A big thanks to Ortovox for making these post happen. Check out Ortovox's mountainwear for your next backcountry adventure.
This post has been moved, please visit https://www.loudawson.com/6120/snow-dome-skiing/
While most of the WildSnow backcountry skiing blog posts are best attributed to a single author, some work well as done by the group.
5 comments
Lou & Lisa, Great reprise of a wonderful place. It brought me back to a week I spent with college buddies on the Icefield in June ’83. We enjoyed ourselves making sloppy tele turns on Snow Dome using nordic gear with “heel locators”. We went up the Athabasca glacier and came down the Sasketchewan and hitched back to the car. Thanks for the trip back in time.
Gee Lou, 1995 doesn’t seem all that long ago. Were you still using a Kodak “Brownie” shooting B&W film?
Sounds like you had a good trip, which can happen under the most dire conditions.
I prefer smaller less problematic glaciers, less stress, and, still good vertical.
Bar, back then I shot almost all B&W, was doing mostly stuff for illustrating my books, which were all B&W, and could get much much better/easier results than shooting color then converting. Also, I liked (and still like) B&W. Color is ok, and terrific some times, but the garish pallet of today’s color photo look only impresses me part of the time. Had my own darkroom/lab, really nice, so I also saved a bunch of money processing a huge amount of film. But I spent quite a bit on camera gear in those days, so just broke even on the savings, not to mention using part of our home as a large darkroom. I sold nearly every bit of my photo and darkroom equipment when it looked like digital was actually going to work. I then had a two or thee year sabbatical from much shooting, as the adequate digital gear was too expensive for my taste. Then, when the digicam prices dropped, I went after it bigtime. Had already mastered Photoshop as well as some ancestral photo editing software that now doesn’t exist, so I had the software skillset ready to go. Am still shooting with a somewhat substandard digital camera, but I plan on upgrading fairly soon to something at lest one level better. Perhaps a Canon G, or one of the new downsized cams with interchangeable lenses. Still don’t want to spend too much on the camera, as I want something I can drop off a mountain and just laugh about.
Great account of more than just another trip report. I really liked the dual perspective. Brings back fond memories of my own 3 month adventure up there in the spring of ’99, skiing the Wapta Icefield Traverse, etc.
Thanks,
Mike
When i read that, and look at where you all were, and now where you are, it really is something. Great family values, faith, skiing, kid in college, and continuing the traditions and way of life, it’s something i def aspire to with my own family and life. It simply doesn’t and can’t get any better than that in my view.
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