Burn to Earn Your Turns
I still remember the first time I ever saw Jeremy Jones’ movie, “Higher” on Netflix. I thought to myself as I’m watching this, “This is what snowboarding should be all about!” A little background on Jeremy Jones, and who he is to the snowboarding world. Jeremy is a pioneer to snowboarding. He is one of the first riders to ever get out into the backcountry and start hitting lines on mountains, people thought previously unrideable. Jeremy started out being pulled in by snowmobiles or dropped off by helicopters on mountain peaks. As Jeremy’s ambition to continue going higher and further, he realized there were limitations. He begin discovering a lot of lines he wanted to ride were outside helicopter’s reach. This left him to one option, to hike.
As I said earlier, we usually drop into the trees just before you exit the tree line. However, this day, was just absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Jaycee, Nick, and myself were all able to convince Thomas to keep on chugging up the mountain to break the tree line. I was leading the pack, as soon as I came out of the trees. What I was greeted with next was an absolute delight! It was an entire bowl of powder, and the lines were at riders choice. As we all got to the our drop in spot for today, we decided we all earned a much needed rest. While we rested under the sun, soaking in the Vitamin D. We were treated to the real reason we all wanted to be above the trees. There, sitting in the snow we were greeted to beautiful Summit County, CO.
To me, the thing that stood out from watching “Higher”; is that anyone can ride a chairlift. Not everyone is willing to go the distance of walking/hiking/climbing or in the worst scenario, crawl for their lines.
My friends Thomas, Jaycee, Nick and myself all agree with this logic. If we want the good stuff, we have to go to it. Thomas always says, “Burn to Earn Your Turns”. The hike to the alpine bowl isn’t long or difficult. Roughly about 20-25 minutes to our usual drop in spot, just below tree line. The difficult part for Thomas comes in being a skier and hiking in those ski boots. I’m lucky that snowboard boots are very comfortable walking shoes, my struggles come from carrying my camera gear on my back.
When we got to our resting spot, my mind starting just running with ideas for compositions for shots for my friends. I brought my camera for my friend Nick when he would be in the terrain park. However, we were all pleasantly surprised on how good the snow was, as some would describe it as, “sugar”. The snow being so soft and moveable would make for some really great action powder shots.
When shooting ski photography, a lot of predetermining and planning needs to go into the shot. I need to ride down to a downhill position leaving all the snow in front of me untouched for my friends to hit. Generally, when I’m shooting my friends on a day like this, we are a lot slower. Most days we get off the lift, strap in and we’re cruising in seconds. My friends are huge in helping me get better as a photographer in being patient with me.
When there are days like these, you can ask yourself. “Austin, do you really enjoy the day even though your riding 200 yards, stopping just to take pictures. Rinse and repeat all day?” Answer is, no. While yes, when I take pictures of my friends while skiing, I am a lot slower and I’m not getting to hit powder like my friends do. I still have to ride to the shooting spot somehow. Being able to capture these types of moments for my friends too is something that I just love.
It was only a short year ago that I decided to take my Nikon D3400 out to shooting skiing for the first time. I get excited whenever I decide to bring my camera out to shoot in the powder. My dream is to be able to go around the world to different mountains and photographer skiers and riders in deep powder.
Below you can find my entire gallery from our powder day hike at Keystone.
Enjoy!
