October Snow

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It snowed about a foot yesterday and, with a few inches under that from the week before, Ben and I decided to have a gander at the skiing opportunity in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Most slopes are still grass and rock, but we found some good turns on some of the more favored slopes at Alta. Continue reading →

Bikeaneering

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“I scouted out a new ridge ride,” said Tom. Upon hiking our bikes to the top of the little summit, I asked “So, where’s this trail?” “Oh. There’s no trail. It’s just a ridge ride,” said Tom. Uh huh… Continue reading →

Orizaba Ramblers

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Steve Fassbinder watches Mehl play in the surf

Windmilling his kayak paddle into the breeze, Luc Mehl, 34, pulls onto the sandbar at the mouth of Mexico’s Rio Antigua and squints at the novelty of a seascape horizon in the hazy afternoon glare.  Two days of sleepless dysentery have drained Mehl’s prodigious vigor and his hands are blanched and clammy as we high-five. Still, he’s grinning with accomplishment in the salt air.

Eleven days earlier we’d set out pedaling bikes strapped with mountaineering and whitewater paddling gear in Cholula de Rivadavia, a ciudad sixty miles east of Mexico City. Without ever having visited Mexico before, Mehl composed a 220-mile bike/hike/packraft triathlon first to Pico de Orizaba (18,491 ft) and then descending through rainforest hamlets to a whitewater river. Now at sea level, we stand at the end of Mehl’s line. Continue reading →

Interview with Kim Havell on TetonGravity

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Kim Havell and I have traveled together on ski trips to Bolivia and Antarctica. Working for Sweetgrass Productions, our trip to Bolivia was the first time I’d been hired to shoot a big trip rather than guide it. That was a huge shift for me and I’m sure my green-ness showed to Kim, who’s worked with the best ski photographers in the industry. By the end of the trip, we’d become both friends and fans of each other’s work. So it’s fitting that the first interview I’ve been asked to give was with Kim.  Here’s the full interview: Continue reading →

Fast Grass

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Utah has gotten wallopped with its first big snowstorm around this week each of the six autumns I’ve lived here.  This week it began snowing in the mountains on a Monday night and after seeing facebook pictures of trail breaking in deep powder Noah Howell, Ben Peters, John and I decided to check it out.  With most of the NWS’s remote snow-sensing stations still decomissioned from summer we hoped that we’d find as much snow in Little Cottonwood Canyon as we’d heard had fallen in the mountains outside of Ogden.
Noah Howell skis the first snow at Alta UT Continue reading →