace. The heavy visitation of national parks made it necessary to enforce strict rules. You often have to “commute” a long distance to photography spots as no car camping is allowed outside developed campgrounds. In many national monuments, you can camp almost everywhere you like. Unlike in Grand Canyon National Park, in adjacent Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, I could drive right to the edge of the chasm and pitch my tent a few yards away from where I made my sunset, night, and sunrise photographs. Drones are strictly prohibited in national parks, but they are allowed in the national monuments managed by the BLM and the USFS.

Many national parks places have become such over-photographed icons that finding a fresh composition has become as challenging as securing a spot. The national monuments offer new landscapes whose more subtle scenery invites exploration to get to know and love. The absence of postcard views and overwhelming features frees you of pre-conceptions that hinder personal discovery.

Explore the national monuments

As the national parks become ever more popular, the BLM and USFS national monuments’ vast open spaces offer us places of solitude and inspiration. The rugged experience gives us a sense of the western frontier. With freedom comes the need for personal responsibility, independence, and self-reliance. As their development is minimal, national monuments can test your preparation and self-sufficiency. Many do not have a single paved road. I needed to rent a 4WD vehicle several times to access some of them. Even then, I still ended up with five flat tires over three years, sometimes in incredibly remote areas. With no visitor centers nor rangers around, no brochures, nor guidebooks, the first obstacle in my explorations was to find information.

Our National Monuments: America’s Hidden Gems provides you with the starting point I wish I had for planning trips. Coffee-table books about places often left me frustrated of being in the dark about the locations depicted. With my previous book, Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America’s National Parks, I had aimed to create a book that inspired and informed. Each photograph came with extended practical travel and photography notes, including facts on the parks’ natural history or anecdotal observations about my experiences. Although people in the publishing industry were skeptical that this combination of an artbook and guidebook would work, the book won twelve national and international awards and is also a best-seller in its sixth printing. My new book, Our National Monuments reprises this innovative format, depicting each national monument in depth through a selection of representative highlights with keyed maps and location information. Because those lands are not as popular as the national parks, I do not expect the new book to be as commercially successful. But, on the other hand, the general lack of awareness of those lands is also why I felt this book is needed, a sentiment echoed by the grassroots conservation organizations that care for those critical landscapes. Our National Monuments is my gift to our public lands and those who care for them.

On October 8, 2021, President Biden finally restored the two national monuments in Utah – and one in the Atlantic Ocean. Was it all a bad dream? Republican politicians in Utah are gearing up for a lawsuit to challenge the restoration. The 2017 presidential attack on them reminded us of John Muir’s appeal that “the battle for conservation will go on endlessly.” It reminded us that since 1906, America’s boldest efforts in conservation have been through the proclamation of national monuments. It prompted me to set out to see for myself the magnificent landscapes of the parks less traveled. I hope it prompts you to learn about our public lands’ hidden gems and embark on your own journey.

In the early 2010s, I heard about a campaign to establish Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument. I was immediately intrigued. The land, located north of Santa Cruz and south of Davenport, would potentially become the national monument closest to my home in San Jose, CA. The conservationists, led by the Sempervirens Fund achieved their goal in early 2017, but it was only last week that I got the opportunity to set foot on Cotoni-Coast Dairies. Still, it was a “preview” well ahead of the official opening to the public planned for next summer.

There is actually no Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument. Part of the actions taken on the last week of his presidency, the Jan 12, 2017 proclamation by President Obama did not establish Cotoni-Coast Dairies as a new national monument, but instead an inland expansion of the California Coastal National Monument. Maybe America’s most odd unit of protected land, the California Coastal National Monument is a paradox. Scores of people see it every day, likely more than any other parkland in California, yet it is unknown to most people. Virtually none of the people who see it ever set foot on its lands. Although spread out over more than 10,000 square miles, as proclaimed by President Clinton on Jan 11, 2000, the California Coastal National Monument totaled only 600 acres of land, less than one square mile. All of this is because as the monument extended for 12 nautical miles along the entire 840-mile California coastline but includes only the islets and rocks above mean high tide within that large area. On March 11, 2014, President Obama had added 1,665 acres of onshore lands to the California Coastal National Monument, but the 5,800 acres from the Cotoni-Coast Dairies are by far the largest onshore additions.

The lands were once inhabited by Indigenous Peoples known as the Cotoni (pronounced Cho-toe-knee), part of the Ohlone of the larger SF Bay Area, and then exploited by the Coast Dairies and Land Company, a Swiss dairy operation, hence the name. After farming activities ceased, a nuclear power plant and later a luxury home development were considered, but fortunately those projects did not succeed. Eventually, the Trust for Public Land acquired the property. They transferred the 407 coastal acres west of Highway 1 to California State Parks, who manages them as an extension of Wilder Ranch State Park, and the 5,800 inland acres east of Highway 1 to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

I am thankful for the invitation to the guided hike, which was organized by the Conservation Lands Fundation (CLF) and led by representatives of the two of its Friends Grassroots Network organizations, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust and the Santa Cruz Mountain Trails Association. The later organization had broken ground for the trails on the same week. They expect to be able to open trails to the public by the summer of 2022. The process of planning and obtaining approval from all parties is much more lengthy than the trail building itself. From what I have seen, it will be well worth the wait. I learned from the former organization about the land’s native heritage, its human-impacted ecology, and the field methods being used to make an archeological inventory. So far, ground samples were made at 2,500 locations. About 10% of them yielded artifacts, but don’t expect them to be arrowheads or pottery shards, they are mostly traces of human occupation like shellfish. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band are the descendants of the Ohlone. Due to the infamous SF Bay Area costs they now live far away, but the Amah Mutsun Land Trust hopes to involve them in all aspects of the monument development.

The lands consist of a mix of grassy coastal terraces and forested hills cut by steep river-carved canyons. Due to prior land use, both by Indigenous Peoples who conducted controlled burns, and then the farming operations, the area is more open than its neighbors, offering great ocean views, especially from the edge of the terraces. By contrast, the canyons presented lush vegetation, dominated by live coast oaks, whereas the hills further inland are home to redwood trees. It all adds up to a fascinating mosaic in a small area (9 square miles).

The hike lasted just two hours. Noticing that I had my camera out, other participants often asked if I got good pictures. Given that we started at midday, that walking, listening to the informative commentary from the various representatives, chatting with them, with friendly CLF staff and other invitees did not leave much time for photography, all I could say was “we will see”. You are seeing them now, as those photographs illustrate this account. I hope that despite the hasty circumstances, they still inspire some to discover this new gem for themselves. I cannot wait for the official opening and will be back.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that stewards most of the lands in Our National Monuments doesn’t have a reputation for being visitor-oriented like the National Park Service (NPS). With a few exceptions, there are no visitor centers within their national monuments, and often not any at all. The website blm.gov is not designed for user-friendly navigation (hint: use the search box to locate information). However, the BLM is good at making available georeferenced PDFs for many of the areas under their management. What are georeferenced PDFs and how do you use them?

Georeferenced PDFs

PDF is an excellent format for maps because it can encode vector objects. For maps, this presents two advantages: unlike raster (pixel) objects, their resolution is unlimited and the file size is relatively small. In 2017, the PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) standard made PDF dramatically more useful for maps with a set of geospatial extensions: added information (metadata) relates the image to coordinates.

The PDF map encompasses the entirety of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, an area larger than Grand Canyon National Park. When zoomed in with the GoodReader app, the half-mile trail to Mt Logan is clearly visible.

The PDF format is the standard for printable documents, from a one-page flyer to entire books – the printer for Our National Monuments expected a PDF from me. It is in wide use, with free readers readily available. Both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader (version 9 and up) support georeferenced PDF, letting you find and mark coordinates or make distance measurements. The real payoff is when you open georeferenced PDFs with a GPS-connected app on a device like a mobile phone: the app can use the GPS to indicate your position on the map. Since the PDF is a document that you have downloaded to your device, you do not need any cell signal to make it work, which is critical in the backcountry.

Avenza Maps App

My primary GPS app for offline navigation is Gaia GPS (review). The Swiss Army knife of GPS apps, it offers a lot of features, but reading georeferenced PDF is not one of them. By far, the most popular mobile app to read georeferenced PDFs is Avenza Maps, available for Apple iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Avenza Map has a number of features such as waypoints, track recording, and measurements. However, since I already use the more sophisticated Gaia GPS for those, I deploy Avenza Maps mostly for its basic function of following my position on a map, which shows up as a blue dot. The app is free but has in-app purchases.

Avenza Maps Store

There are two ways of getting maps into the app. The easiest is to use the built-in Avenza Map Store, which is the most extensive map collection I have seen, with almost a million maps of all kinds. Many of them are free, and that includes a fair amount of BLM-produced maps, as well as maps produced by the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation near my home. There is also a huge selection of paid maps from well-known vendors such as National Geographic or Garmin/Delorme that retail for a price comparable to their print maps, which is to say quite a bit for a digital download. The collection is well-organized and easily searchable by location or by keyword. Those who know how to create georeferenced PDFs can even offer their own maps for sale on the map store. An excellent example are the maps from Redwood Hikes.

Importing maps

The other way to get maps into the app is to import maps obtained from your own sources. I am going to take the maps in the Our National Monuments mobile PDF as an example, but the steps detailed below are the same for any PDF map that you find online. Although those maps are already embedded in the document and can be fully zoomed, they don’t offer the georeferenced functionality when viewed in a standard PDF viewer. The download links are there so that you can import the maps to Avenza Maps. Many of those maps are not available from the Avenza Map Store. I have included them in the Our National Monuments mobile PDF because unlike for national parks, for which there are quite a few apps with offline maps, no such resources were available for national monuments.

The catch is that while there is no limit to how many Avenza Map Store maps can be stored your device, the free plan lets you store only 3 imported maps at a time. If you want to store more than 3, you need a subscription ($30/year). Since I’ve never had the need to use more than 3 maps at a time, I’ve found an easy workaround against this limitation: store maps using another app’s file system, import a map from that file system into Avenza Maps as needed, delete it from Avenza Maps when no longer in use. I’ll detail step-by-step how I do that for the Our National Monuments mobile PDF on Apple iOS. My preferred PDF reader GoodReader ($3) is convenient for that use because it also includes an easy-to-use file management system for storing the maps, but there are plenty of other solutions.

Step-by-step instructions

Tap “Manage Files” in Goodreader and “+FOLDER” to create a folder, for example “MapsGeo”.

For each of the maps you want to store, while you have an internet connection:

1. Navigate to the URL of the map you want to store. For example, in the Our National Monuments mobile PDF tap a “Download georeferenced PDF” link.

   

2. Tap the Download icon of Goodreader (leftmost bottom).

   

3. Tap the “X” on top left as many times as needed to see folders in “My Documents”. Tap on the “Downloads” folder. You should see the map you just downloaded. Tap “Manage Files”, select the map with the circle on its left, tap “MOVE”, navigate to “MapsGeo” folder if needed, tap “Move 1 item here”.

   

To import a stored map into Avenza Maps (does not require an internet connection):

1. Tap “+”

   

2. Tap “From Storage Locations”

   

3. Tap “GoodReader” to choose app

   

4. Tap “MapsGeo” to choose folder

   

5. Tap the map you want to import. It will be ready for use in Avenza Map.

   

To remove a no-longer needed map from Avenza Maps, sweep to the left from My Maps view to reveal the “Delete” button.

I hope that this relatively little known tool is useful to you in your exploration of our public lands. I don’t have any experience with platforms other than iOS, but I suppose they offer apps with equivalent functionalities. If there are other apps on any platform you prefer, please feel free to share for the benefit of other readers.

I am thankful to still have my health, the support of my family, for the vaccine and with it the ability to gather together with all loved ones. I am thankful for the support I receive from you, my readers. There are, however, bigger things. On December 4, 2017, following a review, President Trump had ordered size reductions to two national monuments located in Utah. Bears Ears went from 1.3 million acres to nearly 230,000, only 15% of its original size. Grand Staircase-Escalante was reduced by roughly half, from almost 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. This unprecedented attack on our public lands prompted me to embark on a journey to all the 22 national monuments under review, culminating with the release of Our National Monuments two weeks ago, a book that I had announced one year ago to this day. The project has consumed me for four years, so naturally, I am thankful for the change of administration and Secretary Haaland’s actions, leading to President Biden’s restorations of the two national monuments to their original size on Oct 8, 2021.

President Biden stated during the signing ceremony “This may be the easiest thing I’ve ever done so far as president”, yet it took him 258 days from his inauguration to fulfill this campaign promise. I guess the political process is never easy. President Biden also went a step further from merely reversing Trump’s actions, issuing new proclamations (Bear Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante) that are not merely repeats of the originals, mandating new management plans, and including language that may pave the way for phasing out grazing rights. On that day, he also made the first presidential proclamation of Indigenous People’s Day. It may not be a coincidence that the restoration of Bears Ears embraced indigenous knowledge and honored tribal leadership in both the protection and management of this living landscape. When President Clinton proclaimed Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996, neither protection of sacred sites nor tribal access for traditional uses were mentioned. Both were central in the Bears Ears proclamation of 2016, and both have been incorporated in the new Grand Staircase-Escalante proclamation.

Besides the two Utah monuments, President Biden also restored protections to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, proclaimed by President Obama. The 2017 national monuments review included five marine national monuments. I am thankful to photographer Ian Shive for his work that allows us to glimpse places that would otherwise be inaccessible to us, and his collaboration in Our National Monuments. A screening of the Jean-Michel Cousteau PBS documentary Voyage to Kure inspired President George W. Bush to proclaim the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument, the first national marine national monument, and at one time the largest protected area in the world. He would follow up that designation with the three other marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean. However, they were not meant to become visitor destinations.

On the other hand, the national monuments managed by the BLM and the USFS embody the principle that public lands are open to the public, in a spirit of freedom and exploration as American as the lands themselves. As they never closed during the pandemic unlike the national parks, I am thankful that the isolated experience provided me much-needed relief over the past two years. I am thankful to the BLM and its personnel who has been working for 75 years to protect our nation’s public lands. Conservation starts with community. Places are best protected when a group of local citizens leads the advocacy efforts. I am thankful that citizen organizations have lent their voices to each of the 27 national monuments in Our National Monuments. I am thankful for the 11 national monuments proclaimed under Secretary Jewell’s watch and for the foreword she wrote for the book.

Now that they have been reversed, were the presidential actions of 2017 just a bad dream? This attack on our national monuments had a few beneficial unintended consequences.

It reminded us of the importance of the Antiquities Act. Used by 16 Presidents from both parties, its versatility made it a cornerstone of preservation in America. I am thankful for the thirty national parks that were first protected as national monuments. Scientists back a new goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and oceans by 2030 to protect the earth’s climate and biodiversity. I am thankful for our new extensive parklands with federal protections, which over the past half-century, have all been national monuments, almost all BLM. To preserve the future of public lands, we must protect the Antiquities Act as vigorously as our lands.

It reminded us that fragile landscapes, struggling with a changing climate and surging visitation, need informed management based on the long term and for the benefit of the country as a whole. They must not become political fodder in a divided nation, changing with each new presidential administration. It reminded us of John Muir’s appeal that “the battle for conservation will go on endlessly.” I am thankful that many realized that we can no longer take designations for granted and worked so hard for the current outcome. As citizens who care for lands that belong to all of us, we need to remain vigilant and involved. It prompted me to set out to see for myself the magnificent landscapes of the parks less traveled, an experience borne of disheartening circumstances, but for which I am eventually thankful. I hope Our National Monuments inspires you to embark on your own journey, and if the experience enriches your life, you will help ensure the same experience is available for our children and grandchildren. Happy Thanksgiving!

This spring, I returned to an adjacent segment of the John Muir Trail, a quarter-century after my first visit. How did things change, particularly with respect to photography? Although I carried my 5×7 camera, my first backpacking trip about 25 years ago was mostly a fun outing with friends on a short section of the John Muir Trail (JMT). Since then, I’ve gone backpacking on more occasions as part of my project to photograph the national parks. Those trips weren’t mainly about walking and spending time in the wilderness, but rather about accessing and photographing destinations whose depth in the backcountry made them unpractical to reach during day trips. Having released Treasured Lands in 2016, the next year, when I climbed the Grand Teton, I did something that had become rare outside of family trips: embarking on an outing whose main purpose was not photography. I was looking forward to more of those mountaineering trips. However, the end of the year 2017 brought the reductions in size to Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I needed to go back to work, starting a new place-based project centered on national monuments in early 2018. By June 2021, after six extremely busy months of writing and designing, I had finished the work on Our National Monuments, and it was time for a long-due vacation. Was there a better choice than the John Muir Trail?

After hiking the trail solo, my brother-in-law Nhon, wanting to share it with family members, offered to take them on the trail the previous year. However, his plan of 20-mile days turned out to be too ambitious for the others. The group bailed at Devils Postpile. After two weeks of rest, some of them went back to the trail, but beset by altitude sickness, blisters, stomach issues, and exhaustion, they exited early again. This year, the plan was to restart where they had left off at Kearsarge Pass. This was precisely a section of the trail I had not hiked at all before except for the descent from Mt Whitney to Trail Crest. With a more reasonable plan of 10-mile days, about 44 miles with 12,000 feet elevation gain in five days, with the promise to carry our food and collective gear (including a tent for comfort), I convinced my wife to join, although she had not gone on any backpacking trip since the birth of our children.

That southern section of the John Muir Trail is demanding. Between Kearsarge Pass and Trail Crest, it offers no escape routes. The trail’s altitude is consistently high to the point that another brother-in-law, Phuong, despite having hiked more than 600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail to Kennedy Meadows in the weeks prior was still feeling the effects of altitude. Several sisters felt nauseated and could not eat enough. As the trail crosses the highest point of the entire Pacific Crest Trail at Forester Pass (13,153 ft, 4,009 m), hiking in early June, we were concerned about dangerous snow-covered sections. Fortunately, the snowpack this year was the lowest I have ever seen, and we breathed a big sigh of relief upon reaching the pass. Even though it turned out that the John Muir Trail is quite hard, a notion vividly conveyed in Ethan Gallogly’s The Trail.

JMT, Kings Canyon National Park

However, that fact facilitated my photography endeavors. On long-distance hikes, making fine photographs is a challenge for several reasons. Carrying photography gear is only one of them. All the others had switched to ultra-light gear. Not following the hiking scene, I was the only one using a traditional internal frame backpack from Dana Designs weighing more than 6 pounds empty, but I think it was necessary to carry my load. With the bear-resistant canister, tent, and sleeping bag, my backpack was full, although I had kept the photography gear to almost a minimum. I had brought one Sony A7R4, 24-105mm f/4 and 12-24mm f/2.8 lenses, and the Leofoto small LS-224C tripod (described here), the later mostly for night photography and timelapses. Accessories were limited to half-a-dozen batteries and a polarizing filter. Compared to the 70 lbs backpacks I carried at a younger age, the 40-50 lbs weight seemed reasonable, yet compared to other family members, it was towering high, and each time I stopped, I could not wait to take it off my back. As I aged, I was definitively grateful that equipment has become much lighter for somewhat comparable image quality.

Even if you were to photograph with a phone, you’d still be subject to the main challenge, which is timing. You are rarely at the right time with the most favorable light since the need to progress dictates your schedule. The time to photograph with the least constraints is in the evening, but since each day we woke up before dawn to make an early start, on those long summer days evening photography ate up precious sleep time. We were a group of seven. When you hike with a group, you don’t want to make others wait for you. But when you stop to photograph while hiking, within just a few minutes, the group has moved surprisingly far from you. On that trip, I was able to cope with this situation only because of the fitness I maintain – those runs every other day when at home paid off. Usually, I carried the camera around my neck with a Photoflex Galen Rowell-branded waist camera pouch (long discontinued) to distribute its weight and prevent it from bouncing, making access quick. The other lens stayed on the top of the backpack in a pouch. On sections of trail where I did not expect photographing, I also stuck the camera, in its pouch, on top of the backpack. During the day, I handheld all the photographs. This was possible because of image stabilization since stopping down and using a polarizer eat shutter speeds. My wife and I trailed the group, and after stopping to photograph, I was able to catch up with her within minutes. Still, I had to find compositions quickly.

I made about 900 exposures. In the end, except for the sore shoulders, I felt that photography didn’t detract from my experience in the wilderness, but that the additional challenge made it more interesting and alleviated the unnatural pace of hiking with others. Having spent recent years in more arid and lower-elevation lands, I had somehow forgotten how beautiful the High Sierra was. The photographs are far from conveying the entire experience, which is also made stronger by the effort and difficult times. Yet, they can serve to awaken memories not depicted, and that’s why we cherish them.

JMT, Sequoia National Park

I first connected with the wilderness on the high peaks of the Alps. Besides the setting of that world new to me, mountain climbing captivated me because of the intense concentration it fostered. During technical ascents on steep faces and ridges, there is nothing but you and the mountain in mind, as the only concern is reach the summit and not to make a fatal move. Focussing on rock and ice, I felt part of a limitless universe. I did not think about how limited was the theater in which my outings took place. The Mont-Blanc Massif, the crown jewel of the Alps, is sandwiched between the sizeable towns of Chamonix in France and Courmayeur in Italy, only 13 miles apart from each other.

Those mountaineering outings were mostly two days affairs. The first day – or afternoon, you would hike to a mountain hut. The western Alps are home to a dense network of those structures. They range from full-service hostels with meals accomodating more than a hundred and located on trails accessible to families, to tiny shelters precariously perched on mountain ridges reachable only by serious alpinists. What they have in common are bunk beds and thick, heavy blankets. You don’t have to burden yourself with even a sleeping bag. That helped make possible ascents of uncommon length and difficulty. The second day you’d get up in the wee hours, hopefully summit and then descend all the way back to the valley. I remember only a handful of times when my outings spilled over a third day and only two forced bivies. One took place in 1989 when, during the first recorded solo ascent of the Jaccoux-Domenech route to Mont Blanc (trip report in French), I arrived in the vicinity of the hut at night and could not locate it. The other was two years later on a ledge when we didn’t climb fast enough on the Bonatti Pillar of Les Drus – a landmark route since then totally obliterated by a series of huge rock falls in the summer of 2005, caused by global warming.

After I climbed Denali in 1993, everybody I met in America assumed that I had a huge backpacking experience. You may be surprised to learn that the Denali ascent was my first multiple-night outing carrying a tent and a sleeping bag. Because of the Arctic environment and the peculiar logistics of dragging a sled on the glacier, going up and down the main camp twice to ferry supplies, and then waiting for a weather window, I view it more as an expedition than a backpacking trip. Back from the Mountain, during my spare time, I embarked on a series of multi-day big-wall climbs in Yosemite. In that vertical world of high cliffs, I watched the hours pass and the shadows move across the valley below during the lengthy belays. However, I was mostly stuck on a very steep rock, making very slow progress upwards. In my days in the Alps, I viewed hiking as mostly a way to approach a climb. Because of all the new scenery I saw in the national parks, I began to spend more time on trails, but that was limited to day hikes.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1995 that I embarked on a multi-day backpacking trip. Like for my first visit to Yosemite and to Death Valley, the trip was organized by students from the UC Berkeley outdoor club CHAOS. This particular memory was brought out because my friend Ethan from the CHAOS days just released this week his promising debut novel, The Trail, which takes place on the John Muir Trail. That first backpacking trip also took place over four days on the John Muir Trail, or more precisely, a short section of its 211 miles, common with the Rae Lakes Loop, but starting from the east side via Onion Valley and Kearsarge Pass and exiting at Sawmill Pass.

Maybe it was a fortuitous coincidence that for my introduction to the High Sierra, I hiked a segment of the trail that mile for mile contains some of the most stunning scenery in a mountain range famous for stunning scenery. It is not for nothing that it is one of the most popular hikes in Sequoia and Kings Canyon, if not in the entire Sierra Nevada according to the National Park Service. Our itinerary covered less than 40 miles. Yet there was so much more terrain variety and natural delights close at hand than at the places I concentrated on as a climber. Streams, meadows with wildflowers, trees contributed to creating a gentle wilderness. All the cares of the world were gone, as all I had to do was to walk and camp, freeing my mind for looking.

Mild weather also helps make the Sierra Nevada a great introduction to backpacking. Sunny skies grace the range 300 days a year, and not needing to carry a tent not only lightened my backpack but also increased my sense of connection with the wilderness as I slept under the stars, completing my immersion in the Range of Light. The only thing I could have done without were the droves of mosquitoes at sunset! In those years, I was fit enough that carrying my 5×7 camera, a series 2 tripod, and a 35mm camera in addition to the backpacking gear didn’t feel like a burden. The trip gave me the confidence that I could carry it anywhere in the wilderness for my fledgling project to photograph the national parks. Hiking with the group, there were only a few times I could set it up – including all the photographs on this page. I returned from the trip with only a dozen different exposures. But I didn’t mind, because I felt that they captured the impressions of a new experience in nature and a new beginning.