Winter
Backcountry skiing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, snow camping, snowshoeing, and high-elevation travel.
Snow · desert · water · roads · trails
Outdoor Life and Extreme Conditions
The point of snow, cold water, steep trails and long days is not hardship for its own sake. Difficult environments make preparation, equipment, judgment and limits visible very quickly.
Water
Open-water swimming, pool swimming, flat-water kayaking, whitewater kayaking, and family coastal travel.
Heat and distance
Tent camping in San Felipe in June, tent camping in the Grand Canyon in July, hiking, cycling, running, and active transportation.
Backcountry skiing
Snow is not scenery when you are moving through it.
Backcountry skiing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, snow camping, navigation and winter travel remain part of the outdoor record. Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing have simply been less frequent in recent years when usable snow has been scarce.
The photograph is not a nostalgic substitute for current activity. It is the activity.
February 26, 2010 · near Meiss Meadows
Night one of ten began above the treeline.
I started a ten-day snow camp on February 26, 2010, at roughly 8,800 feet near Meiss Meadows, south of South Lake Tahoe. I spent that first night under a tarp, not a tent, about twenty miles south of town and roughly 2,800 feet higher.
South Lake Tahoe was reported as the coldest location in the lower forty-eight states that morning. That was not the conclusion of the trip. It was night one.
The point is not cold for its own sake. It is knowing shelter, clothing, snow, wind, food, water, route, daylight, and judgment well enough to remain functional when the easy options are gone.
Grand Canyon in July
Down and up in the same day, then back to the tent.
I have tent-camped in the Grand Canyon in July during exceptional record heat and hiked down and back up the canyon that same day. It is a landscape where elevation, exposure, water, pace, and timing can turn confidence into stupidity very quickly.
The story belongs here because endurance without judgment is merely a longer route to a bad outcome.
San Felipe, Baja California
A tent in June on the Sea of Cortez.
I camp in San Felipe, Mexico, in a tent in June. Heat, sun, wind, water, marine conditions, border logistics, communications rules, and distance all become part of the trip.
It is not wilderness theater. It is travel where comfort depends on planning and where the family system has to work outside the assumptions of home.
Lassen in winter
Preparation is part of the pleasure.
Snow camping, backcountry skiing, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing narrow the system to the essentials: weather, daylight, shelter, clothing, route, power, food, water, navigation, communication, and the ability to turn around before pride makes the decision.
Lassen is one of the places where my outdoor life and K6RCS naturally meet.
Earlier snow years
The outdoor record did not begin with the current gear closet.
Older photographs of Randall and Krista put the winter habit in its proper place. Cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, winter travel and snow camping were already part of the relationship years before the current Team Stone systems, radios and family logistics grew around them.
Orange on water, snow and pavement
Visibility became the identity.
My kayak, Three’s Company, is orange. So are my dry suit and much of my paddling and field gear. The InMotion EUCs I use carry the same black-and-orange visual language.
That makes orange more than a graphic preference. It is already present in the equipment I actually use and makes me easier to identify from a distance around water, snow, traffic, and family operations. Team Stone adopted orange for the same practical reason. It looks good because it works.
Daily movement
Movement was transportation before it became recreation.
Before my seventeenth birthday, I had already accumulated tens of thousands of bicycle training miles. I received my first driver’s license on my seventeenth birthday. Today, bikes and EUCs remain part of daily transportation, while running, swimming, backcountry and cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, and kayaking remain part of how I travel through the world.