Nick– Here you go folks, the latest from 18,000 feet, paragliding on the edge of insanity in Peru in the making of SOLITAIRE

Episode III: The Raptor

After the chaos of Huaraz, the crew escapes the city with plans to paraglide over the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca with cameras in hand. At 18,000 feet, it’s never simple.

“On The Road with Solitaire” is a 12-part webisode series following Sweetgrass Productions in the making of their new 2-year project, the South American backcountry ski and snowboarding film “Solitaire.” New episodes will be released on the 21st of every month.

Ben– Spend too much time behind a camera and you become a junkie for light. In our trade we are simply purveyors of fine light, and much of our time is spent roaming the world for the very best of it. I vividly remember standing behind a Japanese photographer in Hokkaido, who ecstatically screamed “Now we are making the moooooneeeee!!” as a skier screamed by with the sun crashing down behind him. But as you become more used to it, your standards become higher and higher, and you push later and later or earlier and earlier into the day, holding off the shot until the last minute to capture that first touch or last glimmer of the sun. It takes more and more extremes to get that fiery red fix.

The ultimate hit is and always has been alpenglow. There’s just something about that very word that sends the blood pumping in the body of a lens-jockey. Luckily in our profession we get to witness much of this gorgeous phenomenon, but two nights ago I saw some of the best I’ve ever witnessed. Pure purple bliss.

We finished off our Haines trip with one last plane-access camping trip deep into glacier-country, and spent a few days riding out the light. On our final evening we trucked up the face behind camp, legs churning like devils to catch the dying rays. We made it minutes before it peaked, and came out with some incredible images, a perfect and cathartic end to a mission that has, all in all, defied all expectations and last year’s Haines troubles to become quite stellar. The… let’s just say “energetic” plane ride back, courtesy of Haines legend Drake Olsen, was the cherry on top to one of the best shooting trips I’ve had the pleasure to be on.

Tomorrow begins the long road home to Anchorage, and a month of editing and relative relaxation before heading down South for the final push to wrap up Solitaire. But very, very stoked on the promise of this year’s Haines piece, online and in festivals beginning this Fall! In the meantime, here’s some screengrabs from our last trip, and the mighty alpenglow that dreams are made of.

Forrest and Oskar wait on the tarmac while Stephan scouts zones

Drake, Forrest and I fly into the sun

Airborn Glacial Glory

Stephan's Spoon

Settling In

Stephan, Forrest, and Johan scope the lines above camp

Stephan en route to evening hijinx

Forrest Sprays the Purple Pow

Johan makes some money

Stephan catches last light over exposure

Happy Ending

Ben–It’s April again, and the spring snows of Alaska have beckoned me home once again. After several months holed up in the relative confines of Salt Lake City, I was happy to pack everything I owned into a board bag and hightail it for the northlands. A midnight arrival, and 12 hours later I was on the road in the Sturgulewski Fund minivan (thanks mom) and on the balls to the walls break for Canada. Crossing the border just before midnight on April Fools, I was greeted to some serious Canadian charm: a great Aurora showing to accompany lonely night driving and endless hours of navigating frost heave booters.

I made it intact through the night, navigated back into the U.S. despite much questioning and a most dilapidated passport, and arrived in Haines the next day to meet up with my amigos from last year’s short, Patagonia ambassador Stephan Drake and Swedish wunder-photog Oskar Enander, along with Solitaire veteran Forrest Shearer and Free Radicals star Johan Jonsson. A solid crew to build a little follow-up to last year’s well-received Desert River!

The mission was pulled together rather last-minute, as we’d heard nothing but horror stories about the bad conditions in AK this year. Everybody else was pulling out, but the fools we are decided to push in, and somehow it seems to have worked out for us– thus far we’ve found epic conditions, sexy spines, and few crowds. We’re in the middle of a hearty stretch of down days now, but before the rain and snow moved in we got a few great days and solid shots. Hopefully the sun shall come and there’ll be quite a few more in the 5 or 6 feet of pow that are piling up there right now… an upcoming plane-in camping trip should get us the goods! Until then, here’s a few screengrabs from the footy in the bag. Stay tuned for the whole package, coming at ya over the world wibe wed fo’ free this Fall, thanks to Patagonia!

Nick– I came across this while doing a little research on old man Warren. Enjoy.

“This now-notorious 1947 trip began by stopping to sell books and draw cartoons to order at Yosemite and Alta, then got sidetracked for three months in the parking lot at the jewel of the West, Sun Valley. The powder was so terrific and the access to the lifts so cheap: day-tickets of the right color and holding a thumb over the expired date (and later more refined methods of counterfeit.) The two knew a lifetime opportunity when it presented itself.

They ensconced car and trailer in a personal spot at the far end of the Sun Valley Lodge parking lot where they stayed for more than three months while the two rubbed parkas with the rich and famous in the lift lines and swam with them more or less intimately in the famous lodge pool, all the while subsisting on an average of eighteen cents a day. The cost-savings were mostly gained by hunting and roasting the indigenous Sun Valley rabbit, ducks, porcupine and awful-tasting birds.

The two disposed of garbage from these unseemly meals by digging it down into the snow. After the first month, they were asked to move their trailer temporarily so the lot could be plowed. As Miller recalls in Wine, Women, Warren & Skis, “The rotary snowplow came roaring through our encampment, spraying snow, milk cartons, old rabbit carcasses, bread wrappers, tin cans and pink paper napkins all over the trees behind our camp site. From then on if anyone who wanted to find our place, we just told them to go the parking lot and look for the tree with the rabbit carcasses hanging from the top.”

Warrenmiller.net