…But here I go anyway.
(NSFW CONTENT WARNING)
So a couple of weeks ago I set out to shoot some fine art snowy nude portraits with my model, Kay (@KayMorgana) up at Boca reservoir in Truckee. I have an all wheel drive Subaru that’s so far never let me down when I’m off the beaten path, so I thought we would venture off the main road and down a bumpy dirt road covered in snow to a more remote location for the sake of Kay’s privacy. That all sounded great in my head, and in execution we made it just fine to a spot about half a mile in from the main road with plenty of trees around so the passersby wouldn’t wreck their cars craning to see a naked woman in the snow.
We shoot for a little bit, but the concept I’d planned out included lit candles but the wind had other plans and we ended up only getting a handful of final images.
Fine, cool, it happens. Not EVERY shoot like this works out perfectly, I’m not mad at it.
But as we’re backing out to go home, the snow decides it’s not done with us just yet and through all my careful 4-wheelin’ we end up sliding into a shallow ditch from which we CANNOT get the fuck out. Literally tried everything. I cut armfuls of pine branches and stuffed them under the tires for added traction, I tried pulling from behind, I tried pushing from the front. Nothing was working.
Shit. We’re really goddamn stuck at this point and the light is leaving, FAST.
Oh, did I mention, I’m an idiot and forgot my snow boots so I’m in soaking wet Vans with no socks on so the concern about frostbite is a very real concern at this point.
Ok, we’re now in a “survival situation” and I’m woefully ill-prepared compared to my usual over-preparedness.
We walk through the snow back to the main road and try to call AAA and my phone fucking dies. So we get on Kay’s phone and call and the call drops. We call again, get about halfway through where we are with the dispatcher and it drops again.
FUCK.
FINALLY, we get the info to the dispatcher, they say it’ll be 2 or 3 hours but if we need emergency aid to call 911.
At this point, I’ve lost feeling in my feet about half an hour ago and I just have two painful flippers on the ends of my legs so I’m lightweight scared for my feet so we call ANYONE in our phones who have a 4 wheel drive and lives in Reno. No one answers. All this time we’re waiting at the road because we don’t want to miss someone driving by with a big truck who could help us. But the cold overcomes us and we hike back to the car to warm up.
At long last, the time arrives for the AAA driver to be near us so we hike back through frozen puddles, foot deep snow, and coyote tracks back to the road to wait again. Guy shows up in a lifted Chevy Avalanche (I def chuckled at that irony) with huge offroad tires. He pulls us the fuck out of the ditch and back to the road and we couldn’t be more grateful to him for saving our lives.
We drive back to Gold Ranch where Kay parked her car and we head home, having survived a (slightly) harrowing experience in the very same mountains the Donner party cannibalized themselves in and I felt a slight kinship to their plight.
Sucks that they didn’t have AAA.
Anyway, enjoy some n00dz from this shoot 👇👇👇
