The Snowcrest Mountains

Not much going on down there.

I'm a winner! continued

So after winning that Outside Bozeman Photo contest I was expecting to get some kind of lame prize at the awards ceremony yesterday. Boy was I wrong. They gave me the best overall grand prize and I won a $3,000 (retail)camera setup and a poster sized print of the winning picture. It's a Pentax K20D and 2 lenses, a flash, a memory card and a sweet camera bag. I've been wanting a new camera, and the $5 in my checking account right now wasn't going to cut it as far as getting one. Lucky me.

Tobacco Roots

Descending from 10,000'





The start of a glacier? A lot of patches of snow here probably aren't going to melt this year. . .

Butte America, USA

Went to Evel Knievel days last weekend. It was really something.

The Ridge

Talked Alan into "riding" from Bridger Bowl to the M on Sunday:



Goat!



"Hazy skies, caused by wildfire smoke originating in California, are likely to last throughout the summer."

Hail!

I made it home on the bike with less than a minute to spare. Holy cow, it sounded like someone was beating the house with bats. Looked like it afterward too.

Pollinators

A couple photos I took for a friend who is doing a project on native pollinators for The Pollinator Partnership.


Missed the wasp, but the shadow is pretty neat.

Snowboarding July 16th

Just south of Flathead Pass in the North Bridgers.

Lima peaks advocacy ride

The Dell Merc.


A sweet anticline



www.montanamountainbikealliance.com

100th post

The Bridgers from the top of the Stone Creek trail

These next couple are from a camping trip to the Lionhead area by West Yellowstone and Ennis.

Sheep Lake in the Lionhead


There is a threat that this trail will be closed to bikes. That would not be cool. You can write a letter here to try and prevent that. I think Sheep Creek is one of the best backcountry trails I've ridden in Montana, and I've ridden a few. Some more info on the closure here and here.


And here's one of the log bridges from that trail. This one was scary to ride because you had to turn onto it and loft your wheels about 8". The pressure was on for Aaron and he didn't even flinch.

I'm a winner!

I won first prize in the Action category of the first annual Outside Bozeman photo contest with a photo of Marshall on Mount Baldy just outside Bozeman (ha ha). They featured my photo in their latest issue along with the other winners. I get some kind of prize awarded to me at a ceremony or something at the end of the month, but they don't know what or when yet. Sweet.

Some Pictures

Backlog from the last couple of weeks. Summer finally started two weeks ago here so I've been trying to take advantage of it when I'm not writing my thesis.
Kujo

House rock

Joe

Mercedes OM617.952


Marshall and Arrowleaf Balsamroot

Mantis!

I got hired by a friend to take some pictures of farm animals, insects, plants and people on Monday. I like how this macro of a praying mantis turned out a lot.

(by the way, it's cleaning one of its front legs off with it's mouth. It was pissed off after I dipped it in water so it would sit still for me)

Did some powder skiing last wed. June 11th is definitely the latest I've shredded the pow.

Went camping over the weekend in the Tobacco roots and did some mountain biking.


that's the South Boulder river by moonlight, about a 400 second exposure.

Hellride 5

It's Baaaaack!

The Santa Cruz Hellride, which takes place neither in Santa Cruz nor Hell, will return to the rugged steeps above Downieville, California, August 1st-3rd.
What has in the past been an opportunity for two unlucky souls to get mugged by Mark Weir and Rachel Lloyd for about 12 solid hours, with the chance to limp away at the end of it all with a new Santa Cruz Nomad for their efforts, is taking a new twist this year.

This year, applicants will be narrowed down to a field of about 32, who will then be voted by the internet public down to a final 8 (4 men, 4 women), who will then be invited to Downieville.

Vote here

There's 15 left, and I've made it this far, now it's up to you, the internet public (or at least the five or six family members, and friends like Mike Stebbins that view this blog)to vote me up to the top 4.

Here's my profile

They will then compete against each other, as well as Hellriders Weir and Lloyd, in a series of feats of strength (think "American Gladiators" meets "jackass") to gain hopeful time bonuses for the following day's

The Hellride itself will take in somewhere between 65 and 75 miles of prime high country riding, mostly singletrack, with anywhere between 12,500 and 15,000 feet of climbing. The contestants will race each other, as well as the pursuing wheels of Weir and Lloyd, in battle where attrition and willpower will feature as strongly as fitness and bike handling ability, in the hopes of winning a brand new Nomad, kitted out with SRAM and Rockshox finest, valued at more than $5500.

I could handle a lot of attrition trying to win a $5,500 bike. . . .

one of my favorite pictures of me, taken by Ian.

Biking and Thunderstorms

Been doing a little bit of mountain biking lately, as surprising as that is. Not many riding pictures as it's been too fun to stop. These are from a thunderstorm that threatened to douse us as we headed back from Sypes canyon.





There's been thunderstorms pretty much every day for a week now around 4. Some are pretty intense. Seems like Colorado summer from what I've seen.

I accidentally took all these 2 stops underexposed so they are kind of weird.

Another one

This one is a little more aggressively HDR'd

More HDR

HDR too

Created from a single RAW file.

Rainy Weekend

Bozeman creek flooded into Kagy and decided to head down it instead. It also flooded closer to down town onto some streets too. It's been raining for 5 days now, with more in the forecast.

We went to Lewis and Clark Caverns yesteray and did their cave tour. It was pretty fun, there were some pretty big rooms and some cool formations. I got to see how solidly I could hold the camera attempting to take 1/2 second exposures with the IS on. Some worked better then most.

WTF?

So my Mercedes blew a head gasket. I overheated it pretty badly due to an unfortunate set of circumstances so it wasn't too surprising. What is surprising is somehow one of the cylinder sleeves is too low. No one I've talked to has seen such a thing before, and the options for dealing with it aren't particularly appealing. The two I'm considering are a totally new engine and selling the good parts of this one or having a steel spacer made to fill the gap. It's a tricky fix due to the high pressures inside the cylinder, but it seems likely that it was working up until the overheat with the cylinder low like this anyway.

Stupid cars. . .