The subject of selecting (and carrying!) photographic equipment for backpacking trips came up in a recent conversation. There’s a lot I could say about this, since I’ve backpacked for decades and often prefer to do certain kinds of landscape photography while traveling on foot, mostly in the Sierra. Actually, I not only could say a lot about this — I have! An extensive article at this website goes over a lot of important things related to combining backpacking and serious landscape photography: My Backpacking Photography Kit. Take a look at the article if you want a lot of details.
The main issues involve how to incorporate the weight/bulk of serious camera equipment into a load that also includes your food and shelter and much more, how to best make use of the photography equipment in the backcountry, how to approach the process of photographing “out there,” which equipment to use, and a few other things. Basically, unless you are young and very fit and willing to accept a great deal of pain from a huge load… you are likely to have to make some compromises and adjustments in both the backpacking equipment and the photographic equipment you carry. The good news is that the compromises are quite doable, and that you can still make fine photographs in areas that you probably can’t get to in any other way.
A related question had to do with a different way to get into the back county that I’ve used during the past two seasons, namely support by pack animals. Left to my own devices, I probably would not have tried this — at least not for a few more years! However, I’ve recently had the wonderful opportunity to join some other photographers who have been traveling into (mostly) the Yosemite backcountry for nearly 15 years every summer to make beautiful photographs. (See a video about them here and take a look at their beautiful book: “First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite’s Wilderness.”) When they started, large format and medium format film cameras were the norm for this sort of serious work, more or less necessitating pack train support if they were to stay out for any length of time — and they often went out for a week or two at a time.
Last year was my first time being part of a pack train supported backcountry trip, and I initially felt almost a bit guilty about it — as a person who has enjoyed walking all over the Sierra backcountry for decades. While backpacking I’ve often felt a bit ambivalent about pack trains, understanding that they had a place out there but also feeling a kind of superiority as a person traveling on foot.
There are many different ways that one can use pack animal support: you could ride the mule to your destination, you could walk and have the animals carry the bulk of your gear, or you could backpack and arrange an expensive (!) resupply delivery. On that trip last summer we opted to ride mules into the high backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park, going through and to areas that I had visited a number of times in the past on foot. As a backpacker I had often looked up at the human cargo riding the mules and scoffed at their wimpyness. I can now report that it isn’t quite that simple. You certainly can get more quickly to harder-to-reach places on the back of a mule, but there is a price to be paid. For me the price was not just the fact that I could barely move when I finally dismounted, but also that months later I was still having knee problems!
This year we again used pack animals, though this time we hiked in, with most of us carrying just daypack loads. I carried water, lunch, a jacket, and my Fujifilm X-E1 mirrorless camera system for handheld photography. My primarily photographic system, built around a full frame DSLR, went on the pack animals, along with the rest of my personal gear.
For photographers, the biggest difference is that you do not have to limit the gear you take in the ways you do when you carry the equipment on your back. By the time I load up a full frame camera, a good tripod, three large zoom lenses, and assorted batteries and other small items, I have added a substantial weight to a backpack that already holds days of food, cooking gear, clothing, tent, sleeping bag, and more. I consider every piece of gear carefully, and I cannot carry everything I might want to have with me. That all changes with a pack train. While I still can’t take everything that I might use back home, the limits expand greatly. We were allowed 80 pounds of gear — not including food or shared cooking and other equipment. The heaviest pack I have ever carried, back when I was much younger, did not weigh that much. Consequently it is reasonable to carry useful things that you might otherwise leave behind: that big and solid tripod, a selection of large and high quality lenses, even more than one camera system.
In my experience, pack train supported photography does have some real advantages — and a few disadvantages. It changes the way you approach the backcountry. For one thing, with a pack train it is more reasonable to get packed in to a great location, set up camp, and then spend a lot of time carefully exploring and photographing the nearby environment. This means that once you are there, aside from normal camp duties such as cooking and cleaning up, you can devote your attention almost entirely to photography. It also means that you learn one general area much more extensively that on a typical backpacking trip, on which you might be tempted to move more often. There are some disadvantages, too. I’ve always enjoyed the freedom of backpacking travel. Once I’m out on the trail I often am very flexible about my plans. I might decide to explore a trail less area or go to a location that catches my fancy. With the pack-train oriented base camp, it is a lot more difficult to wander off and set up a new camp remotely — when you are self-contained it is almost trivial.
There is one other difference. The food is entirely different! My motto when backpacking is that “if I can’t eat it out of the bag I poured the boiling water into, it is too complicated for the backcountry.” In other words, food tends to be very basic. However, if you have the right cook (and we do!) the possibilities for camp food expand immensely when weight is no longer such an issue — and this makes a bigger difference than I ever would have thought.
So, am I now a convert to pack train backcountry travel. Yes and no. I will undoubtedly do this again, partly because that is how my friends travel and party because it allows me to do kinds of back county photography that might be almost impossible when traveling on foot. But I also love the freedom and the feeling of self-reliance of backpacking, and that mode of travel also allows me to see and photograph in its own special way.
*“Peak and Tarn, Sunrise” was originally posted here.
Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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