by Alicia MacLeay
Thank you to everyone who entered and participated in the first Trailspace member photo contest. It was great fun to see so many pictures from our talented members. We had 227 entries in the contest and nearly 4,000 votes by members.
Here are the top-voted winners, out of 68 entries, in the People Outdoors category, along with some words from two of the three photographers about themselves and their photographs.
Congratulations, everyone!
First Place - People Outdoors
"Eichorn Pinnacle" by Ken Seino (Kendog)
About Ken: I love surfing, scuba diving, backcountry snowboarding, cross-country skiing, backpacking, rock climbing, mountain biking, four-wheeling, and motorcycling. I started using a 35mm Nikorrmat SLR when I was 14 years old. It was about that time that I started backpacking and rock climbing in earnest. I take my camera with me wherever I go, even if it's significantly heavy with the two extra lenses I usually bring along. I love Yosemite, Kauai, Fiji, and Moab, Utah, for their limitless photographic opportunities.
About the photo: In the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite National Park is Cathedral Peak, which has an interesting formation called Eichorn Pinnacle. I shot this with a Nikon F5 (35mm film camera) on a tripod and a radio remote attachment. The camera was set up on the boulders on the west ridge of Cathedral Peak, which Eichorn Pinnacle is attached to. I and my partner, Brent Kimura, first climbed up (3rd class) to Cathedral Peak (from the west) where I set everything up, then descended to the saddle and roped up. The single pitch route from there goes around the other side up an obvious crack to the summit. I got the shot, then we rappelled off back to the notch. We had originally wanted to ascend the vertical jam-crack seen here in the photo, but it was swarming with bees.
Second Place - People Outdoors
"EKM Svellnosbreen" by Richard Strimbeck (BigRed)
About Rick: I'm a 50-something biology professor. I spent my formative years in New England, and traveled/worked in a number of different countries, most memorably New Zealand, during my 20s and (extended) graduate school years. I moved to Norway nearly eight years ago to take a job at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim (on the professional side) and to open up some new horizons for my outdoor activities, principally skiing (on the personal side). Backcountry skiing or ski mountaineering is my number one passion, but I also enjoy cross-country skiing, hiking, mountain biking, canoeing, and sea kayaking. I've always liked to take pictures wherever I go, but especially while traveling and having fun outdoors, and it's always nice to be able to share them.
About the photo: This picture was actually scanned from on old slide, taken during a 1990 spring ski crossing of Norway's Jotunheimen mountains with my friend Eric and wife Nancy. We stayed at a mountain hotel called Spiterstulen, where we were able to borrow a manila rope and some ice axes so we could explore the crevasses near the terminus of the Svellnos Glacier, something I had done in a guided group during a previous visit in 1984.
It's a great trip to do in foul weather, which there is a lot of in Norway — the wind can be absolutely howling, blowing spindrift in your face as you approach the glacier, but once you get inside everything is very quiet and blue. Summer melting sculpts the crevasse walls into beautiful fluid forms, and in this case the meltwater had somehow bored a tunnel through the ice. Eric and I were connected by a rope that ran through a parallel crevasse. Nancy was two months pregnant with our first daughter; she had no real problem putting in long ski days, but facing the three kinds of pickled herring served at every breakfast buffet at all the huts was a real challenge. We revisited the Svellnos as a family in the summer of 2004. We're still waiting for Eric and his wife and two daughters to come for a visit!
Third Place - People Outdoors
"Resolution" by Vaclav Bednar (vaso)
About Vaclav: I am 28 years old, studied electrical engineering, and now I work as a physicist in hospital in Slovak Republic. I like to spend my free time in the mountains. Three years ago I discovered how beautiful is via ferrata hiking. I also like biking. My other passion is photography.
About the photo: Raxalpen in Austria is very small, but also very nice sierra. There are several via ferratas. On one of them, Preiner Wand, was taken my shot. I had only a compact camera that day with me, but it was better, because there wasn't enough space and time for precise shooting with DSLR. It was foggy day, and everything seemed so deep... I simply had to stop for a while and holding myself with one hand take the photo.
Congratulations again to Ken, Rick, and Vaclav, our three "people outdoors" winners! They each win a gift card to an outdoor retailer of their choice.
See the winners in Outdoors Landscape and stay tuned for the category winners in Nature and Wildlife on Wednesday. Next week, we'll share some of the other images that were worthy of Honorable Mentions.
All images entered in the Trailspace photo contest are copyrighted by the photographer.
