The Camera Gear I Brought on a Seven Day Alpine Brand Project

The Camera Gear I Brought on a Seven Day Alpine Brand Project

The Real Answer Is Less Than People Expect

When people find out I shot a seven day solo brand project across Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta, the first question is almost always about gear. What camera, what lenses, how much did you carry. The honest answer surprises most people, because it is a shorter list than the scale of the project suggests. A Sony A7R4 was the core of the kit. One tripod. A drone I used far less often than expected. And the brand products themselves, from Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There, which took up their own real estate in the pack.

I want to walk through this honestly, including the parts where the gear list changed day to day depending on what the terrain and the schedule actually demanded, because a fixed packing list does not survive a trip like this one. What worked at Manzanita Lake at four in the morning was not the same kit that made sense on summit day at Shasta.

The Core Kit That Traveled With Me Every Day

The Sony A7R4 was the one constant across all seven days. It handled everything from product shots in the rain on day two to the golden light session at Manzanita Lake to the summit shots at just over fourteen thousand feet on Shasta. Having one dependable body meant I never had to think about which camera to grab. That decision was already made, which freed up mental space for decisions that actually mattered more, like composition and timing.

A single tripod also traveled with me most days. It mattered for the product work especially, since brand deliverables often required a locked down, precise frame that handholding simply cannot match. It also mattered for the three in the morning tent shot on summit day, where slow shutter speeds in near total darkness made a tripod the only realistic option. I chose to travel with one rather than a backup, accepting the risk that a failure would cost me the shot rather than carrying extra weight for a scenario that never actually happened.

What I Left Behind and Why

The gear list is defined as much by what I did not bring as by what I did. I did not carry a second camera body. I did not carry a bag of lenses for every situation. At Manzanita Lake I deliberately chose one lens and one tripod rather than a full kit, because the shoot required speed and decisiveness more than options. That choice meant walking away from a few shots I could have gotten with different glass, a trade I was willing to make for the clarity it gave me in the moment.

I also made hard calls about camera gear on the biggest days. On Mount Shasta summit day, I left half my camera gear back at Horse Camp rather than carrying everything to the top. That day already included forgetting my helmet, which cost an hour and a half, and helping coordinate a helicopter rescue near The Thumb, which took roughly two hours. Every extra pound of gear on a day like that is a cost paid in energy, attention, and safety, and none of those are things you get back once they are spent.

How the Drone Fit Into the Kit

The drone came on the trip and flew far less often than most people would guess. I attempted a flight on a foggy morning on day two and quickly realized the conditions were not going to give me anything worth the battery. Instead I found better material on the ground at Mill Creek that same morning. The drone earned its place in the pack because of what it could show on the days it did fly, mainly scale, a small figure against a huge mountain, something a ground based lens simply cannot capture the same way.

Carrying it meant carrying spare batteries too, and cold weather drains batteries faster than people expect. That weight had to be weighed against everything else going into the pack for a given day, and on the heaviest carry days, like the push into Horse Camp, the drone often stayed packed away entirely rather than adding more to an already overloaded trip.

Supporting Gear That Made the Difference

Beyond the camera itself, a few smaller items mattered more than their size suggested. Dermatone sunscreen handled the brutal exposure on Lassen's approach, where temperatures climbed fast by mid morning. A Garmin InReach came along for safety, essential on a solo trip through remote terrain where a phone signal cannot be counted on. None of these are glamorous gear choices, but a project like this fails on the small stuff just as easily as it fails on the big stuff.

For the mountaineering days on Shasta, crampons and an ice axe replaced skis in the pack for the summit push, while the skis themselves stayed behind at camp. That is not a camera decision, but it is a packing decision that shaped what kind of photography was even possible that day. You cannot photograph a moment you did not survive to reach, and gear choices on a mountain are safety choices first and creative choices second.

Food and water also count as gear on a trip like this, even though nobody thinks of them that way when they picture a photographer's pack. A body running low on calories and water makes worse decisions with a camera in hand, the same way it makes worse decisions with an ice axe. I planned meals and water carrying capacity around each day's specific demands, heavier on summit day, lighter on driving days, and that planning shaped what camera gear I could reasonably add on top of it. Every pound in the pack was competing with every other pound, and food and water almost always won that argument over an extra lens I might use once.

What I Would Pack Differently Next Time

Looking back at the full seven days, I think the core camera kit was close to right. One dependable body, one lens choice per shoot rather than a full bag, and a tripod that got used constantly. Where I would think harder next time is around the transitions, the moments like the second load into Horse Camp, where I had underestimated what a single carry could reasonably include and paid for it with an extra trip up and down the mountain.

The bigger lesson from this whole gear question is that the right kit is not really about camera specs. It is about matching what you carry to what a specific day, in specific conditions, with a specific energy level, can actually support. A camera bag packed for an ideal day rarely survives the real one, and this project, across two mountains and seven very different days, made that clearer to me than almost any other trip I have done.

Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.