Andrew Strain Photography

Heavy rain in Pucon is putting a serious damper on my plans to climb the Villarrica Volcano while I´m here. We leave for Santiago tomorrow night, and the forecast looks... well, better than today. Fingers crossed the situation improves.

With soggy skies (am I home already?? Southern Chile feels alot like Vancouver) there wasn´t much to do other than hit up the supermarket and buy singles of all the different craft beers brewed here in Chile. The north may be for the wines, beer definitely seems to be the fermentation of choice in the south. A strong German influence in this area means most beers are brewed in adherence to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516. Breweries such as Kunstmann (Valdivia) and Austral (Punta Arenas) provide many delicious options. My only complaint is that many of the offerings that I tried were a little bland - highly drinkable, just a little uninteresting. I´ve yet to see an IPA on the supermarket shelves - maybe I´ll just have to look harder tonight.

Home in Vancouver! No, its just Pucon...


Kunstmann (Valdivia)Unfiltered Lager. I really enjoyed this one.



After the tasting, we headed out to a bar for some 2 for 1 drinks, followed by some casino action. I won 9000 playing blackjack. 9000...Pesos. Yeah, thats less than 20 bucks.

Some more photos of my samplings in the full post:

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Polar Imperial Lager, Punta Arenas, Chile:


The Austral family (Punta Arenas, Chile):


Volcanes del Sur Premium Lager:


Dorada - this one was ultra cheap, and strong. Surprisingly good, too.



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We visted the Senda Nativa Romahue today, just outside of Puerto Varas, Chile. A far cry from scrambling through the boulders atop Cerro Catedral, we spent the day below the canopy of the Valdivian temparate rainforest, one of the largest of its kind in the world (second only to my stomping grounds on the British Columbia coast).

After eating a lunch that featured the best steak I´ve ever had, we went for a short horseback ride through the forest (a first for me, much to Meghan´s delight), then spent some time with an orphaned Puma and several tiny Pudú (miniature deer). After watching the Forest episode of Planet Earth, I was thoroughly stoked to actually get to see a Pudú while I´m here...

Ayun´s mother was killed when he was 15 days old. He´s essentially a big, happy housecat now... purrs when you pet him, loves attention, and likes to play futbol. You can see some footage of him (from someone else) on youtube.


A Pudú, full grown at 16 or so inches:


Many thanks to Silvio and Susana for their knowledge and hospitality, as well as the work and love they put into preservation and education.

We´re moving on to Pucon tomorrow for 3 days. Volcanos and hot springs are on my to-do list. More photos from today in rest of the post.


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Range-fed beef, about to become lunch:


Best. Steak. Ever.


The Valdivian rainforest:


Meghan, amused to see me not having any idea how to ride a horse:


Ayun poses for the camera:


This was from the bus window as we were leaving Bariloche the other day - the city looked incredible from across Lago Nahuel Huapi. I would´ve loved to stop and setup a proper shot, but I´m on vacation. No tripods allowed.


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While I´m running around in Patagonia, my good friends at Katal Innovations took their Landing Pad to Lake Louise for its first ever public session. By all accounts, it was a huge success. I wish I had been there, but I guess I can´t really complain...

Here´s a teaser of what went down at Louise:

Katal Innovations Website Teaser from Tyler Mifflin on Vimeo.

I couldn´t spend time in Bariloche and not go on a recon mission to the local ski hill, Catedral. The snow hasn´t started to fly for the winter season yet, but they run a cable car up to the top so people can run around and do touristy things like take photos of themselves with Bariloche and the Argentinian flag in the background.

The tourists that don´t speak Spanish do stupid things like neglet to read sigs, hike a couple kms away from the lift, and almost miss the last gondola down for the evening. Oops...

Cerro Catedral




I said aidos to Argentina this morning, bussing through the national parks of the Lake District to Puerto Varas, Chile, where I´ll be for a few days before heading north to Pucon and eventually Santiago. Argentina was awesome, I´ve been gone for a few hours and I´m already thinking of when I´ll be able to come back - and how on earth I´m going to find Quilmes´excellent Red Lager in Canada...

A couple more photos of Bariloche and Cerro Catedral after the jump:

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The view towards Bariloche (background) and Catedral village (foreground):


The rock garden fingers of Cerro Catedral:




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Took it easy today and wandered around Bariloche in the intense Patagonian wind. Down on the lakeshore, none of the trees have branches on the windward side, so I´m guessing that its pretty much always crazy windy here...





As usual, a few more photos can be seen in the full post -

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Sunrise, from our hostel


Random street dogs followed us around all day


Ocean-sized surf


More meat than your body has room for!


A church





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After spending a few days in Buenos Aires, wandering around the city by day, and eating glorious amounts of parrilla at night (not to mention the fact that beer is about a buck for a 1L bottle...), I got on a double decker night bus headed for Bariloche. I´d heard great things about the Argentinian long-haul sleeper busses, and the 20+ hour ride across the country didn´t disappoint. Fully reclining seats and included meals made the 1600km of driving the most luxurious public transport I´ve ever experienced...

We have 3 days now to explore Bariloche and its surroundings before jumping across the border to Chile. I could easily spend much, much longer here... I wish I could stay for a few more months through the winter.

Some photos from the trip so far...





Read the full post for more photos (¿is there no colon on spanish keyboards?)

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I'm up too early to jump on a plane and head south, way south - Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Santiago then home (via Dallas... woot?). The extent of my Spanish vocab is pretty much limited to "cinqo cerveza pour favor" and a few choice obscenities (a great combo, I know).

I doubt I'll have a chance to upload any photos while I'm gone, but I may sneak a text blog (twitter might be easier) or two in there during the trip... photos when I return!

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Haven't shot much lately, been busy looking for work / preparing my photo submissions for this season / getting ready to head to Argentina and Chile for a couple weeks. Hopefully, my camera doesn't get jacked and I have a ton of photos to post when I get back in mid-May.

Here's a couple old (2006) photos of the Mandy Glacier, northwest of Stewart, BC - she lights up vibrant blue when the light hits her. I miss working there, even though I recall the day I shot the pano being absolutely miserable.




view this one bigger

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Just a few weeks ago I was raving about how winter had finally arrived... it was good while it lasted, but it seems to have been short. I went from shooting on another sunny Sunday at Cypress, to enjoying burgers and beer at sunset on Jericho beach in less than 45 minutes - I really love living in this city.

I wanted to throw a strobe onto Colin in this photo, but my camera battery decided to call it quits after a long day of shooting, and the spare was in the car. I still like it.
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Sunday has lived up to its name the past couple weeks, giving me plenty of opportunity to shoot photos and work on my increasingly well-defined goggle tan. Two weeks ago, (after the storm-of-the-season week came to a close), I spent the day out in Lakeside Bowl on Blackcomb with the NuuLife crew with the intent of staying out all day and shooting some pow shots at sunset...

John Swystun getting it done on both sides of the lens:




Read the full post for a story about how easy sledding is and a short whis park video from Eric Poulin:
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...Unfortunately, Dave Craig suffered an equipment malfunction on the landing of a step down and had his board double eject (wtf, I know) and take off ghost rider style down to the bottom of the bowl. With his board a 500 feet below us, we decided to bugger the sunset shooting and call it a day.

This...


...turned into this:

Is this why we're supposed to wear leashes?

Fast forward a week to last Sunday - the weather was prime again so I took up an offer to head out on a sled trip into the Whistler area backcountry. I've always heard people say how much of a bitch sledding can be when you first start out, but I was not prepared for the beat-down my body was about to receive.

Making matters worse was the fact that I wasn't actually sledding up to the zone - I was being towed, wakeboard style, into the alpine. I like to think my legs are in pretty good shape, but my arms? Please. I'm a photographer, not a longshoreman. Now I feel like Stretch Armstrong - and don't even get me started on the roller coaster ride up to Tricouni...

Complaints aside, once we were up it was about as glorious as it gets. We had some rad laps in the trees to start out, then hit some mellow terrain in the alpine and built up a perfect huck-anything step over.

Eliel Hindert found a nice spine area in the trees to rip:


My prior sledding experience is almost exclusively ice fishing trips. Not today.


Andrew Narkewicz, double or nothing:


Gideon Baldridge plays backcountry chauffeur for Eliel:


When we arrived at the trailhead in the morning it was an absolute zoo, so Gideon got a little creative with his parking skills. It cost us when we got down; the snow he parked on had melted under the heat of the car and refrozen after the sun set, pretty much welding his Land Rover in place. It took a bunch of digging and a pull from Hockenstein (thanks buddy) before we were on our way back to the city... we rolled home 15 hours after we left in the morning, dead tired and super-stoked.

Meanwhile, back at Whistler, Eric Poulin did some filming and threw together a little edit of how he spent his sunny Sunday - check it out!


Last Sunday from Eric Poulin on Vimeo.


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Not much to say with this post, as I think the photos speak for themselves. After the storm passed, the clouds lifted and revealed the scars of a thoroughly badass avalanche cycle. While I scoped the slides from lift accessed terrain, photographer Jeff Patterson and the MSP crew had a sketchy close call out in the backcountry (read about it on his blog). Be careful out there!

Fissile got ripped open:


Some photos of a controlled avalanche on Poop Chutes in the full post:


Patrol bombed Poop Chutes and it rode to the road:


The runout rolled right up to the Blackcomb Glacier cat track:


A closer look at the start zone:


270mm reveals all the different layers in the crown. That is alot of snow coming down the mountain...


I'm sure if you knew the field of view at that focal length, one could figure out the actual size of the crown, but I'm fine with settling for "big". Props to patrol for keeping us safe.


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