Benjamin D. Bloom

With temperatures threatening to hover around 0°F all day, a group of SkiVT-L regulars headed into the Backcountry.  The initial plan was to meet at 10am at the trailhead, but due to some slight forgetfulness, I missed that group.  No worries; the skin in was along the Catamount Trail and the area we planned to ski would continue to drop back onto the trail.  As it turns out, driving from Essex, to Waterbury, to Essex, and back to Waterbury to the trail head meant that I would run into the group just as they were finishing their first lap. Watching some of the final descents, I could tell the snow was going to be interesting.  The winds that swept through the region on Friday had done their damage to pockets of snow making for inconsistent conditions that would throw you over the handlebars when you least expected it.

We all had our moments adjusting to the snow.  I certainly played ostrich more than once, but I was lucky enough to capture Bobby with a spectacular display on his first run.

As much as we joked around, complaining about the snow conditions, it was really quite good skiing in many places.

Definitely good enough to slap the skins on a few times and hunt out more pockets of non-wind affected powder.

Roger – you look like one of them Famous Internet Skiers here.

With temperatures hovering just above zero, not all of our skin glue worked all day.  Seeing as it was a simple out and back, the penalty for complete failure was pretty low.  Any good backcountry skier will have a bag of tricks to dip into when equipment (bindings, skins, boots, etc.) breaks.  In this case, Patrick had duct tape (plaid, mind you) holding one skin on and zip ties holding the other.  It’s worth paying attention when you zip tie your skins, though, otherwise you end up with a predicament like this:

As usual, it was great skiing with all of you.  Pray for snow!  We could use some.  Roger Hill posted a graphic on the SkiVT-L Listserv that compares this year’s snowpack to the 2009 season. It’s pretty dismal.

More photos from our backcountry excursion are on my SmugMug site.

Our last day at Snowbird provided soft snow and sunshine.  The initial plan was to ski in Mineral Basin in the morning and then head over to Little Cloud, where we had previously spent little time, but had good runs.  Well, Mineral Basin was too nice to leave.  The snow on skier’s right was mostly in the shade and softer while the snow on the left was baking in the sun, soft, and heavy (but not manky / mashed potatoes.)

After skiing “Living the Dream” we felt like we were.  Soft, swooping turns down a relatively steep untracked face.  Being on a snowboard, the traverse was some work, but worth it.  To the guy that we met at the bottom, you can see one of the photos below and some more in the gallery titled Snowbird – 1/3/2010

At some point, I’ll finish going through most of the photos and put up a combined set of galleries from our Utah vacation. What a great trip!  We can’t wait to head back.  Next time, later in the season when the snowpack is a little more consistent and predictable.

While it’s full on puking snow in Burlington, VT, we’re out in Utah. It’s snowed a bit over the last few days out here, with 16+ a few days ago and a few fresh inches on top, so Solitude skied wonderfully yesterday. It’s not the 30″ that I see reported in Vermont, but we’ll take it.

Tawny and I met up with Jorden, Pete, and Brian giving us one snowboarder, one telemarker, and three alpine skiers. Brian was also skiing with a camera, so we’ve got a couple extra photos.

The day began by heading up, and then up, and then up to get to Honeycomb Canyon. We were going to traverse out the high line skiers left right off the lift, but it wasn’t possible on a snowboard. The traverse was more of a horizontal sidestep that fought gravity the whole way across. So down we went, finding a few inches of fresh snow on top of skier packed perfection. It wasn’t deep, but the turns were delightful. About half way down we passed through a gate and traversed through to a gully that had deeper snow and nice turns, but a long runout to get back to the lift that would bring us back to civilization.

Opting to save our energy, we stayed on the front side for a few runs, finding pockets of untracked snow 2-4″ deep in the trees. Weaving around on the mid-mountain lifts, we had a ball.

Tawny then decided to take a breather and let the guys take the high traverse into Honeycomb. Off we went, heading left for a ways, but not quite to the second gate. We came down a pitch that had few tracks, and beautiful snow. It was supportive and thick, but somehow still easy to ski. Westerners probably wouldn’t call it powder, but I would. It was great! Over the next knoll, into some shrubby trees that had been largely ignored, and into more great snow.

At the same middle gate we hit on our last run out here, we traversed out further. Brian and Pete dropped in where it looked pretty good, but had some rocks lurking beneath the tempting snow. Jorden had a theory that people had started dropping here because the rocks got more prevalent, desiring good skiing before the terrain got worse. He thought that over the next rise we would find a stash of great snow (No experience, just a gut feel..) Follow Jorden’s gut. We discovered an open bowl area as opposed to the chutes & gullies we had traversed over. The snow was just like above and lightly tracked, making for a few dozen great turns.

The rest of the day was spent on the front side of the mountain, meandering around from soft snow to soft snow, with some bumps thrown in. Solitude’s a great mountain with a feel more like the east coast resorts I’m used to (Smuggs, MRG) The terrain may not be as challenging as Snowbird or Alta, but it’s a whole lot of fun and there’s a feeling of freedom when you ski a mountain you’re not familiar with and don’t have to worry as much about what’s over the next rise or below the next roll. Snowbird could contain a rocky chute, cliff, or something else; Solitude seems to just have good snow. Sure, there are some spots that you can scare yourself, but you have to try to get there instead of stumbling into them.

Solitude posted some of Brian Kretschmar’s photos on their community website / Flickr stream.

We woke up to falling snow and the sound of snowplows and snowblowers.

Tawny, on our warmup run down Mach Schnell. 

She found the white room.

Jake in the Black Forest woods.

9-year old Sam ripping some turns in loose snow.

Tawny, cruising on some post lunch runs.

My Aunt Theresa, skiing the trees near Bananas off of Gad-two.

Cruising down to the house on our last run of the day.  We were going to make one more until we realized that it was nearly 4pm!

Woke up this morning to clearing skies and another few inches of snow.  Can’t wait to see what we find today!

Yesterday, the skiing at Stowe wasn’t all that, but the company was good. Having someone around to laugh with makes rough conditions much more entertaining. Today, the plan was to head to Smuggler’s Notch for some quick lift served laps. Last night, I heard that Smuggs delayed their opening until Tuesday which left me a dilemma; do I skin somewhere like Bolton where the conditions would be much like yesterday or do I head to Smuggs to skin under the snowmaking.

It turns out, the answer is neither. The skiing is just getting going and the fact that we don’t have snow in the Champlain valley means that the mountain biking is still pretty good. I headed to Saxon Hill instead with the intent of riding around and taking some photographs. It turns out, I wasn’t the only one with biking on the brain; there were between 10 and 15 cars parked at the end of Thompson Drive when I turned the corner.

The trails are dry, though the leaves sometimes obscure the less traveled routes.

Evidently, it's cold enough for snow. Someone should tell mother nature that we've had enough rain.

Proof: it's not just Texas and Kansas that get snow!

Self-portrait action photography presents a bit of a challenge without a wireless remote.

When you agree to photograph a half marathon in November in Vermont, you never know what to expect.  The forecast last night was for overnight lows in the low 30’s, warming to the mid 50’s or 60’s for a daytime high.  I expected a cold morning and packed my puffy jacket, winter hat & gloves.  The start of the race was cool, but only in the shade.

Once the runners were on their way, I walked down to mile 7 / mile 12 (the course crosses here twice) to get set for the 350 runners to pass. By the time I got to my destination, it was downright warm!  No need for a jacket, hat, or gloves.  It was a perfect day in Vermont.

The leaders passed close together, but obviously both running their own race.  Others passed running with a partner.

I get a kick out of photos that make runners look like they’re hovering in one spot effortlessly.

Even near the end of the race, it seemed like everyone was in a good mood.

Congratulations to everyone!  The photos will be posted on SkiPix.com shortly.

I’ve had a few great senior portrait sessions recently. This past weekend I photographed my brother in law in New Hampshire. Chris is the starting varsity goalkeeper at Souhegan High School. I knew we needed some standard portraits and Chris’ Mom made a request for a soccer shot of him in front of the net. Once I knew we had some more traditional portraits in the bag, we took out the lights and created a few dramatic portraits.

The more traditional portraits:

Earlier in the week, I photographed Erika at the Mills Riverside Park in Underhill, VT.  When we arrived there were a dozen school busses and a high school cross country meet going on.  This meant we couldn’t shoot in the places I was most familiar with, but I think that worked in our favor.  We scouted out a few locations and made some great photos!

I was on vacation last week and it felt great.  I spent the week down in Rhode Island on the Misquamicut shore.  The beaches are nice and the waves can get large enough to be scary (well, for an east coast mountain boy like myself.)

Our neighbor at the beach house:

I have a mountain of photographs to sort through, but most of those have taken a back burner to my day job and to a few paid gigs that I still need to finish my post processing on.  For family & friends looking for them, you’ll have to wait a few more days!

While I was down there, I had the pleasure of taking some photographs of my cousin, Anna.  She’s getting ready for her Bat Mitzvah in January and her parents requested some portraits for a slideshow.  We had a great time walking around a beach town taking some great photos:

Just before vacation, I spent a morning with my sister and her fiance, taking some engagement photos.  They’re getting married in just about a month!  How time flies…

And when I returned home, my sister in law was playing hockey so we went to watch.  Of course, I couldn’t leave my camera behind so I took a stab at hockey photography.  It’s different than many sports and is a challenge to shoot!  Part of the problem is that I don’t know the sport as well as I could so it’s hard to predict where the good shot will be. (That could be compounded by the fact that this is a pickup league and sometimes plays just don’t develop.)  I had a great time, however, and it looks like I’ll be at another game on Sunday.

Lastly, I had heard about a contest that Scott Kelby was running so I dug this photo out of my archives and submitted it.  The winner gets to shoot an NCAA football game with Scott and Mike Olivella!

The New York Times published an article by Sonia Zjawinski stating that you should download, print and frame photos from Flickr.

And if you’re wondering about copyright issues (after all, these aren’t my photos), the photos are being used by me for my own, private, noncommercial use. I’m not selling these things and not charging admission to my apartment, so I think I’m in the clear.

Uhh… I post my photos on Flickr.  I post them in a format that can not be printed at a useful size to prevent just this type of activity.  My photos are copyrighted; it’s illegal to print them without my permission unless you’re doing so under the fair-use doctrine (generally criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.) It’s pretty clear that Ms. Zjawinski’s use does not fall under fair use. I can’t believe the New York Times editors & lawyers let this run; it’s irresponsible.

Please – if you’re on Flickr and you see a photo you would like to print, check out the copyright status on it.  If it’s All Rights Reserved – contact the photographer about obtaining a print.  If it’s Creative Commons, double-check which Creative Commons license they’re using to make sure you are allowed to print it.