If you’ve read the BE BRAVE product description, you know part of this story. We wanted to tell you the rest….

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After our flight from Toronto to San Francisco, where we spent a few days, we decided to head to Death Valley. We piled Mathieu, the Sanchez brothers and myself into a Jeep Grand Cherokee and began the 500 mile journey.

After several hours and a few temper tantrums in middle of the desert, we decided to call it a day.

There wasn’t a whole lot of selection in this lunar wasteland and we were low on gas so we settled for the most disgusting motel in California. Amenities included a filthy room, complementary bloodstains on the ceiling and mattresses and a kitchen caked with more grease than a tub of Crisco. The sweltering heat didn’t help matters. It was, in short, a delightful evening.

Naturally we got back on the road as quickly as possible the next morning, this time in the direction of Trona, a ghost town that I had passed through the year before.

To give you an idea, here is the first person I met during my visit last year …

Once there, we quickly took in the entirety of the dilapidated town from the comfort of our wonderful 4×4 before deciding to get out of the car.

The houses in Trona that aren’t burned or boarded up emit either the brutal sound of hardcore hip hop or the strong odor of methadone being made, a smell made all the more unbearable in the heat of the day.

Though unsettling, the atmosphere of the city isn’t entirely disagreeable so we kept walking, until a guy (pictured below) stopped his truck to insult us. Apparently it is dangerous to be a photographer in Trona and we risked ending up in a hospital. Not the most welcoming introduction, but the others had driven off in the Jeep to investigate so we were forced to wait.

The man continued on to park his truck in front of a ‘home’ and got out; right at that moment, the others returned in the Cherokee, honking and pulling the handbrake right in front of us. I made frantic signs for them to stop so we could get the hell out of town before the old lunatic became enraged again. I did, however, crack my window open to let out a cry of joy before wisely driving off with my friends and leaving Trona and the raging man with his blue truck behind.

I managed to get a few photos, but not enough to satisfy me; it just means we’ll have to return one day!

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Photo reportage for Shutter Clothing