My First Time Photographing Ice Climbing: I Can't Wait to Do It Again
My cousin is a wildland fire fighter and he smoked me on the approach. But being cold and exhausted was more than worth it to watch them climb and take these photos.
There's honestly not a whole lot to tell for this story. My cousin had some time off work for the holidays and is expecting a baby within the next couple of weeks, so in his downtime we made our way up to Truckee, CA and did some climbing.
It was freezing cold when we got there that morning, which was a good thing. We started to snowshoe in and were immediately shedding layers. I honestly don't remember the last time I strapped on a pair of snowshoes...they're exhausting. Between that and my pack holding my camera gear, food, water, clothes, and climbing gear, I was dead after the hike in.
There were two climbs. The first was really cool and still had some water running down under the ice. I opted out of climbing, knowing we still had to hike back to the car and I could barely raise my legs at that point already.
After a couple of ascents on the first route, we moved over and started on a fresh one. There's a spot about halfway up that I was going to anchor in and shoot from, but seeing as how I couldn't find my camera strap before we left, I decided it was a bad idea.
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