I had a pretty restless night, getting used to the trailer, and there is still a bit of mustiness from the previous 'wetness' I guess I'll need to give it a good ol'fasioned bath in the sun when I get back to the parents, assuming it is still sunny. I got up around 3:00am I know I said 5, but I'm awake now.. so off I go! I had prepped everything I needed the previous evening, so I just needed to get dressed, get the Solomons on and creep out. The ridges trail is literally across the highway, so after about 5 minutes I was there. I got everything on, poles, backpack, toque, layers, etc. My pack seemed a lot lighter than I remember, I guess those ladder climbs I've been doing over the last few months was helping. Well, off I go. It is very dark, the head lamp helps but it also makes you have tunnel vision. This is the second time I've done this in the dark, and this time was exceptionally dark as It is very much more early than last time. Once again I question why the trail markers are red, and non reflective. Probably the worst choice for markers in this area, considering the trees and rocks tend to shade towards red. The result is I got off the trail once, but was able to back track with the help of my watch. I probably would have been fine without my watch, but it sure made the process faster, once again.. tunnel vision in the dark. Cresting the ridge, I saw something I didn't expect.. they sky was pulsing. Like, I thought it was light pollution, or a far off lighthouse or airport search light.. but no, the lights were just on the edge of visibility and quite obviously pulsing, dancing, like faint rivers. I quickly doffed my pack, got the tripod set up and then reached for the 5dmk4. I don't have it. I do not have my camera, where is my camera? I remember setting it on the seat so I could put it on my pack .. so that is why it isn't heavy.. I'm missing 6lbs.. Do I go back? but these aurora could be gone by then.. shit. shit. shit. I have the m6.. it only has a tiny crop sensor.. will it work? The best camera is the camera you have. It does have the EF mount adaptor, but that adaptor is not very reliable.. but it shouldn't matter, since I will be manually focusing anyhow and not relying on autofocus. The aperture on the Ultrawide can be set manually as well. The M6 doesn't have the tripod adaptor.. but I can steal one from the bigma. I can do this. I set up, and started shooting, as it happens.. the best of the storm was for the next 15 to 20 minutes, If I had gone back down for my main camera, I would have missed it. So the pictures aren't the greatest, and I drove that little sensor over what it was ever designed for, but I got the shots. There's a few inverted and dead pixels in there because the little bastard probably overheated a bit, even in the cool 6c weather, but it is mostly on the black and not in the sky. Quite a surprise, I wanted a sunrise, and got something amazing instead. As it turns out, the 50% chance of a great sunrise, was not in my favor. And, the sun rose out of the zone I wanted anyhow.. I forgot that, this time of year, the sun doesn't come where I want it. So maybe, I need to find another place. I definitely couldn't get the shot I wanted, but I'm pretty damn happy with the shots I didn't expect. This is basically a bucket list item, I wanted to go to Hudson's bay to shoot the aurora, and it came to see me. I missed out on hearing it, but now I'm pretty satisfied. I have heard them before, in my 20's when I was visiting my parent's old cottage in the dead of winter. I was dragging a toboggan over the frozen lake to the cottage, and stopped as the sky was on fire in green. I heard the whispers, that seemed to come from everywhere, and stood there in the -20c dead still cold and watched, and listened for what seemed like an hour. Life changing. Back to the present, I took a quick nap on top of the ridge after setting up a time-lapse while the sun came around after about 30 minutes I woke with my alarm, and found that there's nothing really. So I packed up, and head back down. I reached the car, and checked the passenger seat. My camera wasn't there. I finally found it, ON TOP of the car, covered in condensation. Thank god there was no one here.. I do want to get a new camera, but that needs to happen on my terms.. not in the middle of a shooting holiday. I'll have to be more careful. It is now around 8:00 time for breakfast.
8:20am
Today, we're having a good breakfast.. Hashbrowns from one of the potatoes I brought from Mom's garden, fried up in about 2 tablespoons of butter, with 2 slices of peameal bacon and 2 eggs. I'll also have some of that sugarless applesauce I got on a whim. That and some fresh ground coffee with a bit of the rehydrated Medallion whole milk I prepared last night. It was amazing, as usual. Once breakfast was done, I decided on my next trail.. Cranberry Bog.
10:30am
The neighbours are finally stirring. After I cleaned up breakfast, I hit the road again. Well, I just drove down to the east beach. Since the trail head is closer over there, and I didn't really know what I was in for. I'm hitting this one sight unseen. I do know it should be able to finish it in 2-3 hours. After making sure I had my camera this time, I went down the road and entered the cranberry bog trail at it's trailhead. It is a bit late in the day now, so I expect to run into some people and probably not see any wildlife. The sky is clear, dark blue with white puffy clouds. Great for taking postcard photos, but nothing super artistic. But sometimes, you get lucky. The trail was moderately challenging, with some pretty steep sections, and a couple places you can get off track. Some ducks came by one of the ponds and sat in a dry spot in the sun and I pulled out the bigma to try and get a photo, but they were just out of reach, I got a few interesting shots and crossed the boardwalk. I saw some fish in a pool at the top of a beaver dam, and stuck the 360 into the water to get some underwater shots, hopefully. I saw some very small bubbles coming from it very slowly and didn't think much about it, until they started coming out rapidly. I quickly pulled it from the water, and found that the seal around the 3rd party battery I'd gotten had failed.. so there was a bit of water in there.. the camera will no longer turn on.. so i'm a bit bummed. It'd suck for it to fail. I pulled the battery and memory card, and stuffed a lens cloth in the compartment, then packed it in it's carrying case in my backpack. No more video this hike. I met a few fogies on the trail and said hello, this trail does merge with the silhouette trail as well, and you can even get to silver peak from here.. if you can do 25 kilometers quickly over mountainous terrain. That is likely not me. I still want to do silver peak, but not this year. I will definitely canoe to the trail head and then take it from there when I eventually do it. Likely I will need to lose around 50 more pounds before I even try though. There was a young woman with a large hound dog who was absolutely struggling, she can't have been more than 30 years old. She had no gear, so I was pretty puzzled what could be the issue. I was taking a break at the top of a ridge and she was 'oh my god'ing a lot. I guess I just know how to pace myself.
12:40AM
I found myself at the end of the trail, and headed back to the campsite. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I decided to get my pictures offloaded and hopefully pull stuff from the 360 camera if I can. I set up the buddy heater with the door open and placed the camera in front of it about a foot away to try and dry it out, before starting the copy process. My big laptop.. is dead again. The battery is done... Maybe it turned on by itself? seems odd.. I fished around for the power cord and plugged into the ecoflow. I'm not using the big inverter this time because It pulls quite a bit of battery when there's no AC input, and it actually causes the battery to go into protection mode for a few seconds before it resets. With the big laptop up, I also connected my sabrent Raid 1 array and started copying over photos. I edited them, and then copied them back over to the backup as well. They turned out pretty great, I'm testing new software from DXO Labs, it has a 7 day trial which I started just before departing on this trip. I'll have to see how well it does. I'm actually kind of not happy with the default edits it does, they seem very 'bright' but it did a pretty good job on the aurora shots. I'll just have to try it a bit more. I keep all my raws, so I can always edit them again with affinity later. The 360 seems to be fine now, I was able to update its firmware and it is loading fine. I'll let it dry out over night still, and see how things go. It is 4:30 now, and I'm thinking on dinner. Probably small since I went big with breakfast. Those Chicken breasts I bought are thawed now, probably should eat them.
5:00 PM
I ate them, pretty nice to have them out here in the 'wilderness'. just a bit of pepper, and checked to make sure the temperature was right for fully cooked. they were juicy and tasty, not bad for $5 breasts. I had some hot chocolate I made with the medallion 2% dehydrated chocolate milk, and it was excellent. Not sweet at all, it had sort of a 80% chocolate taste. After cleaning up I finished editing the photos and then watched a few YouTube videos before turning in around 8:00 pm