It’s pretty hard to go to Yellowstone and not take at least a pretty good photo. 

Surely it’s the nature of the place; terrain both sweeping and intimate.  I also think it’s my growing familiarity with the place.  A richer, more expansive understanding of what Yellowstone means makes shots frame themselves quicker, makes light a little more predictable.

The exceptionally varied summer thunderstorms this weekend did make life with a camera especially captivating.  Very soon after I took this last one the clouds rolled in, rain started, and night fell an hour early.  Sudden darkness, glare on the windshield, and a Hayden Valley full of tourist cars and bison were not a good combination.  At one point two ornery bulls ran right behind our truck, presumably only hitting it.  I say presumably because I never saw them, though I could here their snorts of vehicular dissatisfaction clearly, before M told me to go forward, now.

As a nightcap, and if you haven’t already, go over to The Republic of Doom and read former 24 hr solo SS world champ and KTR and TransIowa V.1 vet Fassbinder’s series of words and photos of his Moab to Page tour, a route he unwittingly stole from me (and no doubt many others, in most respects it’s the only logically elegant way to go).  Of particular interest is the crux final section: portaging bikes and packrafts up Crack-in-the-Wall and then riding up Left Hand Collet Canyon.  I wonder how much riding they did, as on 11/2007 Harris and I found a huge rockslide at the top, uncleared, and below a road which had been left to go to seed quite a few years ago.  Fun and mostly rideable going down (though I did take a header into soft sand at one point), it seems like it’d be a task for a Pugsely (and good hiking shoes) going up.  In any case, I hope to do this trip some day, though I’d do White Rim rather than Lockhart/Needles, hit the Grandview around the Paunsaugunt, climb up to the Markagunt (follow the Dixie!), descend the North Fork road, and for maximum style/absurdity points bikeraft down the Narrows (which can’t be legal, and might be dangerous as hell).

There are always future adventures to think about.  In the coming weeks I want to create more posts with detailed speculative beta to archive in the sidebar.  This one, for instance, or the upcoming Selway trip, or recreating the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition on bikes and rafts, or the Wonderland Trail in a push (the current unsupported record is soft), and a bunch more.  Contributing to the collective adventure brain trust is a high ideal.

What’s your next big adventure?