CAPTURING THE ROCKIES
Photographer George Brybycin celebrates a life in the mountains with his new book
There are no shortage of beautiful photos to zero in on in George Brybycin’s latest book, The Legendary Rockies.
In fact, there’s 173 full-colour shots that are nothing short of breathtaking.
One of them, taken on a frigid day in Jasper National Park, is of Mount Edith Cavell. The view is obscured by the blizzard-like climate, which perhaps makes it slightly less breathtaking than some of the others. But it’s significant because Brybycin’s little red tent is clearly visible, perched on the side of the mountain and in the slow process of being covered in snow.
In his caption for the photo, Brybycin writes: “To climb Mount Edith Cavell in wintry conditions one should have his head checked out.” The photographer doesn’t know what year the photo was taken. After more than 40 years of obsessively capturing the otherworldly beauty of the Canadian Rockies, those sort of details tend to get blurry.
But it’s one of many that show why Brybycin’s work is so significant, highlighting his willingness to travel to decidedly remote spots to get a unique vantage point for his pictures. He has used other methods to protect himself from the elements. He built a quinzhee when shooting at Lake Minnewanka near Banff a few years back. He has slept in igloos. To capture a sunrise from Mount Temple during one particularly cold October night, he simply dug a hole to sleep in -18 C temperatures.
But that red tent — a bright, one-person abode that Brybycin jokingly refers to as his “bedroom” —shows up quite a bit in The Legendary Rockies ($30, GB Publishing, 180 Pages). It’s almost like a trademark.
“Anywhere with that little red tent, that was my life,” says Brybycin, in an interview with the Calgary Herald at his small apartment off of 17th Ave. “To be on top of a mountain is something very special. You climb for six, seven hours: up, up, up. It’s really tough. Then you realize you are on the top. Then you say ‘Is that all there is?’ You want more.”
How much more Brybycin will get at this stage in his life remains a bit of question mark. The Legendary Rockies recently beat out tough competition to win an award for excellence in printing and production from the Printing Industries of America. It’s also his 55th self-published book, a staggering accomplishment in its own right even if his work is spread over more than 40 years. Brybycin would not give his age, but says he has safely entered his retirement years.
He is also strangely reticent to talk much about his life before he came to Calgary, although a 2007 feature in the Herald described his early years climbing the Tatra Mountains near his boyhood home in Poland.
But he does speak passionately about coming to Calgary nearly five decades ago. As a mounta inloving young man, he knew about the Rockies before arriving. But his first trip reaffirmed that he had made the right choice.
“I right away bought myself a little Volkswagen Beetle and I went to Banff and I went to Lake Louise,” he says.
“I was on top of Mount Temple very soon. I thought ‘ Wow, this is the world I want to live in.’ ”
He has been more or less been living in that world ever since.
He worked as a commercial artist and a freelance photographer while in Alberta. But his passion was making those trips to the Rockies, discovering areas seldom visited by the general populace and capturing them with skill and daring.
And while he may not remember specific dates, he seems to have an interesting story for virtually every photograph in the new book, whether they be of the Fairmont Banff Springs beneath a rainbow (“I was driving to Lake Louise and it was raining like hell and it caught my eye ... “) or the glaring grizzly bear near outside of Banff who interrupted Brybycin’s attempts to photograph a deer (“Look at his eyes ... bears have very poor eyesight and he was looking straight into my lens. Pretty scary business,” he says.)
The aforementioned picture from Lake Minnewanka, which shows the moon about to clear the Fairholme Range, was also interrupted by a unwelcome visitor. The area is a hunting ground for cougars. Brybycin is convinced he almost became dinner for one. But he was determined to finish exposing the six-minute photo.
“Scary business,” he says again. “I could see his silhouette very clearly. I said ‘Mr. Cougar, please, I want to expose that photo to the finish and then you can eat me.’ But he never moved.”
The photos in The Legendary Rockies cover Brybycin’s decades on the mountains, dating back to a 1973 shot of a much younger man sitting outside that red tent by the north glacier near Mount Sarbach in Banff National Park.
That glacier, Brybycin reports, is now half the size of what it was 43 years ago.
How long Brybycin will continue journeying into the mountains for his photography is a bit up in the air.
Brybycin says his knees “finally gave up” and his doctor has told him that scrambling up mountains at his age, particularly when alone, is not a good idea.
Now living a frugal life on a sparse pension, Brybycin admits that the modest extra income his books bring in help with living expenses. But he also says that his next book — which he describes as a “best of” collection — may be his last.
“My ego is fulfilled,” he says. “I don’t strive for anything more. So I will publish the ‘ best’ book and then go fishing.”