Indiana Skiing piece on newsstands

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?

Dogs and Reindeer--Lappland, Sweden

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.

To the Fjords!

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.

McConkey Article Goes Deutsch

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.

MSP McConkey Tribute from "In Deep"

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.]

David Byrne, Bikes, and the Future of NYC Transportation

David Byrne addressing the crowd at B&N in Union Square.

[I recently attended an event to celebrate the publication of David Byrne's new book The Bicycle Diaries. Below is part of an account of the festivities that I wrote for urbanomnibus.net. TS]

I was expecting a turnout befitting a rockstar when I showed up at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square a couple weeks ago for an event celebrating the publication of David Byrne’s book, The Bicycle Diaries. The book is an account of the former Talking Head’s three decades worth of cycling adventures in cities around the world. And, indeed, the 4^th floor was packed by the time I arrived, relegating me to a standing room spot somewhere back in the self-help section. (Hence the blurry photo above.) But as I looked around at the assembled crowd, it seemed a group that cared more about the urban transportation issues than they did about Byrne’s celebrity – which was, I expect, exactly what the musician/artist/author, longtime bike commuter and urban cycling advocate had in mind.

In lieu of a standard author’s reading, Byrne had convinced his publishers and Barnes & Noble to organize a sort of urbanist “be-in”, a discussion on the theme of “Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around.” His discussion partners: Mitchell Joachim, architecture professor at Columbia and Wired-anointed visionary; Paul Steely White, director of cycling advocacy group Transportation Alternatives; and Commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan.

As the speakers were being introduced – the format would be four mini-lectures and a Q&A – I took a closer look at the crowd: messenger bags, cycling caps and helmets, chunky glasses (A 25-year-old in Corbu-style frames? Really?), Rhodia and Moleskine notebooks (quad-ruled, of course), rolled up pant legs, chains locked around waists, even a couple collapsible bikes folded at their owners’ feet. An audience of urbanism nerds and city cyclists.

[To continue reading, click here.]

Update on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 12:03PM by Tim Sohn

Further reading: a piece from the NY Times Cityroom blog chronicling Byrne's daily bicycle commute.

Stand Where Ansel Stood

"Tetons and the Snake River," Ansel Adams, 1942.

If you find you were intrigued but a tad uninspired by Ken Burns's new National Parks opus--it's great, really, but 12 hours is just too long--then perhaps the direct, visceral power of some Ansel Adams images is the remedy. Adams was commissioned by the National Parks Service in 1941 to undertake a series of photos for a mural at the Department of Interior building in DC. He visited more than a dozen national parks and monuments and the Parks Service ended up with 226 images in its archives, among them some iconic and well known ones (above), and some less known but equally arresting shots. You can browse them all here.

If the Adams browsing leaves you wanting to try your hand at capturing the same vistas--you know, imitation being the highest form of flattery and all--you might be interested in this piece from the September issue of Outside, which gives GPS coordinates pinpointing where Adams stood for three classic shots. I wrote the first draft about two years ago, as part of a National Parks package I was writing, but they shelved it at the time and only ressurected it while I was in Alaska this summer. Thus, I share the byline with Kyle Dickman, who graciously tracked down the remaining details. Following Ansel's tracks is a fun game, but be warned: results may vary, and unless you're standing on a platform on the roof of a chevy station wagon and shooting a large-format camera and are Ansel Adams, your photos will not look like this.

Further reading: The Adams piece was initially supposed to run as part of this guide to the uncrowded corners of eleven National Parks that I wrote in 2007.

More Alaska Pics, Chris Miller

Chris Miller, a friend and photographer based in Juneau, AK, came out and took some pictures at Graveyard Point, where Corey Arnold and I were fishing this past July. Chris is a commercial fisherman himself and had just finished up another season aboard the Icy Bay, a Naknek-based drifter. He was kind enough to post some photos of Corey and I looking all heroic (above) as well as some great shots that capture the feel of the abandoned salmon cannery that we called home for much of the summer (below). Check out the rest of them here, and take some time to browse around the rest of his portfolio--he's got some fantastic stuff from all over Bristol Bay, as well as some great backcountry skiing shots and even a few pics of Alaska's favorite ex-Governor and mangler of the English language, Sarah Palin.

Southern Berkshires Weekend

This weekend, I took advantage of the summery weather to hit the southern Berkshires before the fall-foliage crowds choke the roads and the trails. I bit off a (very) short section of the Appalachian Trail and overnighted at the Brassie Brook Lean-To, above, which south-to-north AT thru-hiker Steve "Turtleback" Sheppard was kind enough to share with me. The next day, I hiked up Bear Mountain, touched the highest point in Connecticut (dubious distinction, but fun), and got within spitting distance of Camp Hi-Rock, the YMCA summer camp where I was first introduced to this stretch of the AT 20 years ago. See some more photos on my flickr page here.

Fall Reading

While I was in Alaska, I received a very flattering email from prolific ghostwriter Jeff Haden soliciting a short list of book recommendations to post to his Blackbird Media website. As I mentioned to Jeff, I'm not sure I belong in the company of some of the other writers he's featured, including The World Without Us author Alan Weisman, historian Adrian Goldsorthy, biographer T.J. Stiles, and New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins. (And while I failed to put it on my list, The Forever War, Filkins's excellent account of his years of reporting in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a lyrical and captivating ground-level account of those tragic conflicts.) I tweaked my list a little to avoid repeating others' choices, and any such list is necessarily incomplete, but my recommendations are a pretty good introduction to the kind of things I like reading. Take a look at Jeff's site and check out my picks here. TS