Sherry McConkey

Last winter,  I visited Sherry McConkey, the wife of the late Shane McConkey, at her Squaw Valley home. I had met Shane only casually, but his death in a ski-BASE accident in Italy in 2009 hit me like it did most skiers: profoundly.

So meeting and interviewing Shane’s widow (and meeting his adorable daughter, Ayla), needless to say, was both an incredible privilege and completely nerve-wracking. Before the interview, I asked my own mother - who has dealt with more than her fair share of tragedy - what kinds of questions I should ask Sherry. I was worried Sherry wouldn’t want to open up to a total stranger or she’d feel bothered by the personal nature of the questions I wanted to ask, questions about life with Shane and life without him.

But that wasn’t the case at all. Sherry welcomed me into her home with a sense of utter warmth, and we spoke for more than an hour over cups of tea. She was graceful and strong, and she spoke candidly and emotionally about the husband she loved and lost. The interview just ran on ESPN’s Freeskiing site. You can find it here. For more about Shane or to donate to Shane McConkey Foundation, click here.

Oregon Yurt Trip

I just returned from a four-day yurt trip in eastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains. When most people think of eastern Oregon, steep lines and deep powder probably aren’t the first things that come to mind (potatoes and flat plains, perhaps?). But, picture this: 35 inches of snow in four days, a forest of perfectly-spaced burnt trees, and a two-story yurt that sleeps 10 comfortably in bunks around a wood-burning stove.

The first day, we got a six-mile snowmobile tow in from the trailhead, then skinned the remaining two miles and 2,000 vertical feet up to the yurt in Norway Basin. The teepee-like structure was buried in a marshmallow of snow when we got there and the flakes just kept falling. Low visibility and avy danger limited us to mainly lower-angle tree stashes, but the snow was deep enough to keep us entertained.

On our last morning, the clouds parted to reveal the high-alpine terrain that towers above the yurt, steep, varied peaks that rise from the basin floor and shoot into the sky. Here are a few shots from the trip.

The hardest day

Most days, I love my job — how could you not love writing about skiing? But there are some days — like today, March 1 — when I wish I were an accountant, a hair dresser, anything but this. Today, a fellow skier died. And I was tasked with the heinous job of reporting on his death.

I didn’t know Ryan Hawks personally, but we shared many mutual friends. And like me, he’s a skier. He was a Vermont native who followed the powder train west to Utah and spent his winters chasing storms and freeskiing competitions. From what I’ve heard, Ryan was an amazing person as well — fun-loving and compassionate, adventurous and kind.

But when you’re writing a news story on someone’s death, what matters most is the facts. Especially in this era, when everyone has access to a blog, a Facebook account and a Twitter feed — it becomes that much more important for journalists to do their job, and do it right. Get the facts, report the truth. And do your best to leave your personal bias and emotions out of it.

This was really hard for me. I was there at Kirkwood on Sunday when Ryan crashed and was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Reno. The same hospital, mind you, where my older brother Miles was taken by life-flight in 2005, after he hit a tree skiing at Mammoth and suffered severe head trauma. Ryan was transferred to the same Intensive Care Unit that by brother spent several weeks in and like my brother, Ryan had a head injury, a broken pelvis and he was put into a medically-induced coma. Monday night in Reno, I sat in the parking area of the hospital while Dan, whose company, Flylow, sponsored Ryan, dropped in to check on Ryan’s condition — I couldn’t bear to go inside and see the place my brother had been, a place where so many painful memories reside.

But here’s where the stories differ: My brother survived and is leading a normal, healthy life today. Ryan wasn’t so lucky. I can’t imagine the pain his friends and family are going through right now and I’m sending them all my thoughts and prayers.

Various news sources have picked up the story on Ryan’s death, and naturally a lot of the mainstream media have offered up the sensational headlines that I feared they would: “Hawks Dead after Extreme Skiing Accident.” There is truth in that — the Freeskiing World Tour is an extreme skiing competition and what Ryan did — throw a backflip off a massive cliff — could definitely be categorized as “extreme.”

But there’s a reason the word extreme faded from skiers’ vocabulary years ago and to imply that Ryan was reckless couldn’t be farther from the truth. These athletes know the risks involved in their sport and they take calculated efforts to minimize the risks, examining take-offs and landings and determining speed and snow quality. They’re not just flinging themselves off cliffs. There’s something about this line in a story about Ryan’s death on GrindTV.com that really irks me. “[Hawks was] a rising star in the sometimes dangerous sport of big-mountain freeskiing.” Driving to the grocery store is “sometimes dangerous.”

The story on Ryan’s death on The Ski Channel (which they later fixed after I whined about it on Twitter) bugs me too. Here’s how it read initially: “Although he had traumatic injuries, it just didn’t seem like the kind of fall that would end up the way it did.  It wasn’t like he fell down a rocky face or something similar.  Watching on the live feed i came away with the impression he would be sore from it, that’s all,” says the writer.  Readers need facts, not the writer’s half-baked opinion. To all the journalists out there, let’s not pass judgment or make implications, especially involving someone’s life and death.

Ryan was living a life most people only dream about. I’m just sorry he only got 25 years to enjoy it.

Double Chairs

Maybe it’s the quality one-on-one time you get with your fellow passenger. Or maybe it’s the fact that six seater chairs just lack personality. Or maybe it’s because in many cases, a ski area’s best terrain is still accessed by a double chair (case in point: Snowbird’s Little Cloud lift, Stevens Pass’ Seventh Heaven chair). But there’s something I love about double chairlifts - especially center-bar double chairs like Crystal Mountain’s Chair 6 (above, in a photo I took yesterday) and Alpental’s Chair 2 (from opening day in December).

Trailer Wars

It didn’t take long after my older sister and her husband heard about my new vintage trailer that they went and bought one for themselves. Theirs is a 1957, and looks similar to my Canned Ham-style one, only theirs was decorated with cowboy motif when they got it. Anyway, here are photos of my sister’s new vintage trailer. And below those, shots of my trailer again, which now has some fresh coats of paint and a few other restorations.

The outside of theirs looks really similar to ours. And yes, that cowgirl and horse painting is mounted on a wall inside the trailer.

Their dinette area is in a lot better shape than ours.

I wouldn’t have picked these lampshades out myself, but hey, they do fit the decor.

OK, now, what you’ve all been waiting for, I know. Images of the trailer I bought a couple of months ago, which was in great shape for being built in 1952. Here is what the trailer looked like when we bought it. And here are some ideas for how I wanted to fix it up.

Of course it has a Flylow logo. But more importantly, it now has a sweet turquoise stripe. 

And better yet, sweet turquoise hubcaps.

The trailer had drab white curtains before. So I picked out the material for new curtains, which should also help keep the heat in — after all, this is a ski trailer.

In the sleeping area, I painted the side walls white to give it more light, and added the same turquoise on the back wall. We got a new mattress and built this small shelf above the bed for storing ski gear and clothing while we’re parked.

Some fridge art that I found on etsy.

It’s amazing what a coat of paint and some new cabinet pulls will do.

In a House by the River

I’d mentioned a few months ago that I was working on my first feature story for Outside Magazine. It’s a story about the death of my stepdad, Jerry, who was killed 16 years ago at a remote kayak lodge on California’s Salmon River. Jerry got into a fight with the caretaker of the lodge, who shot Jerry in an act the court later determined was self defense. I reported the story last June, and finally, today, the story is out, in the February issue of Outside. You can get it on newsstands or read it online here. I’m not going to say much more about it – I’d rather you just read the piece. But there is one person I want to thank most of all for making this whole process possible for me: my mom. This story is really her story, she’s the one who lived through it, she’s the one who taught me everything I know about making it through the keeper hole, surviving the tough times, and seeing the light at the end of it all. So, mom, thank you. I know you’re the only one who reads this blog anyway.

Also, since I’m such a huge fan of NPR’s This American Life, I decided to try to create my own podcast to accompany the story. Editing audio is a lot harder than I thought, so please forgive the amateur sound quality and editing. The podcast is of my interview with JD, the man who killed Jerry. You can find it online here.

Powder Magazine Video Awards

When I was 23 and just out of college, I worked as a newspaper reporter in Tahoe City. The best assignment I had all year (not that covering city council meetings wasn’t a learning experience…) was a piece on female pro skiers who called Tahoe home. I spent the day at Squaw Valley, trying to keep up with Ingrid Backstrom, Michelle Parker, Jamie Burge and Jenn Berg. The story I wrote after was nothing to write home about, but I do remember at that moment that I felt like I had discovered what I wanted to do in life: I wanted to write about skiing. I also was completely in awe of the girls I skied with that day. Anyway, all of this is to say that on Thursday, when I found out I was nominated for a Powder Magazine Video Award for best female performance for my part in Powderwhore Productions’ TeleVision (the segment is above) — alongside Ingrid Backstrom, Grete Eliassen, and Elyse Saugstad, all incredible athletes who I’ve covered with amazement for the past few years — I was completely stunned. The reality of it — that a telemark skier with a desk job is nominated for such an award — probably speaks most to the lack of female presence in ski movies these days (honestly, were there only four women in a ski movie this year?). But I’ll take the nomination for what it is: a great honor. Just like I was when I was 23, I’m still in awe in women like Ingrid, Elyse and Grete and to be included in the same breath as them is completely mind blowing to me.  This year’s awards are happening in Aspen on Jan. 28, which is during the X Games. I’ll be there with ESPN reporting on the X Games, so hopefully I can sneak out of work in time to go to the show.

Telemark Skier Photo Annual

Telemark Skier magazine’s Photo Annual recently came out and in addition to a number of articles (check out my Clips page to read those), I got my first spread photo published. This is a shot I took last April of telemark skier Paul Kimbrough skiing off Thompson Pass, Alaska. This line was one of the most scary lines I’ve watched someone ski in person - it had a double fall line, serious no-fall exposure and some massive sluff that would have been catastrophic had it taken Paul out. But, he skied it with complete grace and composure. You can read about Paul here or watch him ski this line in the latest movie from Powderwhore Productions, TeleVision.  

Trailer Trash

I recently became the proud owner of a 1950s vintage 11-foot-long travel trailer. Yes, that’s right: I’m going to live in a trailer. At least on the weekends, parked at the base of a ski area. I’m calling it a ski-in, ski-out condo more than it is a trailer. The trailer itself is a “canned ham” style, as they called it back then and it still has a lot of the original parts: a vintage stove, yellow vinyl dinette cushions, propane lanterns. I got it for a good price on Craig’s List from a guy in Olympia, Washington, who collects antique trucks. But the trailer needs some care and attention, a few upgrades that will keep its historic value, but give it a modern touch and make it a bit more comfortable to actually live in. But before the fixing up actually begins, I went online for some inspiration. Here’s what’s I found, some images of restored vintage trailers that will give me some  ideas for how to fix up mine. Stay tuned for before and after images of my own trailer.

I’m planning to paint portions of the wood interior a retro blue like this one. Also, our trailer needs new curtains - maybe checkered ones?

I love these red hubcaps.

Or maybe polka dot curtains? The dining room table in our trailer looks a lot like this one here.

Oh, Airstreams. This one has great diner-style checkered floors.

Ours is plain white on the outside - a blank slate. We are going to paint a teal stripe similar to this one. I also love the wings on the back, which was common with a lot of these vintage trailers.

First turns of the season

There’s something about that first run of the season. Standing at the top, you worry, for a fraction of a second, that maybe you forgot how to ski over the course of the summer. You feel the pinch in your toes from being crammed into ski boots after months of wearing flip-flops. And you wonder if you’ve done enough to stay in shape since last spring – the bike rides and those squats on that one visit to the gym were enough, right?

But once you drop in, all those fear go away quickly. None of that matters anymore. Your mind clears and all you care about is going faster and farther. Making this moment last as long as it possibly can. In that moment, you never want summer to come around again.

 

Saturday, I went skiing for the first day of the season. The ski areas in Washington haven’t opened yet, so I went on a backcountry tour with some friends near Mt. Baker. Having recently moved to Seattle, it was my first time skiing in the state of Washington. Here are some photos I shot.

15 tips for PR people

An outdoor industry public relations firm recently asked me for some tips on PR do’s and don’ts for a company guide they’re working on. I thought it was a fun project and ended up writing way more than I originally planned. I guess I’ve had a lot of both mediocre and stellar interactions with PR people over the years to see the difference between what works and what doesn’t. Anyway, for those PR people hocking jackets and skis, listen up. Here are my 15 suggestions on what to do and what not to do when pitching journalists.

1. If you send an email that requires a response and the journalist doesn’t respond, wait two weeks and send a polite, non-pushy follow up. If they still don’t respond, move on. They’re not interested. Don’t send a third follow up.

2. Don’t start your email talking about the weather, the changing seasons or some other cliché attempt at being conversational. Get straight to the point. If you know the journalist personally, then a personalized note is always welcome, but if we don’t know you, we probably don’t want to make chitchat.

3. Get to know journalists. Invite us to do stuff. Find out what we like and use that to your advantage.

4. Journalists love to break a story. So if you really want to be our friend, deliver us an exclusive lead on a story.

5. Do proofread your emails.

6. Don’t pitch us ideas over Facebook or Twitter. Don’t call either. Email is always preferred.

7. Do put our names at the top of emails (so we can at least pretend you’re just sending it to us). And do spell our names correctly.

8. Don’t send an email with huge-size PDFs or high-res images attached to it that are going to jam up our inbox. We’ll let you know if we need that stuff and how it should be delivered.

9. Don’t send the exact same pseudo-personal email pitching the same product to two editors at the same magazine. We often compare notes.

10. Know who you’re pitching – know what kind of readership that magazine targets and adjust your pitch accordingly. If you’re pitching a snowboard to a ski magazine or a $5,000 fur-lined suitcase to a discount travel mag, the editor will assume you’re bad at your job and we’ll be less likely to reach out to you in the future.

11. That said, we understand that sometimes you get stuck with lame products, like ear muffs or snot rags and you have to at least try. Just admit it up front. Have a sense of humor and show us you’re not a PR robot.

12. Assume we’re always on deadline (even if we’re not). Respond quickly and thoroughly. If we have to wait more than a day for you to get back to us, we’ve likely found another product to feature.

13. If we’re going through the product line with you in person, say, at a trade show or in our office, be brief and give us only the basic highlights on stuff you think we’ll actually be interested in. If we decide to write about it, we’ll get the details from you at another time.

14. Don’t pitch us on last year’s products. We’re always looking for the newest and coolest stuff.

15. Think beyond the product. We’re looking for good stories. Interesting people, bright ideas, revolutionary inventions, companies making a difference, controversies, events, breaking news. Give us insight into the brand and the people behind it. Tell us about your client’s most interesting athletes, retailers, designers, janitors, founders. For most journalists, writing about gear or product is something we have to do, but what we really love is telling stories about people.

 

My friend Re Wikstrom sent this to me and I completely love it. Wordsmiths are unappreciated in this modern era, but Stephen Fry makes some very good points in here. There are a lot of wordy types out there who gloat and show off their “correct” use of language. It’s an art form, writing, and people should be allowed to do it in whatever form (correct or not) that they like. And like Re, I too quite like Matthew Rogers’ “kinetic typography animation.” I think you will too.

Gear video

My friends at Flylow are applying for an ISPO Brand New award and they needed a promo video that featured some of their new products for this year to send over to the German judges of Europe’s biggest ski trade show. I figured it was a good chance for me to practice making gear videos. So, we set up an amateur studio and got to work. If you’re in the market for a new ski jacket or pants this year, check out Flylow’s Quantum Jacket or Stash Pant. Here’s the video.

Photo in Backcountry magazine

I apologize for the black and white scan — this photo actually does have color (you can see the actual photo on my photography page). But here’s my second published photo this month, a three-quarter spread in the September 2010 Gear Guide of Backcountry Magazine. This is a shot of Black Diamond boot designer Derek Gustafson, taken in Iceland last spring. We were there on a BD media trip, where we got to test out the latest skis and boots from BD’s new efficiency series. The fact that we happened to be there during a huge volcanic eruption that shut down all the airports in northern Europe was merely a coincidence. Thanks to BD for the trip, to Derek for being a good ski model, and to Backcountry’s photo editor, Simon, for running my shot.