Month: March 2009

Two More Big Lines

On Saturday we headed out for another incredible day of backcountry skiing and snowboarding. This day was just as epic as the previous day, with two equally long and awesome untracked descents. These past two days have ranked among my best backcountry days in memory.

Backcountry Skiing
Ann Driggers skis down the premier north face descent of this prominent 13er in the San Juans.

The wide open powdery faces provided ample opportunity to haul some serious ass, as seen in my helmet cam video below.
Snowboard Helmet Cam Video
Click here to watch the Quicktime video. (Minus the music here).

LOTS MORE PHOTOS BELOW!

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Double Whammy

Today was the best day of riding of the entire winter so far. We got two massive untracked lines, with a good foot of fresh snow on top, for a total of 5,000 vertical feet up, and 5,000 down. The perfect bluebird skies, cool temps, and calm wind didn’t hurt one bit.

Ski and snowboard descent routes
Our two descent routes of the day.

Skiing untracked powder
Paul McElrea hauling ass on his new fat powder skis.

LOTS MORE PHOTOS BELOW.

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Had to Go Again

Skiing powder
Skier: Dan Chehayl.

It has been so great to have winter back again… I had to go track up some more powder this morning. The weather was mostly socked in and snowing today, unlike the glorious lifting clouds of yesterday. But, another four inches of pow didn’t hurt at all.

Below is a helmet cam video from the first lap of the day. Excuse the video quality… my video editing skills suck almost as bad as the helmet cam itself. I didn’t even include the second line because the video was full of awful blinking-black frames.

Snowboard helmet cam
Click here to watch the Quicktime video.

Box Canyon

Box Canyon and Ouray

Today two things got me excited… first, a return of winter with cold temps and snow outside! Woohoo! Secondly, I got to try out my new Olympus Zuiko 7-14mm ultra wideangle lens. This thing is an awesome hunk of glass, with a big bulbous front element and a huge angle of view. I shot this photo above from the bridge over Box Canyon, and you can see all the way from the depths of the canyon, to Ouray and the mountains above town. Pretty sweet. It’s a heavy lens, and I imagine I’ll probably use it less than 25% of the time, but it will be a nice option to have for really big landscape scenes with big foreground.

I’m Covered in Sand!

Self Portrait in the Great Sand Dunes

After three completely sedentary weeks at the computer, this last weekend I was desperate for some wilderness action, so I headed out on a backpacking trip in the Great Sand Dunes. My initial plan was to do a simple three day hike up and back the Sand Ramp Trail along the eastern side of the dunes. But on the first night I was feeling ambitious and decided to hike all the way around the dunes! Read more about the trip below, and be sure to check out my gallery of photos from the trip.

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Interview with Norio Matsumoto

Norio Matsumoto photography

Norio Matsumoto is the most dedicated mountain photographer I know of. Every winter, he camps alone for months on end in a snow cave on Alaskan glaciers, and during the summers he camps on islands on the Alaskan coast, photographing whales. The result of his focussed efforts is one of the most spectacular mountain photo collections I’ve ever seen. Norio’s work has been a big inspiration for me for years, and I finally emailed him recently to ask him a few questions.

It sounds like you return every winter/summer to the same glacier/island. Is this correct? How many years have you been doing this?

There are a couple of glaciers that I go for winter camping, and in summer, there are many different places that I camp. I have been doing this for about ten years.

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