Breakout time in the mountains
This morning, I went out on a hike with my wife, daughter, my wife's friend and my daughter's friend. We were going to go up hiking up to Battle Creek Falls, which is a waterfall in the canyon near Pleasant Grove, Utah.
When we got up there, the trail was closed due to construction, so we decided we were going to hike to the "G" on the mountain instead. Here in Utah, some of the cities have massive letters in the mountains and they are good areas to hike up to and see the whole valley. So we set off for the G, not really knowing were we were going, all we knew was that it was up the mountain and to the north.
We passed this pavilion where a homeless person was sleeping out on the ground and began our journey.
We really had no clue where the G was as we were just wandering around on the trails. We kept looking up the mountain thinking that we would get a glimpse of it or something. There were people every now and then walking on trails up higher on the mountain, and they were all walking north, so we kept walking north as well, looking for a place to start our ascent up the side of the mountain.
Not really sure what that was, but it looked cool, so I got a picture of it. It reminded me of the old Fallout video games where they have shacks made out of random things and random people from the wasteland live in them.
As we were walking, we ran into a guy and his cool dogs. The guy asked us if we knew how to get up to the G. He said how he had been wandering around down the trail in the direction we were headed and had never found the way up to the G. So that kind of sucked for us, but at the same time, saved us a lot of time wandering around like idiots.
We took off looking for a trail that went up the mountain so we could start getting some elevation and work towards the G.
We found a very steep trail leading up the side of the mountain, so we started heading up it. It was probably not the best route to take since we didn't see anyone else attempting to traverse the mountain this way. My daughter and her friend weren't wearing the greatest shoes for hiking and were sliding every few steps because of how steep of an incline it was.
We got a few hundred yards or so and came to a nice little area that was kind of flat and had some rocks that we could sit on and rest for a bit.
We still had no clue where the G was, so I decided I was going to put the drone up in the air and see if we were even close. The area we were didn't really have a good take off area, so I almost clipped my props on the edge of the rocks when I was taking off.
I didn't prepare very good for this hike, so my drone batteries weren't fully charged, so I didn't have much flight time.I shot my drone up and started checking out the area.
I flew a for a while to the area where I thought the G was and then I saw it off in the distance. Ya, there was no way that I was going to hike that. I think we were about a mile away from it and quite a ways down below it as well.
After I got the picture above and started flying back, I got the low battery warning that comes on at about 25%, letting me know I had about 5 mins of flight time left.
I flew right above us and got a top down shot. Everything always looks so cool from this perspective. I was running out of time, so I started to get the drone in position for a cool group shot.
After I got this shot, I brought the drone in for a landing. I was looking for a good spot to try and land without destroying my propellors, but I couldn't find anything. I decided I was going to bring the drone in for a hand landing. These are always scary because any gust of wind can make the drone move as you are reaching up to grab it as it is lowering down to your hand and if that happens, you could lose your finger tips. Luckily, I got it landed without any problems and I still have all of my fingers.
We decided that we were going to head back down and not head for the G anymore. So everyone started to go back down the extremely steep trail. I think my daughter and her friend only fell like 5 times each.
The backlighting on the flowers and weeds was pretty nice.
One thing that you always try and pay attention to as a photographer is the lighting, so when you get cool lighting like this, it is always a good thing. As a photographer, you are usually chasing light and trying to maximize good light when it is there and you do your best to try and avoid taking pictures in bad lighting because you know that it is going to be hard to salvage anything good out of an image taken in bad light.
I still had plenty of time to take pictures as the girls were all taking their time going down the trail trying not to fail every 3 steps.
The hike today was pretty awesome. It is always a good time being outside and spending it with my loved ones. I start school again on Monday and my kids go back to school next week as well. So we will all be back to our normal routines and summer will officially be over.
Over this next few months, there really is no telling what kind of adventures my family is going to get into. My wife and I are preparing for SteemFest in Thailand this November, which should be awesome. It will be Faith's first time out of the US, so we are super excited about that. We have wanted to visit Thailand for so long and we are hoping to move there at some point in our lives.
Thank you for taking the time to check out this post. It turned out to be a lot longer than I had anticipated. Hopefully you enjoyed it and weren't too bored.