Lost Photos

Just before I went to Austria in the winter of 2008 Laura and I went out and both got new cameras. Laura had been using the old Canon film camera I got as my high school graduation present and wanted something more, ah, modern. I had been using the latest in a string of profoundly cheap and crappy pocket digitals which never seemed to be as good as their advertising claimed.

Laura wound up with an "SLR-like" Sony, and I got a small point-and-shoot Sony. Her's is a larger, better camera while mine is smaller and simpler. Her's is what you use for important shots. Mine is what you use when you don't want to lug a big camera around.

Mine has performed admirably. It is now on image 12,367 -- that's right, the shutter has snapped more than 12,000 times in a little more than two years.

About three weeks ago I started having problems with mine. While the camera is definitely well used -- with scratches, dings and cracked plastic -- it's worked fine until now. Then lately I started getting low-battery warnings when the batteries were fresh. Later, the camera refused to turn on when it was cold. Living in Montana, that was a problem.

Last week, having had enough, I went out and got a new Sony point-and-shoot. This one was actually very cheap and nearly as good as the old one, though it does not feel as solid or perform quite as well.

Most of those 12,367 images were taken on our year-long around-the-world trip. The small Sony was handy in places where you did not want the risk of carrying an expensive camera, or when social situations called for something the locals wouldn't take much notice of.

One day early in the trip, in Peru, we took a day-long guided trip into the Cordillera Blanca outside of Huaraz. This was a longish hike and we went light, taking my smaller Sony.

A few hours into the hike Laura called out to me -- she was taking pictures but got a warning message that the memory card was full. Since we had gone out of our way before the trip to outfit our cameras with large memory cards, that should not have been the case. If the camera was malfunctioning in Peru -- a country not known for its electronics superstores -- then we'd have a problem.

Earlier in the day one of us had replaced the batteries and must have accidentally hit the button which releases the memory card. When Laura handed me the camera I saw that was what happened and popped the card back in. It worked fine.

When the memory card is not inserted into the camera, all images are stored on the camera's very small hard drive -- there's room for about eight images. That's why Laura got the warning message -- while there was plenty of room on the external card, the internal memory had filled up.

Last night, when we were setting up the new camera I popped the memory card out of the old Sony and put it in the new Sony. Then, just to see if the old Sony was feeling like working, I turned it on and snapped a picture. Immediately I got a warning -- memory full. Weird, I thought. So I reviewed the images in memory and found, to my surprise, eight pictures which Laura had inadvertently taken when the external memory card was popped out. I had never thought to look for images on the camera's body and had forgotten about the incident altogether.

While only 14 months old, these are not exactly a time capsule from the distant past, though seeing them last night did for a moment take me back to a time that already seems very long ago.

(Huaraz from 14,000 feet)



(Looking deep into the Cordillera Blanca -- a range of massive proportions.)





(Me midway up the hike, a scene forgotten until now.)

The January Thaw

Laura got me a book for my birthday called "Downhill in Montana." It's a history of skiing in Montana and focuses on ski areas.

(Lower Lolo Canyon)



Like many states in the U.S., Montana is peppered with ski areas that opened in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, operated for a few or 10 years, and then closed up. Many of these ski areas opened during periods of unusual snow and cold only to find that when conditions returned to normal their once-great ski season had shrunk from five months to two, or less. The author interviewed one former ski area owner who noted that no matter how warm and snowless a winter can be in Montana, there was always one thing he could count on: the January thaw.

(Crystal Theater)



While we've had our moments of snow and cold here, it's been overall a dry and warm winter. Such winters are particularly frustrating when we are new here, excited to get out and ski peaks only to be confronted by brownery.

(Lolo)



My first winter in Salt Lake City was the same way, as was my first winter in Tooele, so maybe we can write this off to a sort of first-year phenomenon.

(Crystal Theater)



So, the thaw is on. Missoula is about to totally melt out, which means lots of puddles, mud and piles of melty black snow. Apparently it also means lots of fog, which we've had almost every day for two weeks.

(Looking to Idaho from Lolo)



The Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers are now wide ribbons of flowing water edged by ice and stranded bergs. South faces above the valley are snow-free. Jumbo has two wild ribbons of snowing arcing up the west face where south winds deposited drifts; elsewhere on Jumbo, the winter elk herd has all the grass it can eat.

(Fresh lines in the Crystal Theater)



(I'm not the only one making tracks here)



Of course, though we are in thaw there is still snow -- just much less of it.

(Laura at Lost Trail)



(Lost Trail is great, but it sure has a lot of flat spots. Every snowboarder needs a telemarker, if for nothing else than to loan poles.)





Let's hope winter resumes before spring begins.





(Stevensville)

"The Whole Reason For Winter"

Last weekend, as temperatures rose, snow settled and skies broke, Laura and I headed up to Snowbowl.

Properly, the ski area is called Montana Snow Bowl, but over the years it's also been called TV Mountain, SnowPark and Missoula Snow Bowl. Either way, the ski area is about 11 miles from our front door and visible from all over town. On radio and TV commercials we're told Snowbowl is "the whole reason for winter.

Snowbowl is best known for its steeps, accessibility and low lift ticket prices. It's rather infamous for its rickety facilities and southern exposure. (One sticker plastered on a chairlift tower on the Grizzly lift says "Snowbowl: The Whole Reason for P-Tex.")

Montana is filled with funky locals-only hills like Snowbowl. Each have their bonuses, and each have their drawbacks, but all are uniform in that they are cheap. I tried to figure a formula for comparing Montana ski areas against those elsewhere in the country and never decided what were the appropriate factors to use. Nevertheless, you can't argue with the prices. Lookout Pass is $33. Lost Trail is $34. Discovery is $39. And Montana Snowbowl is $39 as well.

In many respects, you get much more than you pay for. In others, you get exactly what you pay for. Swanky on-mountain lodges and high-speeds lifts do not have a home in our part of Montana (and really only are those found in a few places in the Treasure State). Snowbowl's access road is dirt, its chairlifts squeaky and ancient, its parking attendants look slightly crazy, and the lodge could use a good scrubbing. And all those reasons are precisely why it's also so loveable.

Oh, and then there's the skiing.

All this stoke comes from Laura. Enjoy.