rediscovering my passion for photography on the continental divide trail
From April 18 to September 10, 2024, I walked from Mexico to Canada on the Continental Divide Trail, a 3,100-mile trail in the United States that runs through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.
Both physically and mentally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
But it was also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
To be honest though, it took me a while to understand why.
The trail was incredibly beautiful most days, and the feeling of remoteness that you get on the CDT is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. You are out there.
But for months after finishing the trail, the physical toll on my body of hiking thousands of miles across the country lingered. I’m only now fully recovered from a nerve injury to my right foot. The mental toll, too, lasted for months. The CDT’s unofficial motto is “embrace the brutality,” and the trail reminds you why almost every day. The footpath was rugged, exposed, and unfinished. The weather was volatile, extreme, and sometimes terrifying. Colorado was covered in snow and ice for several weeks straight. And the experience was, at least for me, sometimes isolating and lonely, even when I was with other hikers. For days at a time, it was just me, deep in some forgotten wilderness, in the least populated corridor of the United States. Many times I enjoyed that aspect of the hike. But sometimes I really didn’t—especially at night in grizzly bear country up north. I missed my incredibly supportive wife constantly and often longed to just be around other people.
So as I recovered from my long, long walk—back home, back to work, and back to “normal” life—I continually put off writing anything about the CDT. I had not yet healed enough to understand what my journey on the trail was all about. I simply had nothing to say. Sure, I chose to hike the CDT because I wanted adventure. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to escape a career that was destroying my mental health. And I got all that, and then some.
But after all that walking—all those challenges and triumphs—what did it all really mean?
What did I discover about myself out there? Did I discovery anything at all?
The answer was yes, although I learned that truth only this month—nearly nine months after I touched the CDT’s Northern Terminus in Glacier National Park, Montana, and completed my thru-hike of the CDT.
You see, for me, it was all about the photography.
Simply put, the CDT taught me that I want to be a photographer when I grow up (which creates some difficulty, because I’ll be 38 in just a few weeks). It was the simple process of taking pictures of my story every single day on trail. The immense joy I experienced in editing my work to my version of perfection. And the sense of community that I felt when I shared my photos with others on that silly app called Instagram (@_ben_snaps_) whenever I was able to find reliable internet in the tiny towns dotting the CDT.
As background, I discovered my passion for photography in 2012 during law school, and I would spend hours walking the streets of downtown Pittsburgh taking photos with my iPhone and sharing them online. I didn’t know anything about “real” cameras; aperture, shutter speed, ISO, none of that mattered. I cared only about light, color, and composition, and in many ways, I’m so grateful that I started my photography that way. It was simple, raw, and fun. I didn’t care one bit about gear or acquiring more of it.
Yes, I finally broke down and bought a camera—but it wasn’t until 2022. And even then, I wanted to keep things simple and cheap, mainly because I didn’t know any better. After lots of (mostly YouTube) research, I settled on the Sony Rx100m3. I bought it used for $314, an amount that still makes me laugh to this day. The camera was first made in 2014, and Sony had by then already released four newer versions of the camera.
But I didn’t care. My Rx100 was utterly tiny and supremely lightweight. It had a fast 24-70mm equivalent f/1.8-2.8 lens. It had a perfectly acceptable 20mp 1-inch sensor. And it was so cheap that I didn’t care what happened to it. So I took it with me literally everywhere I went. Hiking, rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, traveling, you name it. I even dropped it off a 40-foot cliff in 2023. Yet all it ever did for me was work flawlessly and take great photos.
That’s the camera I used on the CDT, and mostly just out of ignorance and blind faith, I brought that same “I don’t care, or even know, anything about camera gear” mentality to my photography on trail. I (foolishly) brought along only one SD card and battery—for the entire five-month journey. My only weather sealing was a Ziploc bag. I didn’t use microfiber cloths or silica packets—I cleaned my lens with a hotel pillowcase every week or so. My hand strap was a piece of leftover cord from my tent’s guy-lines. I edited my raw files in my tent at night using only my iPhone’s “Photos” app—no Lightroom, no Photoshop. And I didn’t care at all about what other people’s photography looked like. Trends and “color science” didn’t matter. I was there to take pictures of my journey, and my journey alone. The camera’s limitations (and there were many) became my strengths.
It was the purest form of photography that I can imagine, and over the course of the next five months, I beat the hell out of that little camera. It survived dust storms, extreme heat and cold, heavy rain, hail storms and lightning, river crossings, snow travel—and even a midnight mouse attack in my tent in Colorado. It was the perfect tool for the job I was doing, and I treated it that way every single day on trail.
I’ve grown a lot as a photographer since finishing the CDT, and yes, I’ve acquired more gear. I even sold my beloved Rx100m3—it was time after all that I had put it through. So there are a lot of things I would do differently from a photography standpoint if I ever thru-hike again.
But while I now see plenty of flaws in my CDT photos, I’m still proud of the images that I took out there—captured completely in the moment, edited lightly under the night sky, and unburdened by thoughts about whether I’m a “real” photographer using a “real” camera. I cherish many of these little photos, including their imperfections, and I hope you enjoy them too. The CDT taught me that I want to spend the rest of my life chasing that pure, unfettered, and creative photography process—where the only thing that matters is the person behind the lens—and I’m so grateful for that recent realization.
I won’t go into the specifics of the hike here—check out my Instagram for that (@_ben_snaps_). Hopefully the photos speak for themselves. I’ll add just two details here before I stop typing.
First, the hiker portraits are from the day I finished Colorado—without a doubt the hardest state on the CDT. These hikers are good friends I met in various spots along the way, and I was happy to get to capture them together that day, in what was, for me, a moment of pure conquest—Colorado was DONE!
The second is that the very first photo below was taken on the very first day of my hike, and the very last photo was taken on the very last day of my hike. A lot of stuff happened in between those photos, to say the least, and I was able to capture only some of it with my camera—tiny little moments in an epic ten-million-moment journey. But that’s life in a nutshell, right? The vast majority of the journey will live on in my memory—and my memory alone—for the rest of my life, just for me.
I think there’s something beautiful about that.
Signing off,
—Ben (“Guru” on the trail!), CDT Northbound, April 18 to September 10, 2024.
Feel free to reach out with any questions: ben@bensnaps-photo.com. Also feel free to reach out through Instagram: @_ben_snaps_. You can also subscribe to my newsletter below, where I’ll send you updates by email when my new blog posts go live!
