February 22, 2011
Mountain Gorilla Infant in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

On our second day of mountain gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, we visited the Hirwa group. It has 16 members, including a 15 day old infant and 20 day old twins! Gorillas rarely have twins, and we were really excited to see them.

The 1.3-mile (2km) hike from the trailhead at 7830 ft (2390m) to where we left our porters at 8090 ft (2470m) took us about an hour and 20 minutes. There was lots of up and down over streams before we reached the park boundary. We saw and photographed the twins, but my favorite image is of the younger, 15 day old infant being cradled by her mother. Conditions weren't very good for photography because the gorillas were under an open canopy with only a thin cloud layer to soften the light. I processed one RAW image three times to bring out detail in the shadows and highlights, then combined them by hand in Photoshop.

We took a different path back to a different trailhead, and it was a much easier 0.7-mile (1.1km) hike. About five minutes after we got into our vehicle it started to rain, and within 10 minutes it was pouring with pea-sized hail — we finished just in time!