At a recent seminar, a speaker from “Backpacker Magazine” described his reader base as “geo reference oriented” which I think was a nice way of saying “geeks with GPS’s.” As I am guilty of the same sin, I wanted to see about putting some classic Wasatch tours on-line and see how it works.
The tour below (Pink Pine, an excellent quick outing, or safe first tour) is created in Trimble Outdoors and has all sorts of download options, including sending it to your GPS enabled phone. Since I don’t have one, I’d be interested in seeing how it works if anyone actually tries this. Continue reading ‘Pink Pine Ski Tour – Topo & Guide’
I recently attended a seminar at the Winter OR Show entitled “Print is Dead” which had a panel of outdoor writers and e-commerce people, including Steve Casimiro. Steve has been one of my favorite skiing writers since his days at Powder, and the upshot of the seminar was that print isn’t really dying so much as becoming one of many other means of publishing. People kept referring to Steve’s website, The Adventure Life, so I checked it out and discovered (among other things) that Scott Markewitz was giving a photo workshop at Snowbird.
I’ve known Scott since I moved back to Utah about 18 years ago, and knew of him before that through his photography. As far as I know, Scott was the guy who invented the genre of skiing photography where you see a tight frame of a skier completely engulfed in a sea of raging powder, with perfectly lit up details and the person is calming looking through his/her goggles directly into the camera. Photos like these are the embodiment of speed, action, details, nature and humanity all rolled into one, which is probably why Scott has had several hundred magazine cover shots. And skiing is just one of many things that he shoots. There’s a photo on his website of girls throwing snowballs at each other, that makes it look like such fun that I want to give it a try.
My personal photography style is best described as “Point & Chute” where I carry a small Point & Shoot camera set to full auto with the burst mode on, pull it out when things look interesting, fire off a bunch of shots and hope for the best. This usually yields about a 1 in 1,000 ratio of good to crap, and from working with professional photographers, there’s no doubt that carefully setting up the shot is 90% of the game. In that regard, I’m very psyched that Scott is teaching a clinic and willing to share some of his techniques.
The clinic is Feb 4-7 at Snowbird and for $1,250 includes food, lodging, ski tickets and the workshop, although there is also a locals deal available if you just want the workshop. Contact Scott at scott@scottmarkewitz.com or book through Snowbird at 1.800.453.3000. It should be fun.
Trivia:
Inclinometers are used in aircraft to show magnetic dip or the angle from the horizon.
Clinometers are used by surveyors in order to measure an angle of inclination or elevation.
Goniometers are instruments that either measures angle or allows an object to be rotated to a precise angular position.
Regardless of what you use or what you call it, being able to measure slope angles is one of the best avalanche defenses available. I’ve been skiing around for the last week in considerable, high and even extreme avalanche conditions without seeing or triggering any slides as I’ve been keeping my angles loooooow. Like in the 20-30 degree range at the most.
For years my goniometer (I usually call it an inclinometer) of choice has been the classic Life-Link plastic card with a dingle-bob on it. After a few seasons, the plastic breaks and you are left with a shard of plastic and a stuck dingle-bob. Still, they were kind of cheap, lightweight and compact enough that you could whip it out, pull an angle and get on with life. With this in mind, I was overjoyed at the recent Outdoor Retail Show to see that Pieps had come out with a bitchin’ new digital unit that mounts to your pole and also includes a thermometer. Continue reading ‘Pulling Slope Angles’
I love the idea of regluing skins, not just because it is all eco earth friendly and vegan approved, but because a pair of moderately worn nylon skins have such a nice feel to them – they glide, climb and fold-up like butter. With this in mind, I stripped the old glue off of a pair of skins last year and carefully documented my first outing with Black Diamond Glue Renew strips in eager anticipation of a KILLER BLOG POSTING. Yeah, well, it turned out like crap as I have the patience of a two year old and once again forgot to read the instructions until after I finished the job. Continue reading ‘Glue Renew Guru’
It’s about time the Wasatch got some snow, dammit. It was a mixed blessing to open my garage door this morning and find that the overnight snowfall was thigh deep and over the top of my snow-thrower hood, which necessitated a double pass, which in turn made me late, which led to getting stuck in the Cottonwood Canyons traffuck, and once we finally got to the trailhead almost an hour later, I pulled my beacon out to find that it had been left on and was reading “00″ as a power level (details below). It wasn’t a great start to the day, but it soon improved, as photo Exhibit A shows below: Continue reading ‘Deep Snow and Shallow Batteries’
The Outdoor Retailer Show is in Salt Lake City and the Sundance Film Festival is getting underway in Park City, so Utah is hopping at the moment. A bit more snow would make it even better.
I’ll add some updates from the OR Show over the next day or so.
As a crusading Dynafit Evangelist, I’m loathe to say anything bad about them, but will admit that many times the brakes hang up and don’t deploy. This happens often enough that some of my Dynafit buddies skip the brakes altogether as “they never work anyway.” It seems that this is more common with skis that are right at the brakes limits, like using a 92mm brake on a 91mm ski, which technically should work, but seldom does.
Rather than yarding on the brake legs, (which only makes matters worse as they require a certain geometry to retract and deploy well), I use a Dremel tool and grind off the inside of the plastic tabs. Continue reading ‘Dynafit Brake Modification’
A little video we shot this morning while waiting (and waiting…) for it to finally snow in the Wasatch. This technique is a slo-mo variation on a racing strip and it takes about one and a half minutes. Out of habit, I like to strip my skins right when I get to the top of a climb just so that I’m all ready to go. After that, I can, and usually do, dink around for a while, but first things first.
The “Up There” Ski Film Fest is taking place on Jan 14-15 in Bozeman, MT. It is being presented by the Yellowstone Club Community Foundation and benefits my all time favorite ski mountaineering organization, The Hans Sarri Memorial Fund (<– which happens to have a new website, check it out). Not only are they showing two cool films, “Swift. Silent. Deep.” and “Skiing Everest,” but they are raffling off some killer prizes, like three days/two nights at Aspen, three days/two nights at Jackson, a men’s AT package, women’s AT package and a day with Scot Schmidt. I suspect you can order raffle tickets through Drew Seessel (406.556.1275) and arrange something if you can’t be present at the actual event, but still win. Continue reading ‘“Up There” Ski Film Fest – Bozeman, MT’
