It’s 2:30 p.m. on December 23, and I feel awful. I am exhausted, and my heels and lower back feel as if someone is driving hot, dull knives into them. I have been on my feet since 5:30 a.m., working a retail window at the post office, and an unending line of people before me are looking to mail Christmas letters and packages. I try to hide my discomfort, and I try not to think of the five long days between now and my next day off.
Hot smoke, cold smoke: Wildfires burn both ways on the heels of a destructive season in the Northwest
“What pictures will never give you is the smell of the smoke,” says Stefan Hood, a Forest Protection Technician and backcountry skier from Houston, British Columbia. “You’re smelling the organics of the soil burning, and you’re smelling trees [that] are on fire. That kind of smoke permeates everything. It permeates your clothes and your hair; everything ends up taking on that scent.”
That Girl: Kt Miller integrates adventure and conservation for a new take on ski photography
Kt Miller was more or less born on skis. “My dad skied like 100 days a year, so he started putting me in a backpack when I was a baby,” the 25-year-old Cooke City, Mont. resident says. “I think I’ve been skiing since I was two.” That early outdoor immersion resulted in a livelihood based […]
Snow Shooter: Blake Jorgenson
Photographer Blake Jorgenson has been taking photos for a long time—before the era of digital, when the average kid still knew Fujifilm was a photography company and didn’t assume it was just a movie about the tropics. His experience has given him a perspective on communication and what it means to be an artist. We […]
Snow Shooter: Jason Hummel
Photographer Jason Hummel and his twin brother, Josh, have a ski streak lasting 203 months. This means Jason and his brother, age 36, have been skiing every month since they were teenagers. While this is an impressive feat, it is just one of Jason’s many achievements. We learned of other feats and mishaps in a […]
Snow Shooter: Mason Mashon
Before taking photos, Mason Mashon was into mountain bike competition. But he switched his focus from being in front of the lens to behind it—a change that, he says, allows him to understand the athlete’s perspective when shooting. We caught up with the Whistler, B.C. based photographer to talk about his pivot from athlete to cameraman and his need to pack everything but the kitchen sink when he goes to shoots.
Snow Shooter: Adam Barker
It is understandable why photographer Adam Barker is a homebody—his backyard is Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. Though travel is an inherent part of his job, he loves Salt Lake City, living with his wife and three sons a stone’s throw from the Little Cottonwood Canyon backcountry.
Fire and Ice: How the Beaver Creek burn has changed skiing in the Sawtooth Mountains
Little is known about how fire affects snow stability, so Simon Trautman, director of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center in Idaho took a deeper look into the Beaver Creek Fire, which began in the Sawtooth Mountain Range just outside of Sun Valley on August 7, 2013. The fire started after a lightning strike ignited the surrounding pine forest northwest of Hailey, Idaho. It raged for nearly a month and consumed 114,900 acres of Sawtooth National Forest. Afterward, Trautman wanted to delve deeper into how the change in the landscape might impact winter conditions.
