The five greatest hiking pictures i never took

I’m sure we all have had the experience of, for one reason or another; having missed what we thought would have been a really great shot while hiking. In some cases maybe we just forgot to pull out the camera. In other cases it might have been impossible to take the picture because of what was going on.

I was thinking about this the other day. Maybe the pictures I have in mind wouldn’t have actually turned out to be great but at any rate in my mind they would have been dramatic.

I’ll give a few examples. I’m hoping you might have some of your own.

1. Back somewhere around 2003, I forget exactly, I was going up the Falling Waters Trail with my Airedale Duffy. At the time there was a section where the trail went up the right side of a water fall then crossed over the falls and continued up the left side. The crossing was very slightly slopped but not too bad. I started across through very shallow water when my feet suddenly went out from under me and I started sliding down the falls. The falls were not real steep and I was sliding not free falling but I couldn’t get stopped and started picking up speed. The only thing going through my mind at the moment was that I had to somehow miss the rocks at the bottom or I would break an ankle. I did manage to straddle them. My momentum sent me rolling on the ground but none the worse for wear. A picture of me going down the falls would have been interesting. Also the look on Duffy’s face was priceless as he looked down on me from above. It was a ‘You don’t really expect me to go down that way do you?’ As a side note I’ll mention that a Forest Service Ranger was coming up the trail as I fell and saw it happened. The next time I went that way a year or so later the trail had been rerouted. I always thought that the new section should be called the Ed and Duffy spur.

2. In the late spring of 2007 I was heading up Adams via Airline again with Duffy. He was out of sight up ahead when I heard a rustling and saw him running full blast towards me a moose right behind him. I started to run when I noticed the moose had stopped. It was a mama with her calf. We regrouped and made our way up the trail towards them. When we got there they were grazing under some nearby trees. I thought, ‘This will make a great picture’ and I slowly pulled out my camera, aimed and took the picture. The flash went off. I hadn’t thought about that. That mama moose came charging out of the trees right at me. I turned and started running down the trail, my brave Airedale about 60 yards ahead of me. I looked back once and she was only about three feet behind me her head to the ground snorting. I grabbed a tree, swung off the trail and started zigzagging through the woods. Again she quit chasing me and went back to her calf. I think a picture of the look on my face as the moose closed in would have been quite humorous.

3. In the spring of 2008 I was out hiking the Oceolas with my new pup Lauky. We approached from the east. When we got to the chimney I said to him ‘Well let’s see how good you are on ledges.’ He went right up. However, on the way back when he got to the edge of the chimney he paused. I thought it was probably better for me to go first anyway so I made my way down until my head was about even with his. I had a pretty good three point grip with my two feet and one hand and I said ‘OK, come on.’ I expected him to carefully make his way down, but instead he paused a moment then…jumped. My heart skipped a beat but I managed to snag him with my free arm as he flew by me in the air. He was a feisty little fellow, but he still had some things to learn about ledges. Again a picture of me grabbing him as he went by would have been dramatic.

4. This fall Lauky and I were heading up Cabot via Lost Pond. About half way up to the lake we came over a rise and there right in front of me was a bear who immediately stopped, turned and stood facing me. I stood there a moment, while all the articles I had read in Backpacker about bears flashed through my mind. Just then, Lauky who had obviously been tracking the bear his nose to the ground, looked up, saw the bear and barked. The bear turned and ran. I can in my mind picture a Norman Rockwell picture of a man with a 20 pound terrier on a leash facing a bear with the little dog barking. It’ll never happen but it nevertheless stays etched in my mind.

5. A final example for the moment, would be of our last hike. As we were heading down the Ammonoosuc Ravine trail my feet without warning went out from under me on a treacherously slippery rock slab and I started tumbling head over heels down the ravine with Lauky attached. I not sure if the more dramatic picture would have been of me tumbling down the slab or of the look on my face after I slid off the edge of the ledge and somehow managed to land on my feet, standing there looking into Lauky’s face as he stood there on the edge of the slab. When I think about it the whole thing might have made a better video.

Anyway, there are five potentially great pictures that never were taken. What about you? There must be other examples—dramatic, humorous, cute, whatever.

Ed'n Lauky said:

I’m sure we all have had the experience of, for one reason or another; having missed what we thought would have been a really great shot while hiking. In some cases maybe we just forgot to pull out the camera. In other cases it might have been impossible to take the picture because of what was going on.

I was thinking about this the other day. Maybe the pictures I have in mind wouldn’t have actually turned out to be great but at any rate in my mind they would have been dramatic.

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I've often missed a shot I wish I had, like you say, for various reasons but I've found the "damage" is minimized because I tend to keep a narrative going in my mind. This narrative often supplants, if not exceeds, what I can catch on film because it includes such invisible images as the nature of the geology underfoot, the biology around me and the history that came before me, all of which opens up an internal dialogue about the future before us. At times I'll document this narrative in a trip report and I always keep a journal on long trips. Occasionally I use a video camera and recite such mental meanderings as I film the surroundings.

Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words but there are some words a picture can't replace. I find that when I do use lots of photos in a journal or a report, I tend to shortchange the cerebral in favor of the aesthetic, so a balance is worth aiming for.

The most memorable photo that I wish I had was certainly a Pulitzer prize winner ... ... was actually a picture I took with a disposable camera while leading a kayak camping group in Muscongus Bay, Maine. Unfortunately, I later lost the camera overboard and never got to see the picture but the scene is still firmly etched in my mind.

Our group consisted of several participants with disabilities including one young lady in a wheel chair. We were camping on Thiefs Island where, at the north end, there is a picnic table on a bluff overlooking the water. We were set to dine as a colorful sunset illuminated our evening through the gauze of a low fog. The chair was pulled up at the head of the table where it was most accessible and the young lady sat there facing west with the red glow highlighting the beach rose in her dark hair and the sparkle in her eyes. Behind her was a great blue heron perched on a rock at the shore and outlined in the haze as it awaited its meal. Click.

I knew the Flags on the 48 bear encounter had to be on Ed’s list somewhere!

I’ve only had one bear encounter while hiking, in July 2009 on the Roaring Brook Trail up Giant Mountain of all places, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Ed and Lauky’s; I just saw the back right flank of a bear moving very briskly off the trail. Still, I’d love to have a picture even of that.

The first picture that came to my mind wasn’t taken during a hike; it was from a flight in May 1980, when my grandfather and I flew to California together. The first leg of the journey took us from Philadelphia to Chicago, and as we lifted off from O’Hare bound for San Diego aboard a DC-10 — this was not long after a DC-10, also in Chicago, I’m pretty sure, had turned sideways immediately after takeoff and crashed, so I was pretty nervous. And this being my first airplane trip to boot, my camera was obediently stowed beneath my seat, and so I missed capturing the image of the pale blue of Lake Michigan set against the dark blue of the land and the city’s towers, with the bright orange of the sunrise reflecting off the lake directly behind the downtown skyscrapers. That would have been a great composition of contrasting colors.

The next non-picture that I thought of was actually taken on my son’s 11th birthday. I had promised him we would climb Mount Marcy for his birthday, and we added Skylight as well (but there wasn’t enough time for Gray, too), so it was late when we finished and there was a dramatic orange glow on the horizon as we drove out Adirondack Loj Road back to Lake Placid. We checked into a motel, and I stupidly showered first, then we went to the late, great Cameron’s Restaurant, our favorite, where we had eaten most of our vacation suppers over the last five years. We had told the owners, Glen and Sue, that we would be there to celebrate Cam’s birthday, but when we arrived, the door was locked. I heard a voice inside say, ‘‘Sue, it’s Cameron’’ (they all knew him), but we trudged back to the car, as I tried to figure out where we could find supper at this late hour. As we got to the car, Glen approached us, asking, ‘‘What happened? I thought you were coming.’’ I explained that we had climbed Marcy and Skylight, and he said with surprise that he had thought we were only going to Marcy Dam. But he invited us in for cake and ice cream, and I borrowed Cam’s camera to take pictures of Glen and Sue and the waitresses posing with Cam, but I never saw the pictures. Cam’s mother and I were long divorced by then, and she and her second husband had a tiling business, and the only photos they got back from the processor’s were of tiling jobs they’d done. So the images of our after-hours celebration in Cameron’s Restaurant vanished into the ether. As did the pictures I took two days later when Cam and I climbed Vermont’s Mount Abraham, under crystal-clear skies, natch. Two years after that, when my ladyfriend, Susan, and I climbed Abraham together, I had my digital camera along, but the summit was completely socked in by fog. Ah, well.

But that reminds me that five-and-a-half weeks before Cam’s birthday, Cam, Susan, and I and my parents were gathered at Cameron’s Restaurant for the celebration of my having completed the 46. We had told Glen and Sue the night before that I planned to wrap it up on Whiteface the next day, so as we finished our supper that night, having checked Whiteface off my list, we were suddenly startled by the blaring of Glen’s bugle or trombone as he marched around the restaurant, followed by the waitresses shaking pom poms, announcing as he approached our table that ‘‘here [was] the Adirondacks’ newest Forty-Sixer,’’ and he presented us with a chocolate cake decorated with white icing and ‘‘Whiteface Mountain #46’’ (if memory serves) written on it in blue. My camera, of course, was out in the car.

More recently, in April 2011, I drove out to climb (New Hampshire’s) Mount Monadnock for what would be a 12th different month, completing The Grid for the mountain (or would that be The Row?) and when I pulled into the parking lot I reached for my camera ... and it wasn’t there. I’d left it on the dining room table, 75 minutes away. So that hike, which I did regardless, of course, in which I saw many ski areas I’d never noticed before, with fantastic visibility — a fellow on top with binoculars pointed out Franconia Ridge and other landmarks — went un-photographically recorded.

What else. Well, I never got a picture of PinPin the two times I met him (though Susan got a nice one of him with The Queen), and I didn’t get a picture of Bill McKibben and his daughter when we met them at Slide Brook lean-to during what turned out to be Susan’s penultimate mountain hike, or of the bull moose above us in the fog on Mount Pliny two weeks before that. I wish I’d gotten a picture of the summit (any summit) of Mount Huntington when I was up there five years ago, but that’s because I don’t think I ever found it, and that’s the real disappointment there.

May 1986: I was up early on Garfield when a UFO landed nearby. Two aliens came out and proceeded to take what I asumed were summit pictures and they were congratulating themselves....I told them it didn't count b/c they took their UFO to the summit. They said something mean and left. Tourists.

Dec 1998: A friend and I were coming down OBP when we saw a moose all dressed up as a reindeer. Normally, that's not so great, but he was pulling a tiny sleigh with a fox dressed up as Santa. Weird. Classic line by my friend that day, "No one is going to believe that one, wish we had a camera."

2010 or 11. Thought I saw a man dressed in a 50's Ice Cream suit passing out ice cream sandwiches to thru hikers on a summit.

July 2012: Jackson (Wunderdog) and I were taking a break and being treated to some Gray Jay activity. While he was lying down, a Jay landed on his shoulders and stayed there for about 45-60 seconds. I did try to get my camera out for that one.

Two are true, the others are left for you to decide.

Peace.

Jaytrek57 said:

I can't think of an inspirational, funny or quirky little saying.

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I thought you did quite well actually.

I just received this one by E-mail.

Hi Ed

Just read your post on VFTT. Last year, I had rented my friend's cabin in NH for a week and planned to hike on 5 days, work at the cabin one day and reserved one day just to rest. The first day was miserable, light rain, low clouds, no views for sure, with a chance of harder rain. Not wanting to miss a day, I decided to bag Tecumseh from Tripoli Rd. There was no one else out that day. I was the only car in the lot. About a mile or so up, the trail levels out and hangs left. I came around the corner and there was the biggest bull moose I've ever seen! He was so close, it took my breath away. I slowly took the pack off and reached for my camera. By the time I had it out, he had sauntered off into the woods and the photo would have been moose butt, fading away. Missed it by that much.

However, I had my reward for going out on a miserable day. And I did get Tecumseh.
The rest of the week was great and I got Waumbek, Galehead, Moriah, and Cabot.

John

Ed'n Lauky said:

5. ... When I think about it the whole thing might have made a better video.

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Actually, Ed, all five sound to me like they would be great videos! Of course I just came back from Disney World so a cartoon movie of a moose chasing you and Duffy would be perfectly comical

Tim

My wife and I were backpacking in Denali NP in 2004. It had been rainy and miserable all day (i.e. par for the course) and we were setting up our tent on a gravel bar in the Savage River. I heard some noise upriver and looked up to see an entire herd of 50+ caribou trotting down the river directly towards our tent. The magic of the moment temporarily paralyzed me - huge bucks up front, then several does, then the calves mixed in with the does, then a bunch of huge bucks again. As they got closer, I actually had to wave my hands and yell since it seemed like they might overrun our tent otherwise. When I did, they adjusted their course ever so slightly to follow one of the gravel bars leading to our right, giving us a perfect view of every animal as it passed. Their beautiful bodies, the organization of the herd, the monochrome sky as a backdrop, and the braided river stretched out before us - no time to grab a camera, but I will never forget it.

I have many photos that I should have taken. The most recent was a month or two ago when I was hiking (climbing) the Bald Face Circle Trail. As I was going down the slope from South Bald Face toward North Bald face, this little bird trotted out of the brush. It didn't seem all that concerned about my presence. It was sort of a miniature Barred Rock chicken with a bright red patch on top of its head. My friend Mary was a witness to the encounter and after some search came up with the name. It was a Spruce Grouse. I have hiked a bit and never had seen one before. Like the rest of the responders to this thread, I had no camera that day.