Whumpf

Splitboarding through frosted trees

It felt great to take the splitboard out today for the first time up here in Wyoming. We were out for about 7 hours, putting in most of a skin track and then scoring a powdery 3,000-foot descent. Due to the limited visibility of the foggy snowy weather, and sketchy avy conditions (whumpf, whumpf), we took it pretty safe and easy on the way down. This zone has some serious shredding potential and I hope to return again during clearer weather and more solid snowpack conditions.

Snowboarding the powder

Rider: Mot Gatehouse.

Too Cold

backcountry snowboarding in Wyoming

backcountry snowboarding in Wyoming

Rider: Jason King. Today we repeated the nice route that we did on Saturday. The two north-facing descents were perfect mid-winter-esque powder goodness; however, hiking up along the ridgeline involved some suffering in perhaps the coldest temperatures I’ve ever experienced. Dangerously cold. Too cold for human beings in their right minds, I think. But we persevered and scored some sweet pow lines… along with a bit of frostbite.

Training

Snowy Ridge

Brutally cold today up on a high ridgeline, with frigid winds and sketchy frozen windslabs. We hiked a long ways for not that great of a descent – at least compared to the sweet lines we’ve been getting lately. But as always the hiking and adventure were fun enough… at the least, chalk it up to training.

backcountry snowboarding

Dropping in to the line.

backcountry snowboarding

The lower runout.

To Jackson Hole!

Cowboy Death Gap

In a couple days I’m moving up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the winter! I’m looking forward to LOTS of snowboarding, as well as some winter photography in and around the mighty Teton range. And while I will surely miss my friends in the Ouray area, hopefully they will come up and visit me! And hopefully the San Juans won’t have a bigger winter than the Tetons, or I’ll never hear the end of it.

If you’re wondering about the photo above, that is yours truly hucking myself over the infamous “Cowboy Death Gap” on the old Teton Pass road back in my college days. Not sure that I would attempt this sort of thing nowadays… probably not. I want to still be riding powder when I’m an old man!

I’ll probably be out of computer contact for the rest of the week until I get internet hooked up at my pad in Teton Village. See you in Wyoming!

Cerro Torre Reflection #2

Cerro Torre Reflection, Patagonia

Here’s one more Patagonia photo from the vault. I’ve been on a roll lately digging these ones up. These last three photos I’ve posted are digital shots from the Ricoh GX100 camera. When I returned home from my month in Patagonia in 2007, I mostly forgot about all these since I was concentrated on editing and scanning my 4×5 film collection from the trip. So it has been fun to browse through these and find some forgotten gems.

This photo here is the famous Cerro Torre reflected in the glacier-fed Lago Torre. I took this shortly after an earlier, wideangle shot of the same scene with the 4×5 camera. That morning was one of the luckiest photo shoots I’ve ever had – to have this lake so calm in this notoriously windy place is extremely rare!

To add to my stoke after the shoot, this was only the second morning of a week-long outing. I was prepared to wait numerous days camping near this lake to hopefully score some good light conditions, so having it happen so soon freed me to continue on my trek to other valleys and adventures.