What Happens When Your Plans Fall Apart on a Mountain Photography Trip
as always, the full gallery is at the bottom, so skip there if you don’t care about the words
Nothing about this seven day trip went exactly according to plan. Not a single day. And by the time I was driving home from Mount Shasta with a van full of drying gear and a hard drive full of images, I had come to understand something important about planning for a mountain photography project. The plan is not there to be followed perfectly. The plan is there to give you something intelligent to deviate from.
Day two was the first real test of this. I drove to the south entrance of Mount Lassen with a clear idea of what I was going to do. Scout the route, shoot some product work, get a feel for the area. When I arrived, the road was closed. That was it. No negotiating with a closed road, no workaround, no plan B that involved the south entrance. I turned the van around and drove an hour and a half around the outside of the park to the north entrance. What felt like a setback in the moment gave me Manzanita Lake. It gave me one of the most beautiful mornings of the entire trip. A closed road sent me exactly where I needed to be.
Day three delivered a different kind of plan failure. I woke up before sunrise with a specific composition in mind, a shot I had been picturing since before I left Lake Tahoe. I walked the northern edge of Manzanita Lake looking for it and could not find it. The angles were wrong. Nothing was clicking. So I doubled back and walked the entire loop around the lake in the opposite direction. That detour brought me to the dam on the southern side just as the first light hit Lassen Peak. The shot I ended up with was better than anything I had originally planned because I was forced to keep moving and stay open.
Day four was supposed to be a clean ski descent of Mount Lassen. I had scouted the route, felt the snow, and gone to bed confident about what the next morning would bring. What I did not plan for was the snow turning soft and unstable near the summit, each step sinking deeper than the last until the mountain was telling me clearly that it was time to stop. I turned around a couple hundred feet from the top. On the way down I triggered a small slough and skied hard to get clear of it. The ski descent I got was not the one I planned. But I was safe, I had footage, and I had a story worth telling.
My Favorite Items I Brought On This Trip:
2p Tent Copper Spur by Big Agnes; I’ve had this tent going on 5 years and still love it
Crazy Creek Camp Chair; easy and simple to use
Jetboil Flash; I’ve had mine for almost a decade and still works great
Sony a7r4; my work horse of a camera
Tamron 16-30; probably my favorite lens right now
Peak Design Tripod; a requirement for solo creatives
Even the Shasta approach did not go as planned. I brought skis specifically to use the faster ski route into horse camp, then somehow stayed on the hiking trail for over three miles carrying those same skis on my back. The summit day started with a forgotten helmet that cost me an hour and a half. A rescue situation on the Thumb added another two hours to a day that was already long. Not one single piece of this trip unfolded the way I drew it up.
What kept all of these moments from becoming disasters was the same thing every time. A willingness to accept what was actually happening instead of fighting to force the original plan back into existence. The closed road became a better location. The wrong composition became a better shot. The bad snow became a safety call that probably saved me from a serious situation. The mountain keeps score and it does not care what you planned.
The best thing you can do on a mountain photography trip is plan thoroughly and then hold those plans loosely. Know your objectives. Know your gear. Know your route. And then be ready to throw all of it out and respond to what the mountain actually gives you. That flexibility is not a sign that you planned poorly. It is the skill that separates photographers who come home with great images from photographers who come home with nothing because the conditions were not what they expected.
The mountain will always have a different plan than you do. Your only job is to be ready for it.
Read more from my Lassen and Shasta road trip:
About the Author:
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, director, and writer (award-winning at all three) based in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Over the last 10 years, Dalton’s creative work has taken him to every continent, above the arctic circle, and below the antarctic circle.
