Warner Mt. Lookout

Last weekend three of us left friday to cross country ski 8 miles and stay in this fire lookout. We left at about 3:30PM and finally reached the tower at approximately 10:00PM. When we left it was almost 60 degrees and sunny. When we reached the top, exhausted, it was roughly 32 degrees, windy, and snowy. This was one of my most favorite adventures yet.

first night

saturday morning trek to the outhouse.

It was a blizzard all day saturday. We were supposed to be joined by 5 other guys who had bought a snowmobile off craigslist for $300. The weather was too bad for them to make it up.

There was a Popular Photography mag in the desk. Tell me this isn't the most rediculous accessory ever.

wings

drying clothes

drawer contents. the UNO box was empty...

sunday morning was perfectly clear with about a foot of new snow.

Packed to leave. I never used my boots once. We made it home in 3.5 hours because we got to board/ski down most of the way.

Comments:

1) I think my autofocus is dying. Even with "all AF points" selected, it simply fails to focus and hardly even attempts. Its getting to the point where it is really annoying. I don't trust the camera anymore to focus.

2) I find it really difficult to white balance for snow.

3) To add to that, my new monitor has a hint of pink tint to it. After editing all these photos, I put them on the macbook screen and they were all green. These photos may be off in color... I was too lazy to correct it.

4) I forgot to dump some trampolening photos before I left. For the first time ever, I filled up two 2GB cards in one trip. I had to delete many of the tramp photos to make room.

5) This trip was a real treat because I got to shoot at really low ISO's all the time. I havent been able to do that in a long time.

6) I'm very impressed with the battery life in DSLR's. I don't think I even went through one and it was pretty cold the whole time.

Dope trip, though we lucked out in many many ways. Had we not found food or had the weather cooporate, things could have been very uncomfortable.

Thanks!

budget lenses

Last summer I found a pair of sunglasses I liked at Walmart for $5 bucks. I went through three pairs pretty quick and struggled to find replacements. Over spring break I stopped at another Walmart and noticed they had my faveorite sunglasses sitting in the $1 bin. I promply bought out the place and walked back the car with 9 pairs of new glasses.

This was actually a filler post till I get time to put up a real one.

Thanks for looking,

-Scott

end of break

These would have made a good opener for a spring break post. Oh well. Bachelor was real nice to those of us on the mountain for spring break. It kindly dumped 4", 4", and 7" for me each day I was up there. Crowds were insanely non-existant and there were many runs where I never saw a person. Lookin forward to some spring boarding with some sun. Stay tuned for the newest project as well. I might be heading to the dark side and putting on some stiff plastic boots sometime in the future.

This was taken on Feb 18th, 2011. The red line is where the snow was when I left on March 25th, 2011.

Found this little beauty sitting on one of the tables in the lab at the end of finals week.

We're baaaack.

get it right blogger

Blogger really pisses me off sometimes. I don't understand why sometimes my images wont get bigger when you click on them. Even after a re-upload... When I first upload them they work, then after text is added, they don't. They also always pop in at the top of the page. Why won't they just go where my curser is? Come on...

I'm going to try and fix the post below... don't have time right now.

"me" time

Well its been an interesting spring break. Not quite a party like it should have been, but fairly eventful in a weird way. I've spent most of the break by myself as many plans fell through. Its also really difficult to take video when traveling alone because most of my ideas pop up while driving. It would be really fun to roll out with a patient crew who was actually interested in making a short clip. That said, I haven't taken any video.

1/2 price Sisters Bakery donut at smith rock

monkey face climbers

day 2 at smith rock

Its crazy when you can comfortably ride bikes one day and snowboard the next. Central Oregon is neat like that.

those famous words:

"happiness only real when shared"

but nowboarding solo with an ipod comes fairly close

slow start

Added a new camera to the quiver the other day. My old roommate kindly gave it to me. Some special features include: a lens cover that requires manual opening and a black dot on the sensor. Nice beater to have around though.

the new guy

the new set up

an awesome gift

messing around at 2am

gear, ready to roll

Here is what is coming with me on my mini trip. We'll see if any of it actually get used. It sure would be fun to have a project to work on or a specific goal to try to reach. The problem with snowboarding is that I always want to do it and not record it. All my ideas end up being "lifestyle" shots and you cant make a video of just that; you need exciting content too.

it finally arrived

... and I'm not even sure what to do with myself. I hope to make it to the sand and the snow but we'll see how things go.

so fresh, so clean

Shower Essentials

Sunday

Nothin new.

ridiculous doo

???

Ohhh

I'll be surprised if I'll ever need more than 10 megapixels. Maaaybe 12 but anything more than that and i'm just filling up my hard drives with excess information.

Dead Week

You know times are good when you're eating/drinking stuff to keep you awake AND eating/drinking stuff to put you to sleep. Finals are next week then spring break is around the corner. Should be plenty of opportunities to take some photos and blow off some steam.

Not even sure if any of this actually does anything. Life is full of mysteries.

north jetty at home

sunday

sweet sweet nectar

Mt. Bachelor blew up last friday. It was absolutely amazing. Blue bird, minimal crowds, and two car loads of friends, and 12 inches of fresh snow on top of 30+ during the week. Last friday was almost as close to perfect as a mountain day gets. I realized that snowboarding on a good day might be one of my most enjoyable activities. Its so fun that you forget about everything else.

Back to fluid mechanics and intermediate dynamics...

2-14-11

Two random things that are rad:

1. big storms- mad snow, wind, or lightning and thunder is sick. Driving back from the mt in a snow storm made me think of this again. Heavy heavy weather is exciting.

2. good times- this one is hard to explain. think of it this way: you know its a good time when you can turn your phone off or leave it at home because it deosn't matter what your other friends are doing. You are having such a good time with the people you are with at that instant that you KNOW you're not "missing out" on any other activities. Good times are when you don't care if you have internet or cell phone service. You can essentially live in the moment, and be happy.

empty bowl of guacamole

in between couches to crash on, chillin in the Bend parking garage, eating tuna and crackers

happy valentines day,

Scott

first "real" video

Last wednesday night, while studying for a failure analysis midterm in the library, a lightbulb turned on and I finally got an idea for mt. bachelor's video contest. The contest ended in 24 hours. I was up till 4AM thinking of details then woke up at 6:30AM to go film because that was the only daylight I'd see that day.

We filmed for about 3 hours, I went to school, ripped the shit out of a midterm, survived through a fluid mechanics lecture, and went home to edit till 12AM. Here is the ghetto result:

We lost to another crappy video but had I been next to a computer instead of snowboarding, our video would have got way more votes.

Sunday Project

Having no engineering homework is sort of like a lunar eclipse. It only happens two or three times a year. This past weekend was a rare one and I'm afraid I didn't use it as well as I could of. I did finally make a little flick though. Here it is:

I don't understand a whole lot about video. This is a .avi file just because it was the smallest I could figure out how to use. Quality suffered a bit. I realize this clip is long and boring but maybe thats it's point. I was hoping it might just be a little inspiring and leave people feeling a little happier for some crazy reason. Maybe it's another classic clip encouraging people to enjoy and appreciate the little things.

I had another "moment" last night/today where I questioned engineering as a whole. It was due to a combination of things beginning with many small movie ideas that sounded really fun. Then last night I was watching a sweet artsy ski shop clip and then in lab today I got a little overwhelmed with the materializing responsibilities of an engineer. This was probably my 5th or 6th "moment".

...but today is Taco Tuesday, so thats good.

-Scott