Last week I went along with Tim Kemple to assist him shoot a trail running trip with endurance runner Sam Thompson. Sam’s goal was to do all 483 miles of the Colorado Trail in less than 8 days to destroy the speed record. I was excited to get out of Utah and to go along on a completely different type of outdoor shoot than I’m accustomed to shooting on my own.
So the trip started off with my usual drive to Colorado, I-15, US 6, I-70, however we ran into a road block on I-70…literally. So this was our first incedent on the trip. The car accident blocked the road for about 15 min or so. Pretty amazing someone could wreck 
like that on a road going in a straight line for 200 miles. After that we collected about 642,004,991 dead bugs on the front of the Jeep and kept on rolling into the night. About 2 hours away from our campsite in Buena Vista we watched a tire blow on a car in front of us going about 90mph, sparks fly everywhere, the tire fly across the road in front of us, the car go skidding into the median where it almost spun out a few times before getting the hell out of the way and blowing past him. Fortunately the rest of the drive was rather uneventful that night aside from the brand new rental Jeep Commander saying it was 3 degrees Fahrenheit (only about 70 degrees off…..), and the check engine light being on from the start. Awesome. We finally got to the campsite to catch up with Sam on day 3 of his run and camped out. It was super nice spot, I got to sleep and then Sam showed up to sleep for the night at about 2:30am.
We got going that morning I got to meet Sam, his wife Kirsten, Aaron Kehoe from The North Face
and Kirsten’s parents who were there to help out with support for Sam. I got to see the pace chart that Sam set for himself. It was pretty insane to think what he was going to be doing in order to cover 483 miles in less than 8 days! So Sam was off for the morning, Tim snapped off a few shots, Aaron rolled a little bit of vid and we were on our way.
This was definatley a different type of shoot than I was used to. Since we were following Sam along through his journey we were only meeting up with Sam a few times per stage, he’d cross paths with us and he’d be on his way. We would then go to the next spot, which was usually an aid station, and would hike up trail get a few more, and meet him back while he refueled. One theme held true throughout Sam’s entire journey, shoes, switching shoes, blisters, and Sam eating like crazy.
Afterwords we broke for lunch found some awesome place and of course Aaron and Tim both had to get some souvenirs, a nice raccoon skin hat. Nothing like wearing
road kill! We got to the last aid station of the day and he had to navigate some pretty burly Jeep roads, the Commander held up great but what I couldn’t believe was Aaron in his little Hyundai Sedona. A little wannabe SUV that apparently had a 4WD lock, no low but still ruled it with Aaron behind the wheel. We got where we needed to go and got another shot 
for the day with another to go at sunset. This first spot was easy to get to and work, we were hoping for another spot to meet up with the sick sunset but the roads just led to nowhere. At least they were fun to drive though! Check out the proof we had a good drive on the hood of Aaron’s Sedona.
We finally headed out to the campsite for the night, and got everyone up there. We setup camp and then heard Sam and Kirsten squawking on the radio….they got a bit lost on trail. Apparently the trail is not marked very well….especially when you are
running it at night. Tim and I drove up a jeep road and caught up with them. Fortunately for everyone there were a bunch of cows annoyed by our camp location that were quite loud that Sam and Kirsten heard so we were able to direct them in. It was another night sleeping under the stars without the tent which was cool, however I wasn’t really prepared for it to be below freezing overnight…..oops! When we woke up in the morning we were rewarded with a sick alpine meadow and a sick sunrise. Oh, and we were surrounded by cows. I’m glad I didn’t get stepped on in the night!
So Tim and Aaron shot some lifestyle stuff in the morning while Sam and Kirsten were getting ready to go on for the first stage of the day, they got up and out and it was time to get out to the next meeting point and some sleep that we didn’t really get that night! We then set out to a few other not so photogenic locations to help out with support on a few gnarly roads. We then actually caught a hotel for the night to get some good sleep before getting up at 4am to dawn patrol up on the ridgeline around 13,000′ at sunrise.
We had another great sunrise and the hike in the dark was well worth it. We went through a high alpine meadow that was covered in about 6-8 different types of wildflowers, it was really nice. Unfortunately in the 4am wake up call I managed to not pack my camera. Oh well, my job was to haul up gear anyways. Unfortunately the timing wasn’t right and Sam and Kirsten came up about an hour after the sunrise. So we missed the sunrise shots because of it but the light was still great when we saw them come up trail.
We then went out to the next meeting zone, up some gnarly roads, the roughest so far. We were almost able to drive all the way to the summit where we were going to meet up with Sam but had to park about 1,000 feet below and hike up. Oh well can’t be ridiculously easy all the time right! It was another cool zone and the highest point on the Colorado Trail where we were hoping to meet up with Sam at sunset.
This was definately the epic sunset of the trip. It was quite possibly the best sunset I have ever seen with backlit rain with beams of light pushing through, double rainbows, then finishing with intense color underlit in the clouds almost completely surrounding us, 270 degrees worth. Simply epic. Unfortunately our timing was about an hour off meeting up with Sam but we still got some really good, raw stuff done. I don’t have any shots of the epic sunset now, I shot them on Tim’s d2x. I figured if I was taking photos of those I should take them on something better than my D70 I brought with me! I will post those later.
This night, Kirsten was down with some gnarly blisters on her feet and wasn’t able to help pace run with Sam through the night until the next stage. Tim stepped up and took it for the team, running through the night with Sam on the the stage, somewhere around 16-17 miles to keep it going with Sam. I then drove down with Kirsten down the bit of the gnarly road and was my first 4×4′ing experince. It was actually a bit of fun since it went by just fine.
Kirsten and I geared back up in town and headed out to the next station near Silverton. 
We headed out on even gnarlier road that was somehow a county road! On the way up we passed by a Suburban that had seen better days, rolled off the road and sitting on it’s side. We made our way up and ended up with some pretty gnarly trouble. Kirsten went on, catching a ride with some nice people. I eventually limped the jeep back over the pass and into town. I can’t believe it made it. A 60 year old man on a dirt bike helped me out a bit, I wish I could remember his name, the guy was awesome. We met some great people along the trail on this trip.
At this point we met up in Silverton while Sam ran on his next stage. Kirsten and her parents went out to the next pass to meet up with Sam and get him refueled. At this point Sam was off pace to break the record by the margin he wanted to and decided it wasn’t worth it to keep going since he was off pace. It was a bummer to see it end as it did but being there seeing what Sam was going through to go at the pace he was and run as many miles as he did was simply amazing. I’m glad I was a part of it. This was a really fun and different photo trip.
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