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Lisa Densmore (8/22/07):
When the snow is off the ground,
I'm still in the mountains.
I'm writing and photographing my way through four
guidebooks for FalconGuides: "Hiking
the Green Mountains";
"Hiking the White Mountains", "Hiking the Adirondacks" and
"Best Easy Day Hikes: Adirondacks".
The books are a great
excuse to be outdoors and to work on my nature photography.
Sounds like a lot. I
guess it is, but I've got three years
to finish them. I took this photo on top of Haystack
Mountain near Saranac
Lake, NY using the self-timer on my
camera. Haystack will be in one of my Adirondack books.
I'm also working
on a new show on PBS called "Windows to the
Wild", which features historic and beautiful backcountry
places and pursuits
around New England. The weather just
turned cooler here in New England, in the 40's at night.
Fall is in the
air, which means winter is coming soon. Can
hardly wait for the first snow! See you in Colorado in
December
when Alison Gannett and I host a couple of women's
events for HEAD through Outdoor Divas in Boulder (we'll be
skiing
at Loveland) and Powder Divas in Steamboat Springs.
More on that in the next few weeks...
Jill
A. (9/19/07):
It’s
that hurry-up-and-wait time coming on hard and fast. Perhaps you’ve noticed it in your co-workers and friends. You can
feel it in the air. This is the season where everyone rushes to get in their last licks of summer but now we’re on edge;
biding time for the first big snow when we can scrape off the storage wax, pull out the ski clothes from the attic, and fill
in the blanks with new gear that’s just shown up on retail racks. When I lived in Los Angeles
all we had was the Ski Dazzle Convention to tease us. In Utah,
we have ski movie premieres, pray for snow parties, 2007 blowout sales, annual ski swaps, and ski resort upgrades (check out
Alta’s new ticket system). We’re inundated with pre-winter the way Christmas marketing hits before Thanksgiving.
As I floated through the Grand Canyon in August, feeling the warm, late summer kiss of the
wind through the corridor, I paused and breathed in the last gasp of a bustling river season. I forget what it’s like
to freeze time. I imagined how isolated and grey the River would be in just a few months. No echoes of paddles on the water,
river guides tossing Frisbees at camp, or hundreds of international tourists milling about the Angel Bright Lodge or the Lake
Powell Resort. All would soon fall silent like a bear heading into hibernation; but not so in mountain towns. Soon traffic
on Wasatch Boulevard in Salt Lake City will snake back toward the 6200 South exit, there’ll be lines
at Einstein’s Bagels, and no place to park at Park City Mountain Resort. But before all of this, stop and smell the
changing foliage, ride and hike a few more trails, paddle the Weber; go ahead and cram as much ‘summer’ fun into
these next two months as possible (then do what I do and round it out with a visit to Lagoon’s Frightmares in October
). And get in shape fast! A decent winter of three powder days a week are due.
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