TIM SOHN

As the X-Dance Action Sports Film Festival (the oddly-named outdoorsy version of Sundance) kicks off in Salt Lake City this week, there's one film in particular that drew my eye: "Shane and the McConkeys," a 16-minute short debuting January 21st. It was filmed by The Ski Channel's Zeke Piestrup over four days spent with McConkey and his family last March, just a week before Shane died in a BASE-jumping accident. "I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to have been with Shane McConkey last March," Piestrup told Ski Channel. "The film is a snapshot in time of a family man pursuing his passions."

Other McConkey tributes abound. One of Shane's favorite runs, the Eagle's Nest at Squaw, an incredibly steep (68.5 degrees!) run just off the KT-22 lift, with views over the whole valley, has been officially renamed for him. And then there's the limited-run (500 pairs) of K2 McConkey tribute skis, based on the Pontoon design, of course. (You can try to find a pair of the $699 boards--proceeds go to McConkey's family--online, or you can enter a contest to win a pair here.)

But the most moving tribute is undoubtedly the ten-minute McConkey segment that Shane's friends at Matchstick Productions (MSP) put into their 2009 film, In Deep. Alternatingly inspiring, hilarious, and heart-wrenching, the tribute includes some footage from Shane's final jumps, along with an emotional voiceover from friend and jump-partner J.T. Holmes, followed by a montage that, in classic Shane fashion, will have you laughing your ass off. (Keep your eye on MSP's website for news about their upcoming, full-length McConkey tribute film.)

[To make a donation to the family or peruse the thousands of comments and memories left by Shane's friends and aquaintances, and even strangers, you can visit shanemcconkey.org. You can find my Outside article on Shane's life and tragic death at Outside Online.]

When I was in high school and junior high, the closest ski hill to us was a tiny place called Big Birch in Patterson, NY, just 70 miles north of the city off Route 22 in Putnam County. When I arose to a beautiful, crisp, bluebird morning this past Saturday, I was itching to ski, but it was already too late to contemplate the two and a half hour drive from Brooklyn to Hunter or Windham. So it seemed like the perfect time to indulge my fascination with mom-and-pop ski areas by revisiting this place. An hour and a half later, I was making turns.

Big Birch is now known as Thunder Ridge, and while I'm not sure when this rebranding occurred, it reeks of a bunch of olds trying to figure out how to attract today's video-game-addled youth to their hill. It turned out I wasn't the only one who preferred the stoicism and, uh, overtones of the old name. As one guy I rode the lift with put it, "Big Birch is a great name: simple, masculine. Thunder Ridge sounds like an XFL team or something." Other than the name change, the place remains precisely as I'd remembered it, down to the no-frills base lodge locker-room (bring your own lock), the creaky lifts, the wobbly first-time skiers, and the friendly staff. In other words, skiing Big Birch is a lot like skiing in Indiana (see below).

I spent most of my day on "The Face," the one pitch with enough slope to allow you to get up to speed and make three or four nice turns before you're back at the triple chair. Not much, but it was enough to stretch my legs and prepare for bigger things later in the season. And it's the perfect getaway for those days when the most important thing is just getting out of the city and into the fresh air for a bit. Metro-North even runs a ski-train to the place, with a shuttle right to the hill. If you've got your own wheels, be sure to stop by the classic (opened in 1964) Red Rooster Drive-In, a few miles south of the hill on Route 22, for some pre- or post-skiing cheeseburgers, seasoned fries, and milkshakes.

For those who missed it in the January issue of Skiing Magazine, check out my piece on Paoli Peaks, Indiana, for an education in midwestern skiing, now available online here. And while you're there, be sure to check out the slideshow they posted, featuring shots from photographer Ilja Herb as well as some that I took during my visit, including the one above. (More of my Paoli photos can be seen on my flickr page here.)

You might think that an air temperature approaching single-digits and a bone-chilling wind would make surfing prohibitive. Not so for the hardy (crazy?) surfers of Maine, who capitalize on the occasional clear and calm winter day by donning a walrus-blubber-thick wetsuit and heading out to their local breaks. The sport's been growing all over New England (scroll down through this article I wrote in 2007 for an account of New Hampshire surfing), and Maine now boasts a handful of surf shops located mostly along the coastal stretch south of Portland. There's even a website dedicated to Maine surf forecasts. I came across this intrepid stand-up paddleboarder just north of Fortunes Rocks Cove in Biddeford a few days after Christmas. I never did get his name, since he was still riding when the cold forced me to move along.

This weekend's epic storm had Brooklynites dusting off more than just galoshes and snow shovels. In Fort Greene Park, just over the hill from where a teeming horde of kids were sledding themselves silly, parents and dogs looking on, I stumbled upon a slightly different scene: a crew of snowboarders--that's one of the ringleaders airborne at left--had built up a little kicker using a wire trash can for a base and were taking turns speeding down the 100-foot approach, launching the trash can, pulling a grab or a 180, and landing, all to the bewildered stares of pedstrians. Nicely improvised. Check out some more of my pics from Sunday here.

My piece about the wonders of skiing at Paoli Peaks, in southern Indiana, is out in the January issue of Skiing Magazine. Titled "Graveyard Shift" in a nod to Paoli's reputation as a nightskiing destination--open until 3am on weekends--it features some great photos by Vancouver-based photographer Ilja Herb. Due to one of those quirks of scheduling, Ilja and I caught Paoli on very different weekends; where I found slush raining from the sky and novice skiers in Carhartt overalls, he found girls in bikinis and shirtless, tattooed guys skiing in jeans. The issue doesn't seem to be online yet, so why not support the magazine and go buy a hard copy?

After our fruitless attempts to swim with killer whales in Norway in mid November, we drove east into Sweden, crossing Lappland in the dark, in a snowstorm, and nearly crashing into a herd of reindeer, predictably some might say. (One of the reindeer took offense and charged the passenger side of our car. But what Skodas lack in comfort, they make up for in durability, and the car was fine.) Eventually, we arrived in the mining city of Kiruna, where we hooked up with competitive musher Mats Petterson the following day for an early-season dogsled tour. Click over to the photos page or check out the flickr set for visuals.

During the first half of November, a friend and I ventured to northern Norway on a mission to swim with orcas. The orcas, alas, failed to show up, and though it was frustrating to be thwarted in our primary goal, the trip was more than worth it. The area around Tysfjord and Lofoten, north of the Arctic Circle, is a fantastic landscape of craggy mountains crashing down into the icy swells of the fjords, all of it stretching on to an incomprehensible distance, to the point where you can see the curvature of the earth and feel the reality of your own smallness. Bobbing in the swells in a drysuit in Tysfjord, with an air temperature below zero and a water temperature a few degrees above freezing was disorienting and invigorating. And meeting the folks who live way up there all winter long, with little daylight and long, dark, booze- and karaoke-filled nights, was an education. Seeing the Northern Lights wasn't bad either. But in the end, we had traveled all that way to see whales, and not seeing them was a tremendous disappointment. And while it's possible some magazine will want a story about not finding whales ("Looking for orcas in all the wrong places?"), it's definitely a tough sell. Click over to the photos page or check this flickr set to see what it looked like.

German ski magazine Planet Snow has taken the time to translate my Shane McConkey article for their October issue. My German's a little rusty, so I just have to trust that it still says roughly the same thing as it did when i wrote it in English. I don't think it's online yet, but here's the pdf for those interested. Thanks again to Michael Neumann and the team at Planet Snow.

When Shane McConkey passed away in March in a tragic BASE-jumping accident, he was filming with his long-time friends and co-conspirators from Matchstick Productions (MSP). MSP's new film, In Deep, is touring the country now and winning over audiences with an impressive roster of skiing talent and a poignant ten-minute tribute to McConkey. Though the bulk of the tribute is given over to a montage of Shane's exploits through the years--from nude backflips to saucer boy to Bond tributes to insane, big-mountain lines--the first three minutes of footage is from Shane's final jumps on that Italy trip with J.T. Holmes. Holmes provides an emotional voiceover account of his final jumps with his friend and mentor, and Shane's voice is heard over footage shot from his helmet-cam on a successful jump two days before he died. Alternatingly inspiring, hilarious, and heart-wrenching, the tribute will have you laughing and choking back tears all at once. Keep your eye on MSP's website for news about their upcoming, full-length McConkey tribute film. [You can watch the tribute segment poignant here, and you can find my Outside article on Shane's life and tragic death at Outside Online.]