[Leica] Hiking with a 4x5 set up

[Richard Man]

PhotoBackpacker is a company that sells excellent pack with suspension
system. Unfortunately, after 20-30 years, Bruce, the owner retired last
year, but before he did, I bought one of the backpacks for about 60% off.

This past weekend, my daughter and I went to the Garrapata Trail,
overlooking the famed Route 1 Pacific coast. It was rated as "strenuous".
Somehow I read somewhere that it's a 3 mile round trip but afterward we
realized that it was more like 6.8 miles and since we went to the side
"river trail", that makes the total more like 7.5 miles. It's a loop trail
with both ends pretty much straight up/down the mountain with not many
switchbacks.

The wildflowers are supposed to be one of the best in California, but as we
saw the "orange hillside" in Tehachapi a month ago, the flowers at
Garrapata are nice but certainly do not look "the best" to us.
Nevertheless, the scenery is amazing, starting with cacti in the lower
elevations, to Redwood around the river and scrub brushes on top of the
mountain.

Anyway, the bag weighs 20 lbs, with 3 lens, filters, and 12 holders also in
the PhotoBackpacker cases. I had the Chamonix F1 4x5 camera on the tripod.
With a sandwich and a water bottle, I was carrying around 25+ lbs of stuff.

Summary: the P1 Backpack works really well. My shoulders were sore
afterward but I am sure it would have been a lot worse with another pack.
The suspension system works well to distribute the weight. Toward the last
3rd going downhill, my knees were giving me trouble, as they tend to do
with hiking downhill for a long stretch, and my daughter carried the
camera/tripod for me. There was even a bench on a vista point overlooking
the ocean. (Where is Bob Adler?!!)

I was wearing my photog-vest and I carried one holder in a pocket, and the
loupe and meter in other pockets. It took about 5 minutes to take a photo.
After taking two photos, I just grabbed another holder from the case so I
could be ready for the next photo. I changed lens once, but all but one
photo was made with the 110mm Super Symmar XL. In all, I took 14 photos,
one was definitely bad as somehow the cable did not work. Fortunately, I
had 2 spare cables with me.

No time to develop the film yet, and I will mega busy for a few days
longer, but looking forward to crank up the Jobo soon.

-- 
// richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>
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