On a dark cold night Chickenhawk ventured into Todmorden up a giant hill covered in snow and ice with a photographer named Danny North in tow…….
Aim: to find a location that Danny claimed was 30 minutes walk in ‘normal’ conditions. Stick brought the whole world in a bag, including chairs and unicycles, which were quickly removed from the bags before we set off.
In hindsight if things had gone worse we may have needed some of the more bizarre items but more on that later……
Walking along the main path leading to this giant hill was fine in comparison with what was to come, it was bitterly cold and we had to wrap scarves around our faces.
When we began to ascend a hill covered in ice and snow that’s when the fun began…
The snow was deep and I mean really deep in certain places you had no idea if you would tread on solid ground or fall through less dense snow that was up to your waist and this did happen A LOT. We climbed for about an hour, the peak seemed a mile of hunting for this golden location. We finally reached a wall which would hopefully break the wind a little, it didn’t and although we were now on flat ground the snow was still just as deep, we could now see the forest we were aiming for but the funny factor had already gone.
We eventually approached this ‘forest’ it was clear no one else was around for miles and hadn’t been for a long time. This places was mightily impressive: rows of trees with a ‘corridor’ down the middle something straight out of Edward Scissorhands. We thought it was snowing, it was raining ice….thats something I’ve never seen before.
Walking down this corridor Danny picked his choice location and in true Indian Jones style we wrapped a cloth round a stick, doused it in turps and set it alight…..
We, I say we but I actually mean Danny experimented with different set ups and eventually settled on us with our backs to a tree, by now I think there was just pure ice on my feet and it felt like my whole legs had pins and needles. Danny set the camera up with a very long exposure which involved us staying as still as possible for about 30 seconds, not very hard when you are the coldest you’ve been in your life.
I am really not complaining about Danny giving up his time to do this photoshoot but it seemed an age to get the actual shot and standing still does not help one bit.
Once we had all the shots that’s when the fun was completely gone everyone was really struggling and as a result we came back down the ‘hill’ a lot quicker, as the ice in my boots began to melt for some strange reason the cold water felt really refreshing. I cannot explain to you how bizarre my legs felt. Myself and Matt bombed on ahead with the thought of a warm car…. Once we got onto the main path down to Danny’s village I kept slipping on the ice, in total FIVE times, you think I would’ve learnt from this….clearly not….all I wanted was a warm car.
When we got back to the cars, I pulled off my boots and literally poured a pint of water out of each one, I bet that looked amazing when it was frozen inside around my toes. Truly bizarre things always seem to happen to this band….this is one of them, the location Danny found was amazing, I’m now adding arctic explorer to my C.V and no I’m not over-reacting…..total man challenge.
Moral of the story: always have photographs taken in a sauna.
First gig of the year: Next Friday at the cockpit with Future of the left and Kong...POW
http://www.myspace.com/chickenhawk
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