Emigrant Wilderness 6/13 – 6/15

Photos…

Above Camp Lake

Lilly Pond

Piute Lake

The Proud Marmot, master of his domain

Between Jewelry and Deer Lakes

Jacob’s Khufu (and new CP3 poles, also with my Borah bivy)

David’s Contrail

Bannock

Wildflowers

Corn Lilly

… and another

Lastly, a science experiment in a long abandoned whiskey bottle

Pics look sweet.

Nice pics Jacob. When we walked by deer and jewlery lakes there were some big snow drifts obscuring the trail and at one point the "trail" was a well flowing stream. Very sloppy. Hopefully the mosquitoes didn't get you too bad.

How did the bannock turn out?

What a difference a week or two makes I guess (regarding the snow). The trail was pretty soggy in a few areas, but not too bad.

The mosquitoes were thick in most places but the breeze kept them off well enough. In camp we wore headnets and I rarely took my windshirt off. Bumped into a guy in shorts and a tee shirt who was getting eaten alive.

We also bumped into a group of guys/boys on the way out who exclaimed: "whoa, are you guys crazy light or something?!?". So light that we even dropped the "U"… CL backpackers ;)

The bannock turned out pretty well, thanks for the idea! I really need to find a little lightweight non-stick griddle so it's easier to flip things. My current options are both a little sketchy and usually somewhat messy.

Love the Corn Lily pics.

Wow! You guys really know how to travel. Most folks don't eat that well at home.

Really enjoyed the pics. Thanks for sharing.

I think they are a bit over-sharpened. There is plenty of detail and content to ease of on the sharpening. Great report and pics!

Nice pics, gents. Care to expound on your recipe/method for bannock? It looks delicious.

Bannock –
the base recipe is flour + baking powder + whatever you want. You can literally add whatever you want to the bannock. Powdered egg, oil, butter, raisins, berries, fruit, cinnamon, sugar, chocolate, w/e.

Best way to cook it is with a frying pan. Lay it flat like a very thick pancake and flip it. This method is very fast. With a pot you would need to bake it somehow which is more likely to burn and I don't know how you would do it with a stove.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2BU0be8f3s

Thanks Tom. I believe you and David have something planned for later in the year, so you may get a taste of his food flare. He sets the bar high and I usually have fun trying to one up him, this time we collaborated. Harder to do the fresh food on long trips though!

Thanks Yuri. The sharpening is because of two things. First, Flickr adds some sharpening to all but the original size image. Secondly, it's more of an issue with verticals (for some reason) and I've never quite figured out the best way to handle it, other than upload the size I most commonly view and post them at that size (I often post to Fred Miranda). Because BPL is an older forum it doesn't play well with 1000+ pix wide images so I post the downsized versions. Viewing the originals should look better, if they still look too sharp, then it's just personal preference :) My sharpening settings in LR are nothing dramatic.

Andrew, my recipe for the bannock was:

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup powdered milk
4 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/2 bag of dried cherries

I "baked" it in a non-stick frying pan for about 6 minutes on each side over a low flame. To flip it, I use the lid of a 1L titan pot to cover the top, flip over, then slide back into the pan. This is my "safe" way of doing it. More adventurous is using 2 small plastic spatulas. Have done this with pancakes before. Less messy, but also less safe! It sux when you drop one in the dirt!

Two other ways to cook it. As little dumplings/chunks of dough in boiling water, can be with the pasta water. Really good in a batch of mack in cheeze or a soup. Or wrapped around a stick over a fire. I've had it both ways. Sticks is really delicious.

"Thanks Tom. I believe you and David have something planned for later in the year, so you may get a taste of his food flare."

Given what I generally carry, that will be something I'll look forward to with great relish. :)

I agree with Yuri. The photos would be best if they had not been oversharpened. You can process them with a tiny bit of Gaussian Blur to tone that down just slightly.

–B.G.–

I enjoyed your pictures. I didn't know there were any spots to camp near Camp Lake. The fish were really active there.

On 6/2 this year, I crossed Cherry Creek and it was knee deep.

Bob, thanks but you should read my response to Yuri above. Essentially if you don't like looking at down-rezzed photos, click on them to view the "full size" jpegs I made, which are not over sharpened.

Hey John. The camp sites at Camp lake were just up and over the granite above the trail. We had a nice view of the basin on the other side with the full moon that was out.

"Bob, thanks but you should read my response to Yuri above. Essentially if you don't like looking at down-rezzed photos, click on them to view the "full size" jpegs I made, which are not over sharpened."

Jacob, if Flickr or anything else was trying to automatically adjust or sharpen my photos and I could not override it, I would never think of using it again.

What the heck does it know about the photographer's intent with an image?

My intent with sharpening is to try to recreate exactly the scene that I saw when I looked through the camera. Now, maybe the camera screwed up, or maybe I don't remember it so well, but any image that I present should look natural and not oversharpened.

This entire discussion changes a bit when you shift over to production in print. There, the overall size of the image can dictate how much sharpening is necessary for a particular print paper on a particular printer.

/RANT Personally, I don't think much of Flickr and similar online services that want to have their own way with my images, and they think that they own them. I prefer to keep total control of my own images. /RANT OFF

–B.G.–

I appreciate the photos and the efforts in which it takes to post them here at BPL. Thanks again Jacob. Looks like another awesome trip.

See you next month.