I went to the Harvard Square newsstand the other day to pick up the March issue of Backpacker magazine. Splashed across the cover read, “Better Than National Parks! 10 epic routes-no crowds or permits.” I opened it to the article and there it was, spread across two full pages (58-59), a photograph of me looking across an alpine lake at 13,024-foot Snow Peak high in the Colorado Rockies.
This post isn’t about my fifteen minutes of fame and all that comes with it like the scores of beautiful women asking for my number or the countless kids seeking my autograph. Oh no, that was already happening long before the photo was taken. This is more about the trip, which ranks as one of my favorites.
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Back in August, while flying high above the checkered terra firma of midwestern farm land, my growing anticipation was matched only by my curiosity. This week-long trip had two objectives; attend a bachelor party in Denver and embark on a four-day backpacking journey in the Rockies. The backpacking trip was going to reunite me with my college roommate and great friend, Ryan Bonneau, the guy who snapped the photo.
I last saw Ryan about 11 years ago when we lived in New Hampshire. He was doing well at a financial services company but decided that office confinement wasn’t his thing. He knew he’d rather be fly fishing so he moved to Telluride and became a guide. His other passion is photography and he has developed a respectable name for himself within the trade having been published in several nation-wide publications. (You can see his work at ryanbonneauphoto.com).
After a long drive from the airport, we finally greeted each other at the trailhead and realized we had no map. It was a rookie mistake but we circumvented the error by taking a picture of the map posted at the trailhead with my Blackberry. It’s bush league - I know.
We hiked six miles up steep terrain with hardly any interaction with other hikers. Backpacker magazine’s assertion of “no crowds” is quite accurate and can be attributed to the absence of any 14,000-footers within the Gore Range. We loved it. In fact, we were hiking this spot because Ryan received a shot list from Backpacker looking for photos of the area. He was on assignment so-to-speak.
The photograph that appears in Backpacker might seem natural - as if I’m unaware of being photographed - but that isn’t the case. To get the shot Ryan stuffed a sleeping bag inside my backpack to fill it out. Then he gave me a red jacket to help me “pop” in the scene and finally he handed me a mesh Patagonia trucker hat for character, I suppose.
After “wardrobe,” I was able to skip hair and make-up because: A) I have no hair, and B) I never go camping without my own bronzer. Ryan set up the composition, making sure to maximize the benefit of the reflection of Snow Peak on the lake, and sent me out rock hopping into the scene. He snapped a few shots and interjected direction on my posing while I balanced on a rock that surfaced above the deep cold water around me.
“Bend your right knee a little more!”
“Give me a quarter turn to the right!”
and the predictable, "Suck in your gut!"
This whole experience taught me life lesson #414: Modeling isn’t easy nor is it appreciated. And herein lies the reason why I refuse to grace the cover of GQ or Esquire.
Within 45 minutes the sun had risen and the shooting was done. We had three peaks to bag and hoped to make it to another lake on the other side of the mountains you see in the photo. As we hiked around the lake and up the super-steep and unstable terrain of the mountainside, we began to have second thoughts (this is where a map would have come in handy).
We pondered and pointed at possible passages to get to the other side but all options seemed too dangerous. We contemplated our options; we could go up and maybe die or we could chill by the lake for the next few days. We opted for the latter and made our way back down the mountain as Ryan’s dogs went crazy chasing the countless marmots scurrying in the underbrush and rocks.
Later, Ryan did some fishing. He favors the catch-and-release philosophy but I told him that if he could catch it, I could cook it. And with that I was searching the area for a flat, low-profile rock that could double as a griddle. It wasn’t long before I heard the range-echoing “awe yeah!” and saw him coming back with an impressive and tasty-looking 23-inch cutthroat trout. We were pumped and I took a photo of him with the fish, which currently serves as his Facebook profile pic. We now had a feast so I scoured for firewood while he uprooted some wild mushrooms with the aspiration to fully live off the land, even for one day.
The rest of the trip was solid. We had great weather, the Gore Range all to ourselves and no bears. We hiked out and grabbed lunch at a place in Vail before going our separate ways with the notion that we would hike together more regularly than once every 11 years.
And with a wave and two honks of the horn, I was heading back to Denver for the bachelor-party-of-all-bachelor-parties. It started in the basement of Coors Field drinking Blue Moon straight from the vats and ended with a long nap on the flight home.
