The Trail is Calling: Back to the Pacific Crest Trail

Banner Couple

For us here at Goldpaint Photography, 2015 begins with a couple of milestones. On May 16th, we became Mr. and Mrs. Goldpaint. 5 years ago, we met at mile 50 on the famous Pacific Crest Trail, and so began the start of our great adventure together. We backpacked 1,300 miles that year and promised to each other that we would someday try and finish the remaining 1,300 miles. For the next 5 or so months, we will once again put on our packs, lace up our trail runners, and venture out into deep wilderness areas and attempt to make it to the finish line…Manning Park, British Columbia. Only 800 miles of Northern California and another 500 miles through Washington state, and we will be doing our happy dance at the Northern Terminus. In addition to nursing our blistered feet, sore knees, backs, and every other imaginable ache and pain you can think of, we’ll will be out there photographing the night sky in high altitude areas only few will ever experience in a lifetime.

Your next question is probably somewhere along the lines of, “How are you guys hauling all that camera gear for 1,300 miles?” Well, that’s a good question. Marci says, “Easy! I’m not, Brad is!” With long distance backpacking, every ounce must be calculated. We literally weigh every ounce of our backpacking equipment and try to get our ‘base weight’ down to 12 pounds. ‘Base weight’ is the total weight all of our backpacking gear except fuel, food, and water. In my case, my base weight and camera gear is going to be around 18 pounds. Long term, each ounce begins to feel like a pound, so carrying 6 extra pounds is significant, especially if you have to add an additional 20-25 pounds of food for long stretches without resupply opportunities. I’ve tried my best to select camera gear, batteries, and solar powering solutions that are ultralight as possible. Below you will find an image setup that I hope will work for 1,300 miles of hiking:

key

1. Sony a6000
2. Rokinon 12mm f/2.0
3. Voltaic Fuse 4W Solar Charger
4. Voltaic V15 USB Battery
5. Voltaic Custom Sony FW50 Charger Cradle
6. Sony Batteries
7. SanDisk Memory Cards – Totaling 384GB
8. Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom with ballhead
9. Neewer Intervalometer for Sony a6000
10. Cleaning Cloth
11. Storm Jacket Camera Cover
All Images taken with the Sony a6000 & Rokinon 12mm f/2.0

All Images taken with the Sony a6000 & Rokinon 12mm f/2.0

Our hope is to finish this beautiful trail and having come full-circle, continue to inspire our students through our work and dedication to the preservation of our dark skies. If you have ever had the desire to learn how to capture the night sky within a safe and fun learning environment, please check out our 2016 workshop schedule here: goldpaintphotography.com/workshops.
We hope to update our blog as much as possible throughout this experience and share our images via our social network pages: Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter. You can also sign-up for our newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/kfeA9. 

If you are interested in reading about our adventures in 2010, you can read more at: http://www.trailjournals.com/hikertrash15.

Happy Trails,
Brad and Marci