My entire draw to wanting to photograph Lover’s Leap in Siskiyou County, Northern California was the sense of height created by the juxtaposition of the actual climbing routes.
The routes themselves are typically seventy to over one-hundred feet high on a limestone crag that sits atop a hill that is already several hundred feet above the small valley below.
So when some friends invited me along for a day of cragging I was all in!
I doubly lucked out by the presence of big beautiful cumulus clouds scattered across the sky. All the conditions added visual emphasis to both the distances and height of the climbs.
The presence of the climbers in the images scaled the images beautifully.
There are so many things I love about climbing photography- the way the climber adds a sense of the vastness of an extreme landscape, the aesthetics created by the human form in freestyle athletic endeavor, the connection created between the climber and the natural world by the experience, and of course, just the opportunity to hang with friends and kindred adventurous souls.
As it turns out, one of the climbing party was going to attempt a redpoint climb of a project he had originally eyed twenty years prior, a 5.12a called “I and I”.
I was so fortunate to manage to get these captures of my friend Jeff Shamansky achieving his goal.
Below are a few images I managed to create from that awesome day of climbing.
You can also view the entire gallery on my Smugmug site here:
williammaderas.smugmug.com/LoversLeap513/
