Catching up on the last year

Just to highlight a few things in the past year....

Last summer i had the opportunity to spend a few days shooting the first ever Roxy Pop Drop water Ramp Camp. It was truly inspiring to see girls from all ages, and i do mean all ages, anywhere from 7 to 37, sending it into the pool, spin-after-grab-after-flip. It was awesome to say the least. Vanessa Pierce was there to provide written coverage for Powder.com as well. Here are the links to the stories that went up along with a final gallery of mine at the end.

GIRLS AND BEACH BALLS Women head to PC for water ramp camp
TRAMPS TO RAMPS Mackenzie Epperson-Valum Blogs from Roxy Camp
SWEET SORENESS Roxy Ramp Camp
ROXY POP DROP Photo Gallery

After that my summer was full of adventures. I ran the Wasatch Back relay for the 3rd year in a row, went canyoneering for the first time, and backpacking for the first time, spent enough time on my bike to win the Mountain Bike category of our annual summer adventure contest at work, rafted a few rivers, camped out everywhere, and visited as many places within about a 6 hours radius of SLC as possible, including Moab, Brianhead, Zion, Escalante, The Uintas, Fruita CO, Jackson WY, Stanley ID, and Bellingham WA. (okay that last one isn't within 6 hours....) It was truly the "summer of fun" and possibly the first time i have really honestly loved summer. You know, instead of just wishing winter would come back as soon as possible. And after the jilting by mother-nature we had here last year, the summer was a welcome season.

And speaking of feeling jilted by mother nature, it was looking like a repeat of last year, or even worse when the local resorts could not even open by Thanksgiving this year (that is a rare rare occurrence to be sure). But suddenly winter got punched into high gear. And by January we were getting hit by storm after storm with nary a bluebird day to be had. Early on in that month i had the pleasure of driving 12 hours in one of those storms on a return stretch from Silverton, CO. (for which there is also a Powder Gallery: SILVERTON DUMP Re Wikstrom reports from the San Juans) it was definitely epic driving. After 6 hours of driving in star-wars-warped-speed like visuals, I was close to sleeping in the car and waiting out the storm, but we pushed on through the night and eventually made it home.

I guess that brings us up to February and the current season here in Utah. Our train of storms has been in remission for a week or two now, but it is at least nice to see some sunshine for a change (although too much usually ends up in a gross air quality inversion for the valley so we'll keep the fingers crossed that the forecasted storms for this week will push all of that crap out). The Crested Butte comp is also going down this week, so sending out some positive hard-charging landing-stomping vibes to the girls!