My love for hiking, and photography is not always intense.
It is easy in this digital age to be saturated with amazing images of awesome places, and lose the desire and drive to create. It is easy to fall into the routine of waking, working the 9-5, sleeping and repeating, stuck and disappointed in a success you are not achieving, staring at follower counts and inventory not sold.
I have no answer. This post does not contain a fix. However, I was recently inspired in an unlikely way by the YouTube channel of a long distance hiker John Zahorian. John has hiked over 10,000 miles in some of the most beautiful locations this country has to offer. His videos are a vlog style format but peaceful and realistic, with some excellent videography. I highly recommend this video he posted on his record breaking hike of the Colorado Trail. Watch through to the end. Well worth it.
Great Divide Trail
A recent series he released (first video here) focused on the Great Divide Trail. A route that begins in Glacier National Park at the border with Canada and Montana (where the CDT ends) and continues on into the Canadian Rockies. Hearing someone who has hiked so many miles describe this trail as the most beautiful hike he's ever seen, triggered both the hiker in me and the photographer.
I have seen some of these locations pop up regularly in Instagram feeds, knowing that someday (in the never sense) that I would get out there and explore them. Well... This video series did me in. For the first 2 days after watching I worked through multiple scenarios trying to figure out how I'd take that much time off of work, and from my family, or even how I'd handle such a long hike, through such an intense landscape. I have experience hiking and backpacking, but nothing so large an undertaking.
Lets face it, jobless, divorced and eaten by a bear might not be ideal.
The plans (if you can call anything I do a "plan") morphed from a solo, plaid-clad, grizzled hike through the Rockies, to a family car camping trip. Less ambitious than John's adventure, but finally inspired and excited to bring my family along on the trip of a life time.
The result was an amazing 8 day road trip from Colorado to Glacier National Park in Montana, and then up through Canada to Banff and Jasper National Parks. As a native to Colorado I thought I'd seen the best of the Rockies. At every step and the further north we went, we were consistently amazed.
This trip was unlike anything I'd seen before.
The next several posts I do here will go into more detail of our adventure and share with you some of the photography I captured along the way.
With any luck I can hopefully be that source of unexpected inspiration you weren't quite looking for ;-)