Published, sort of

Shortly after I got back from my vacation, I received an email from the director of the Colorado Trail Foundation, Bill Manning. He liked my photos from the Lake City section I rode up around 12,000 to 13,000ft and was wondering if he could have permission to use them. As I am a complete amateur when it comes to photography and have no aspirations to ever make a cent off photos I take, I was more than happy to help Bill out. I sent him full resolution images.

A short while later, Bill contacts me again and said a British magazine was interested in photos from the Colorado Trail and my photos may be of interest to them.  The magazine is called The Great Outdoors. I checked TGO out first before responding to Bill. At first I was cautious, as they appeared to be a hiking oriented mag, and could they possibly be anti-mountain biking? Deeper probing showed not. They ran stories of off-road riding too.

Again, I didn't want compensation for anything they might want to use. I told Bill they were free to use my Colorado Trail photos, just give me credit. Bill also said he'd try to get the TGO to send me a print copy if they used any of my photos.  I wasn't sure they would even use them, as the CT piece was supposed to be more about bike-packing and the Colorado Trail Race.

I don't think even two weeks went by when I got a brown paper wrapped package post marked from the UK. At first, I was like what's this? Then it dawned on me. It was a very thick magazine, a special edition sometimes referred to a "bookazine." It was full of glossy pictures from around the world featuring 100 bucket list epic adventures. Cool! But how could any of my photos have made it into the mag? It probably took two weeks just to come over the pond.

But sure enough. One of my photos was in there on a one-page CT piece. The only problem, they gave Scott Morris the credit! I've never met Scott, but I have followed his blog for many years, and Scott has been involved with bike-packing and the Colorado Trail Race for years. TGO magazine probably had photos to consider from Scott too, as he's posted many photos from the CT on his blog. Here's a rather poorly scanned image of the page with my photo.

That photo certainly captured the essence of my ride that day, and the Colorado Trail over all.  I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over the botched photo credit. I won't even let them know. I'm just happy to get this expensive magazine (10 GBP + 7 GBP shipping) to peruse and dream over what adventures to put on my bucket list. The special edition magazine covers many human powered activities, such as hiking, biking, repelling, kayaking, skiing and more. Many of the adventures are competitive events.