From 1994 through 2003, my brother Carl had nine cover photos in Backcountry Magazine, more than anyone else, ever. Each of those shots displayed Carl’s knack of placing a skier in a setting that made you want to be there. My favorite is the photo of Brian Sato on Mt. Baker in Issue 24. It’s a picture that—in the Lower 48—could only have been taken in Carl’s beloved Cascades.

The cover that means the most to me is not from while I was Photo Editor but from when I was a freelance photographer. I was on my first assignment ever with Backcountry Senior Editor John Dostal. Matt Mancini “Johnny Bravo” is the cover boy. We were doing a story for Skiing Magazine about the slides on Whiteface, and the snow looks better than it was in this photo—good thing there was no audio because it was loud.

With just a few minutes digging in the basement, I unearthed a box of old BC Mags. I laid out the covers with the old design on my dining room table and was surprised to see that I was only missing three. They brought back lots of old, good memories (Backcountry started just a couple years after I started backcountry skiing, and my first article was in Issue 8). Some of the shots are funny, some just bad. Some have that super-staged look, where all I can think is, “What the hell were the shooter and skier and editor thinking?”

I was still in high school at the time in Eastern Washington and was completely obsessed with skiing. That cover really defined that area of steep skiing in Alaska and was something that I only dreamed about getting to experience someday. Little did I know at the time that two years later, I would move to Bellingham, Wash., and meet Carl, who became a mentor of mine, and Dean, who became one of my closest friends and mentors. After several seasons learning the ropes from Carl and Dean, my own photography started to take off and I scored my first cover, on the December 2003 issue.