ImpromptU-AH! Back to Utah We Go!

Just catching up on all of Monte's trip reports, hadn't seen the last like 4!

Sorry for all the likes in the last few days @Blackdawg

When you guys plan on coming up to Alaska I have a growing list of amazing trails I want to do up here, and some I've already done that are amazing. Let me know in advance and I'll see what I can do to come with and find some great ones.

@Blackdawg how do you stitch together the routes? I do miss Utah in that so many trails go for miles and miles and all interconnect. We don't have as much of that up here. I have GAIA on my phone and love it but and just really getting the hang of it with my wife's help getting (some) trail data (RS 2477 mining trails actually) pulled from the state of Alaska's website and friends sharing trails.

 

haha i've noticed the likes throughout the days! Bet it was a good read! haha

Would love to make it up to AK some point. Not sure when though. Especially with my new job. Idea time is July up there and that'll be mid concert season.

Stitching routes is more about finding places you want to do and keeping track. Then they just kind of work out or we travel long distances to get from one area to another. Hours sometimes. We have started using GPS data a lot and being able to see the trails in advance on GE for instance helps stitch routes together to form the trip. I've started recording my own data as well. We use BCN on an android tab4. Works great.

Otherwise, its just looking on websites and forums and asking folks about stuff!

 

Very good read! Makes me want to document my trips better and do pictures as well as the video I've been doing.

August or even September are good times as well, although late July and August are typically rainy. Honestly mid winter would be fun to and is also extremely beautiful, just sucks for camping. My garage is always open for you when you come through though. (because you will break something inevitably lol)

I've been thinking about getting a tablet for better navigation, staring at my Samsung S7 for navigation, to take a quick video (the DSLR for pictures), and then trying to run APRS off of my HT and a retired Samsung S5 gets the small cab of the Tacoma feeling rather cramped. Especially with all the wires for everything. I might try and copy some of your setup on running the USB wires behind everything, and the RAM mount of the OSH.

 

yeah i feel you on the wires everywhere and shit. I hate that! Igor's setup is nice though. Also BCN is starting to implement APRSDroid into the app itself. So you only need one device to use Nav and APRS. Though its in Beta and hopefully will improve a lot as its pretty basic integration right now. Still cool.

I've been there from July to august usually. Been a long time since ive been up there. Would like the summer as well as the salmon would be running and my family has a Cabin on the Keni so be fun to go fish for a day too!

Appreciate the invite though...no doubt id need it hahaha will try and keep you in the loop if and when that happens!

I've thought a lot about trying to video out adventures...but man. It just is so much work and take a lot of extra time. For a 2 week trip anyways. Id have to bring a computer and hard drives to offload cards every night damn near and lots of batteries..Id like to try and do some basic vids at some point. But not a priority. I enjoy the writing and photos for now haha

 

Photos capture a lot of it and still leaves some room for the imagination and storytelling, video leaves a lot of the story telling out it seems. Video for a 2 week trip would be insane. I can't even imagine trying to edit that!

 

be hard! Multiple videos really...too much data. haha would take the fun out of the trip too i think. Be too much of a production to get video. Photos slow us down enough as it is haha

And yes you're right! Let you fill in the gaps with your own imagination which i think is more fun anyways haha

 

Dumb question probably but do you shoot in Raw format?

 

thanks! Trying to get a crash course on a DSLR my buddy let me borrow so getting up to speed on it all. I don't have light room but I have photoshop and I can probably get IT to throw light room on my machine for me if I wanted them to.

 

Always

Light room is very nice. I use it 90% of the time. It's much faster and you can link to Flickr directly to it so you don't have to export more files. And it's non destructive editing. Photoshop is amazing for more surgical stuff

 

Lr doesn't have to do that period. Just link your Flickr account. Make a new album through Lr. Drag and drop the photos you want. Upload. Done. Lr is like Camera RAW and Bridge rolled into one. It's file management and editing. It's just easier. You should try it since you pay for CC right? I have both and can say that Lr is easier and faster to work on from experiencing both haven't found a person with both that won't agree to that light room is the doctor. PS the surgeon

 

That's fair. Ever program has a learning curve. I also like how you can buy lighroom right out. No subscription BS

 

Yeah I think I bought mine as a student. Was only 60 bucks I think. 150 ain't bad though

 

Totally does

 

So thank you guys for recommending RAW, just edited my first photo with it and holy shit. Awesome. Also stoked to find out that my work laptop also has Lightroom already (the perks of being in the creative industry). The photo I did was quick so I used what PS had built in but I want to dive into LR features. I'm assuming they probably have batch features? Or the ability to make a custom preset that you can apply generally to a bunch of photos and then go back and fine tune? Will be exploring more of LR's features today since work is slow.

 

Yep you can totally do batch photos. I have never been that happy with the results though and always like doing one at a time though.

You can save presets though which can be super helpful for certain things to do to all photos right up front. I often do Camera Profile correction to all photos for instance so you can just select all and click the preset and you're done. Can make any preset you want. But again, I found that just doing all the color for each photo to turn out much better results as the light is never the same and camera settings are never the same.

Still a very nice and powerful program.