Life in Grain: Summer in the Alpine

Summer moments in the alpine are some of my favorite moments of each year. But this past summer of 2022 I decided to push myself to go further and faster while on my solo trips into the mountains. I chose to use the mountains that I was familiar with, so I chose the Sierra Nevada's that surround Lake Tahoe.

My objective was to try and go further than 20 miles in less than 8 hours of moving time. But I was not going to be running, I was going to be hiking and shooting photos the entire way, which would make this objective quite hard to hit. But another obstacle would end up being a bigger hurdle.

Wildfires in Northern California can make summers nearly impossible to safely hike in. And this is exactly what happened the night before I was going to leave. A fire to the south was blazing and with the added wind, the smoke ended up covering Lake Tahoe. I was pretty sure I would have to call off my mission the next day. But I woke up just dawn just in case it cleared, and to my surprise the wind had shifted overnight, so I went for it.

I set off on the trail with a healthy amount of hesitation. But to my luck the smoke wouldn't make another appearance while I was out there. As I hiked, I kept in mind that my pace needed to be high but not too high. As the sun came up, I found a burst of energy that would last all the way until the halfway point at Fontanillis Lake where this image was then captured, being my favorite from my entire trip.

I ended up shooting tons of images and completing my objective, hiking 20.4 miles with 3,970 feet of elevation gain in just 8 hours, a true summer alpine experience.

-Ryan Warner