Grand Canyon

T&T (GB's brother and partner) run REI hikes in the Grand Canyon every Spring and Fall. They were looking at a new area to hike in with a new itinerary on some lesser-known trails and decided to use us as guinea pigs before they took paying clients on the adventure. Me, GB, and J went with them on this new adventure and had an absolutely amazing time. It was one of the hardest hikes I've ever been on and gave me as well as GB and J quite the workout. Not to mention the rattle snakes, scorpions, bighorn sheep, etc. Of course, for T&T, it was "just another day at the office." Must be nice.

First Time from T - N - T on Vimeo.

Portfolio Pics - Part 6

"Fresh Air"EXIF Data
Location: Virgin Islands
ISO: 200
Exposure Time: 1/640 sec
Aperture: f/13
Focal Length: 17 mm
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority

Tour of Park City Route added!

See my bike routes post by clicking the link or look over to the left at the top of the column to access it. Each link on that page will take you to an interactive map of the route.

The Tour of Park City route is linked under the "Summit County" section on that page.

Published!

I just have to do a bit of bragging about my wife and her new publication! Well, OK, it's not a full book, but it is a photo in a book. We have a few photos on iStockphoto.com to help us earn credits so that we'll buy other images there. (I know, it's a vicious cycle) We've sold a handful here and there to non-descript downloaders and maybe one day I'll spot one somewhere, but the photo below drew a bit more of a personalized crowd. We received a message saying that Greg Witt was including it in his book "60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Salt Lake City". We were pretty excited. Way to go GinaBina!

Do not reproduce without permission

Ringing in the New Year!

Besides the party that we had for New Year's (I'm sure GinaBina will post about that...), we celebrated the new year and the new snow with snowshoeing up by Mountain Dell Reservoir.

Here's the view we woke up to yesterday...

"Flocked"

Me and the Mrs.

This is what we saw all day long

Zion's HDR attempt

Steve and Liz invited us to St. George with them this weekend with no kiddies. We couldn't pass up a free place to stay and the classic Anderson hospitality so we headed down. The weather was perfect and some of the trees were starting to change. Now for the pics... With all the shadows, it was very hard to get the detail in the sky along with the colorful trees. So what did I do? I tried my hand at HDR again.

Here are the originals

In this one the sky looks great but the trees are blacked out

This one the trees look good but the sky is washed out

Here's an attempt at a happy medium, but the trees are still a bit dark and the sky lost some detail

Here's the HDR Version

Now you can see the High Dynamic Range (HDR) in this version. The trees keep their true color and the sky is a rich blue with whispy clouds. Not bad since I'm still figure the HDR thing out. In hindsight, I should have taken about 5 images instead of 3. Now I know.

More pics to come!

Lake "Pal"

Thanks to the Wildings and the Bennetts for making the second annual trip to Lake Powell an absolute blast! Now for some pics...

"Relationship Building"

"Sunrise at 'Pal'"

"At the Helm"
"The Gang"

"Surf's up"

Experimenting with stroboscopic flash

"Houseboat Livin'"
"Sweet Dreams"

Early Autumn Uinta Backpacking

It just doesn't get any better, crisp mountain air, chilly alpine lakes, the girl I love, and a night in the mountains. Far, far away from any of the worries of life. Now for some pics, since I do still call this blog "Two Wheel Photos".

A few "artsy ones" first:

"Glass"

"Lichen Fetish"

"andiamo"

"Grass Swirls"

"Star Trails"

"Leading Lines"

And, of course, the ones of my babe:

"Here Goes"

"Wall Lake"

"Pensive"

"Take a Deep Breath; ahhh"

Nice clouds...

Just had to post this quick shot of the sunset tonight. Look at those clouds! They were on fire.

Saturday Ride

Last night when we were getting ready to go to bed, Gina asked if I thought she could do Big Mountain... I answered by telling her that it would be hard, then I showed her what the profile looks like for that ride:


I was pretty excited when she said she wanted to try. Sure enough, we woke up this morning to a beautiful, cool summer morning with the sun shining and a steady stream of cyclists heading up Emigration Canyon. The wind was a bit strong at first, but didn't last long after we got into the canyon. Up we went. The pedals kept turning over and before we knew it we were at Little Mountain. Gina said she didn't even want to stop until we got to the Reservoir (look in the profile and it's the little dip on the way up). We stopped and ate a bit, drank some water and then it was back on the bike for the steep section. Gina cruised right up the switchbacks of Big Mountain and I think the top looked more beautiful than ever because she had worked so hard. Now for some pics at the top:


Gina taking a short break after a steep switchback section. (almost there!)



Ahhh, the top. (I keep forgetting my camera, so I have to use my crappy cell phone one)

Wasatch Loop (check!)

As a follow up post to this one, I thought I'd post the only picture that I got from our ride of the Wasatch Loop, as I affectionately call it. It was a great ride, there were a few of us from the University of Utah Team (myself, Tyler, and Jon), and one "friend of the program," Trevor. It was great having you guys, we'll have to do some other long rides next time. Thanks for the 5-star lunch at Sundance Gina! It was a welcome pit stop.

Sorry for the camera phone pic, I forgot the camera :-(

Treasure Map

Unfortunately it's not every day that you find a company willing to help out a single user when it means making a global change to the product. In the case where that change will help other users, this becomes more common, but it is still rare for it to happen quickly. I came across a great service that did just that. TopoRoute is a route mapping software for runners and cyclists (and anybody else that needs to plot a route). The software works great and they've gone through some changes recently that have made it even better.

I was trying to plot a route that was 115 miles long with many curves (means the file size is relatively large). They apparently had a limit on the size of a file that could be created and I was over that limit. I emailed their contact and within the day, Martin (thanks Martin!) got back to me to tell me the problem and that he wanted to get it fixed. By the next day, he had doubled the size of file that could be created and my route worked perfectly. Here's the route (a ride that me and some friends are going to do this Saturday if anyone else wants to come!)

Wasatch Backcountry

We couldn't have asked for a better day to celebrate two Presidents' birthdays! The sun was shining, we have lots of snow, and the avalanche danger was low. So we decided to take advantage! We had a hard time deciding where to go, but we settled on snowshoeing to Donut Falls in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It's a short hike, but very scenic. The best part was how much wildlife we saw today. There was a huge herd of elk on the mountain by the side of our house when we left with one large buck heading up the harem of females. Then we saw a few moose while snowshoeing and later in the day we saw a bobcat dart across the road below our house. It's amazing that within 15 minutes of the city, you can see all that wildlife and simply "get away from it all." Now for the pics...

Classic one-hander

The Tongue

Leap of FaithMt. Olympus on my shoulderQuiet SolitudeThis is Donut Falls just to the right of the rocks (about 5 feet under the snow)Moose Buddies (see the one on the right too?)

Unfortunately we didn't get pics of the elk or the bobcat, maybe next time...

***PS*** We also went on a SLC photo tour with our friends on Saturday, click on the teaser pic below for more great shots of SLC.

An American Institution

Welcome Old Man Winter!

I am so excited that it snowed today! It has been too long since we've had any snow, so it was about time. The resorts need it, the valley needed it to blow out the inversion, we all needed it! I got so excited I just had to snap some pics on the way home today. So enjoy...

Finally some photography

I finally have some photography to post! Yay. Short story: We went to Yellowstone kind of on a whim, the weather was bad but the scenery was beautiful! Here are some of the pics I took, and more can be found here

"Cold Osprey"


"Above it All" (actually taken in Midway, Utah)


"King of the Meadow"


"Go Away"


Is that for real? (Silex Spring in Yellowstone)

PS, feel free to comment