After a week of some of the best riding I’ve ever done, we were off on our long drive to photograph the California Enduro Series race at Mount Shasta Ski Park. We broke the drive up into two days, because I needed to get some work done, before we left the house in Park City, and I didn’t think that I necessarily needed to be at Mount Shasta for the entire practice. For the past few weeks, I had been hauling around a rooftop tent that I borrowed from Rubicon EP. We used it the first weekend in Mammoth and I thought it would be the perfect solution for us to set up camp at the race and not have to worry about sleeping pads or having the tent blow away while we were at the race. It was really great to sleep in, but driving across the flat Nevada desert was not ideal for fuel consumption. We put it to use that first night on the road though, breaking up the drive camping outside of Reno before heading up to Shasta on Friday.
For the most part, we took our time on Friday making it to the mountain, besides trying to get through the smoke of the Beckwourth fire. The entire course of the drive was constantly passing through apocalyptic smoke and burnt down forests. Molly wanted to make a stop to get some exercise and she surprisingly discovered that Mcarthur-Burney falls was a 5 minute stop right off our route. Neither of us had been so we turned it into a quick hike and lunch stop. If you haven’t been, I would highly recommend it! It’s only a few minute walk to the base of the falls and takes less than 30 minutes to make your way around them. 10/10 would recommend.
After some PB&J’s we got back into the car to finish the last hour of the drive to Shasta.
This would also be the first time that I had actually been to Mount Shasta. I’ve driven through, I’ve been to the lake, but I’ve never actually been on the mountain. And this would be the first CES race that I had shot as well. A few weeks before, I got together with Aaron Lesieur, (Bixxel Media) to get some tips about transitioning to more of a freelance position with my photography. He gave me some tips on how to shoot the races because he is actually contracted by CES to shoot photos of the Pro’s at the events.
As I went up to get some information about the race, I kept running the things I had learned through my head to develop a good plan for the weekend. I needed to find a good spot that would provide for good action, good lighting, and somewhere that I could get a good shot of all the riders. I scoped out stage 1 and found a few good spots and ended up getting a lot cool shots of the riders kicking up dust in a deep left hand turn.
Since we got there so late, I didn’t have much time after that to scope anywhere else out, so I headed back down to the car to go get some dinner and relax a bit before the Race began on Saturday.
When Saturday came, I couldn’t tell if it was excitement or nerves that had me up early and countlessly going over all my equipment. I wasn’t contracted to be there by anyone, but I wanted to make sure to give it my best when I was out there. When the race was finally getting close to starting, I rode my bike halfway up stage one and decided to dump it so I wouldn’t have to push it up the hill. A lot of stage one was set in the trees with spotty, inconsistent light that would make my style of shooting pretty tough. I found a spot that had a number of different lines to it that would provide options for all the riders coming through. The inside line proved to be the fastest and if people took the outside line into a deep, sandy right hand turn, they’d be swearing at themselves as they rode past me.
After I got pretty much all of the pros and experts, I decided to head down and try to find a spot on stage 3 because I hadn’t even been to that part of the mountain yet. I took the chairlift up with one of the sport riders and was asking him for beta on which trail was which. He informed me that one that looked to have some scenic turns was the stage that he just rode. After getting off the chair, I hiked my bike down to find the spot I saw from the chair, hiking off trail, through the bushes, only to over hear someone saying that this particular stage was stage 5. I was in the complete wrong spot. So I took my bike and hiked the slow way back to the top. Stage 3 was finishing up with the beginners so I tried my luck at the top of it, but unsuccessfully found zero good light.
Onto stage 4 I went and pretty much new where I wanted to be. Stage 4 was the queen stage which had a good sized road gap with a fox banner under the lip. A well photographed location at Shasta and it was where Aaron and I split the trail and shot the riders hitting the gap. Aaron had to get shots of the riders with the banner included in the frame, but I was noticing that not everyone was hitting the gap so I wanted to provide some variety in my shots. After the road gap, there was a catch berm down at the bottom of the landing that a lot of people were skidding into. I moved down there to find that once again the dust in the corner added some extra flare to the images. Stage 4 was the last stage of Day 1 so I packed up after everyone had come through and headed back down for a beer, dinner, and sleep. After of course dumping my images and making a few selects to put a post together.
Sunday morning, I had a different goal in mind. I wanted to make sure that I had photos of as many riders as possible so I started with the group that I hadn’t shot a single frame of yet. I took the chairlift up to the top of stage 6 and found a spot that was in the sun, but could also provide good angles for everyone coming through. There was a rock garden, which didn’t have great light that early in the morning, into a flat S-Turn out into the sun that lead right back into the forest. It was a few hundred feet that would provide lots of angles for everyone. I shot there for almost 5 hours and really tried to change my angles and float around as best I could.
At the end of the day, I met up with Molly in the lodge. She deserves an MVP award for me dragging her all the way there to sit in the hot sun and not really have much to do. I thought I broke even with the images I’ve sold, but I think most of that will be going into a thank you dinner for her.
Waking up Monday morning was a bit tough when I had to face the reality of going from a weeklong vacation, straight into a few 16 hour work days. Excited for the next chapter when my photography gets to be my full time job. More on that soon.
I hope you enjoy the images and if you raced, or know someone who raced Shasta, check out more of the images over at gallery.bradynations.com/shastaenduro
Cheers!
