Photogaboutit

Last Thursday (geez, has it been that long?!) we finally received a much needed dump of snow. Well, that's not quite accurate. The mountains received snow. The valleys...well, let's talk about the mountains. Air-udite Dartmouth Professor Nick Reo, grabbin' some hang time. Yahoo! I'm enjoying it too Nick! No, it's not you. This image is black and white. But mostly grey. When the snow is thick, a foot can feel like two. And that's a good thing! Better than a day at the office! Specifically, let's talk about Magic Mountain. Without a doubt, my favorite ski area in southern Vermont and one of the best in the east when the snow is right. Located in Londonderry, Magic mountain is a true New England ski area. Not a resort. With two slow double lifts, although they usually only run one, since they pretty much both go to the top, Magic Mountain is all about fun winding trails on natural snow, steep terrain, secret glades and no crowds. No...

Seth and Katie take diverging routes down Smuggler's Notch. This shot was taken at Smuggler's Notch in January of 2010. It was the last run of the day. I thought the composition was fun as my friends decided to take opposite paths around the tree in the middle of the trail. This shot wasn't planned but I had my camera out anyways. You can have the best camera in the world, but if it's not in your hand when you need it, it's not doing you very good. In fact, the times that are most inconvenient for taking photos often end up providing the best images.

My photo of Margaret Wheeler '97 adorns the cover of the newest issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. ...and some more photos from this summer. Read on... Jevan and Dave are roped up as they travel near a crevasse. Happy New Year. And a happy new year for myself as well, as my photo of Margaret Wheeler '97* is the newest Dartmouth Alumni Magazine cover. There are a few more photos of mine inside the magazine as well. Margaret's always smiling, so it wasn't a difficult assignment. (You can download the current issue for free on the website.) On the glacier, we roped up in teams of two during our summit attempt on the final day of the course. Here Dave post holes so that I don't have to! This past summer Dave Lysy '99, Jevan Stubits '01 and I took a five day glacier mountaineering course taught by Margaret out in the North Cascades National Park . We arranged it through Pro Guiding Services . Jevan was on the front of my rope. The sno...

Dave skis down the Mt. Ascutney auto road. This 30 second exposure is too long to capture Dave, but the headlamps pointing down track his path. If you look closely, you can also see his tracks underneath the light. For a night owl like me, a 1:00 am ski is just the ticket. This view is from the little shelter half way up the road. After I took this 30 second exposure at iso 800, I then pulled the exposure down a couple of stops. The original photograph looked like the middle of the day. Over the past four or five days, our region has been blessed with abundant snow. At my house here in Windsor, Vermont we got about 10" the other day and another 5" or so last night. Many of the mountains picked up over twice that. The moon was so bright, it cast shadows on the snow. Yesterday morning at 1:00am, which was actually still a continuation of Friday for us, Dave and I decided to climb and ski the Mt. Ascutney Auto Road by moonlight. We went VERY leisurely wi...

A quick skin and ski of Mt. Ascutney Some nice virgin snow, with a little grass for good measure. When I bought my house in 2003, I thought it would be so wonderful living just five minutes from a chairlift at the Ascutney Mountain Resort. Unfortunately, the ski area part of the operation went out of business three years ago. On this rare occasion, Tigran stuck near me while Otis (black spot upper left) forged ahead. A ski resort no longer. The views are still nice though! For us backcountry lovin' locals, it's been pretty nice having a mountain all to ourselves. It seems however, after today's excursion to reap the foot of new snow we received, I realize that nature comes back quickly. I think backcountry skiers will find it difficult to ski there in coming years unless there's an effort to tame some of the growth. Although it was a little late to be skinning up the mountain, I was treated to some beautiful northerly views. Nonetheless, a...

Maurice plows the 8-10" of new snow from our driveway so that I can get out early tomorrow morning for some fresh turns. Gotta love a nine year old plow guy who comes to work with a smile! Maurice, my awesome nine year old neighbor does a fantastic job plowing our driveway with his little John Deer tractor. Well, we finally got our first snow storm. (In fact, it pretty much was our first winter snow storm here in almost two years!) Dave drops a knee on one of our many fresh runs this morning at Pico Mountain. Dave and I got out to Pico this morning. Unfortunately the summit quad was closed due to wind (although I understand it opened for an hour at the end of the day) but we were able to make a number of quick hikes over to the trails off of the Outpost lift and were skiing multiple runs of 10"-14" of untouched pow. What a great day. Still deciding where to head tomorrow.

When I used to ski race in college, we'd come back from training and watch video of our runs. Occasionally (well, actually frequently with me!) we would crash. The crashes were the most fun parts of the video, and Vince our coach would always stop recording mid fall. I would always look forward to these, and in still photography, you can get people in seemingly impossible positions that fly by in video. Jevan perfects a falling maneuver in the woods at the Middlebury Snow Bowl a few years ago. From now on, I'm shooting all the falls I see...as long as they're not falling into me. Here's a great one from 2010. Not much snow there Jevan, ouch! I expect a lot of falling tomorrow, when we get hit with a big storm.  Hopefully I'll be posting great powder shots from Pico tomorrow afternoon!

Photo of me skiing, shot by my wife. This is out behind the house during mid December of 2008. (Photo by Julia Burakian) This is just a quick reminder to Mother Nature, that it's mid December in Vermont! I hiked over Mt. Ascutney today and even at the top (3,200ft) there wasn't a speck of snow to be seen. (At least other than the white trails on Okemo.) Here's proof that occasionally we do get winter. It's supposed to get a little snowy starting tomorrow night. Fingers crossed!

If you're like me and you love playing in the snow, you probably search the internet looking for any sign, any glimpse, that the next big storm is just around the corner. Well, I'm here to share my favorite sites for my snow prediction addiction. 1. National Weather Service Hydrometeorological Prediction Center - Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance - What a mouthful! But this is MY FAVORITE , I mean it's from NOAA for goodness sakes. What I love about this is the fact that it shows the probabilities of certain amounts of snow over specific time frames. It's just three days out, but that's all I really trust anyway. It is also very graphic yet the view is customizable by the user Screenshot from the HPC Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance by the National Weather Service. A simple, intuitive, and most importantly informat ive site . 2. Snow-Forecast.com - This is another site where you are able to view the amount of predicted ...