Backcountry Magazine
A Grand Scheme
"The Grand Teton is iconic. Dark rock traced with veins of snow and ice stress the apparent challenges in reaching its summit. There is no easy way up or down. To ski the peak is a revered accomplishment for good reason — not in the least for the imagination required to even visualize such a line. While no one challenge is particularly great, managing a descent from the summit requires nearly every trick in the book.
Cutting the slope hard nothing moves. I carry energy into a quick turn, picking up speed with edges set — the arc forms — fall line under foot, eyes downhill, shoulders square. I press into the front of my boots and accelerate. It feels good."
Alpinist
Dukkha ~ Funeral for a Friend
"Closing my eyes, I can easily visualize the basin above the lake and feel the freezing spray of water, whipped into the air by gale-force winds ... immaculate granite soaring in all directions, limitless possibilities for alpine endeavors left to the creative mind. Stepping out of the shack, my head spun with sensory overload — the wind, the stinging spray, the contrast of earth to sky and water to storm. The world outside was raging."
Climberism
The Greatest Mountain
"I slowly realized — no matter the intensity of fire inside, the dark cold of northern winter will always have final say. It’s a broad and complicated lesson to pass on, but The Mountain did so with no words at all, only cold implication."
Scarpa North America Athlete Blog
No Weak Shit
"The upper face was surreal. Between mental fatigue and our setting — dawn light stretched over alien flutings of ice, enormous snow mushrooms dolloping impossibly-steep spines, shattered seracs still lingering overhead — it was difficult to stay in touch with reality. Hours 25 through 27 were at once a dim blur of endless 60° ice, creeping trench foot, and a vibrant blend of arctic dawn colors culminating with final steps through the exit cornice and gaining the summit plateau."
Outside Bozeman
Sweet as Honey
"Unload from the tram on top of Big Sky Resort’s Lone Peak, let the view wrap your mind with 360° exposure — the wild Montana landscape, its dramatic rise and fall of range and valley — and 99% of the time, find your eye drawn to the prominent south face of nearby Beehive Peak, centered along the lofty and jagged skyline."
