the little moments :: Titcomb Basin, Wyoming

After sharing the video of our backpacking trip to the Titcomb Basin in the Wind River Range, Wyoming I wanted to get down just a couple additional stories from the trip.  The drive was long - broken up by good eats {Jax on the Tracks in Truckee & Pat's BBQ in Salt Lake City} and by listening to Game of Thrones.  The hike was long and hard and at higher elevation than we're used to {10,000-ish}.  The trip was physically and emotionally challenging.  

Here is the rest of the story...

The hat has progressively gotten floppier after each subsequent washing {or hail storm survived}.  And while it does its sun-blocking job as it should it also does quite a bit of visibility inhibiting as well.  The path was rocky in patches, thickly muddy in others such that I found myself looking down instead of forward.  The floppy hat doing just what it does until, "Stop! Stop!"  The words came from Lukas behind me on the trail.  Up ahead... two moose munching lunch on a brush from the trail.  I was moments away from walking right into them.  We skirted the cow and yearling, giving them a wide berth while they occasionally gave us a side-eyed look between leafy bites.

When one doesn't ever swear, in those moments where a good curse word would be warranted and instead such a mild mannered one pops out that it could hardly pass as a swear word, one doesn't get taken seriously.  The hail came, this time, when we were hiding in the tent.  It was followed by deep and echoing rumbles of thunder.  We looked at each other with saucer big eyes and decided the best place to avoid a lightning strike would NOT be in our little metal framed tent.  The flash came.  Two seconds and THUNDER!  "Sh*t, that was close!"  After the flashes and booms stopped and the hail let up and we finished crouching down low, Lukas had a good laugh at my 'epic' swear fest.

Lukas wondered away from the reflective pool while we were waiting in hope that the sunset light would fall across the crags overlooking Titcomb Basin.  He set up to shoot the orange light glowing on Elephant's Head, up the bank on the other side of the pool from where I stayed still admiring the view.  Up in the clouds, two dancing butterflies caught my eye.  Little pumps of the wings in graceful flutters, sinks and rises.  They tumbled together against the blue sky like small, sighing breaths.  My eye followed them higher until their flight path had me looking back at Fremont Peak.  And it was glowing pink.  "Lukas!"  But my voice just echoed back at me, ten thousand times louder without reaching Lukas.  I made the trip to the other side of the pond and up the embankment quickly to share the photo-light news.  Then two trips back and forth were made at a jog to bring Lukas the lens he needed.  Two trips because, although the 70-200mm looks very similar to the 24-70mm, they are not in fact the same.  I gasped ragged breaths of oxygen thin air while Lukas got the shots.  Even still, I stood in wonder and amazement.

right before we discovered that our filter only wanted to work very very very slooooowly

Lukas's shots