Lisa Richardson Bylines

I’ve worked with most of the photographers who entered Whistler Blackcomb’s Deep Winter Photo Challenge and like and respect them all. So I wasn’t going to vote in the People’s Choice for Deep Winter. I hate giving my email to enter random contests. Everyone put on amazing shows. I was happy that Robin O’Neill won, because she blazed such a trail through my heart last year as the first she-photographer ever invited to compete. I had closure. I didn’t need to engage any further.

But when I chatted to Robin O’Neill yesterday, she told me that she’s just trailing behind Mason Mashon in the People’s Choice contest with one week of voting left, and she’s really hoping to win.

So she can take her athletes heliskiing.

I know Mason put his heart on the line too. And I’m sure he and his crew would love a day of heliskiing too.

But the Voleurz crew have, inshallah, next year.

Robin’s athletes are all over 75 years old. And they’re the people who built Whistler. Werner Himmelsbach. Peter Alder. Trudy Alder. Peter Morin. Betty Vogler.

So I voted. And I’m saying, why don’t you vote too? Send Karl Ricker heliskiing. How freaking cool.

Much as I love that any of the teams have a shot at a day heliskiing – they all deserve the playday,  after putting on such great shows – I get goosebumps thinking about those grey-haired Lifers, who have devoted their entire lives to this place, all hustling out of a helicopter, standing on top of a perfect peak as the bird flies away… with a pristine field of pow unrolling before them.

So that’s my pitch.

The best argument of all comes from an email Robin received on Monday:

Having just got back from possibly my last downhill trip – thinking of giving it up due to age – I am re-invigorated by the dignified photos of elders. Your work was inspiring and I am thinking of maybe another trip this season – two trips in a season, I haven’t done that in 10 years

At some point in our lives, we are no longer in the realm of ticking firsts… We start inhabiting a place where each trip, each adventure, each farewell, could be our last. A different kind of pioneering mentality is required. And that’s something to honour.

Trailblazing is what these elders of ours have done. I’d like to pay a little something back.

If you feel the same way, vote here.

UPDATE Jan 17, Robin O’Neill’s winning show:

Robin O’Neill – Deep Winter 2012 Winning Slideshow from Robin O'Neill on Vimeo.

On timing. (In which we argue that Deep Winter 2012 was a display of both exquisitely good and bad timing.) 

Deep Winter Photo Challenge returned last night, the cultural highlight of the New Year.

It couldn’t have come at a better time, socially.  We’ve recovered from the onslaught of Christmas parties, we’ve shaken off the New Year hangover, we’ve officially ditched the resolutions to be better people, to get drunk less.

It could have come at a better time, snowcially. Like now… with flurries forecast all week, 10-20cm expected on Thursday and 40-90cm expected by the middle of next week.  It might have been the most un-deep winter week ever. But Robin O’Neill was too tired to even contemplate the hypothetical offer on the table, to go back in time and reschedule for a different weather window, when compere Feet Banks offered to play Wizard.

Feet: “Would you rather we push back the event to next week so you can get all that snow in the forecast?”

Robin: “No. Too. Tired.”

"Big Night", photo by Jussi Grznar

On microphone management. (In which we argue that Feet Banks is the host-with-the-most, and we hope he went home with an Arc’teryx jacket for keepsies.) 

My vote for best performance of the night goes to Feet Banks, emcee extraordinaire,  for his sartorial class (vest and bow tie, quite the wardrobe upgrade since he debuted as host of the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown in his skivvies), his microphone management and commitment to keeping the show moving (“we’re just going to give you a second to all get off the stage and then we’ll roll tape”), his willingness to go woo-woo for a minute so we could send some white light to Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield, and his quicker-than-a-40-year-old-virgin’s-orgasm wit. (“Did you bring the short guy into the mix so the snow would look deeper?”)

(Give the dude an Arc’teryx jacket. It’s hard to throw love all night to the sponsors, and not get any warm fuzzy affection back. I’ve got an idea, Feet. Ask Robin for a jacket. I think she might have a few extra…)

On being bold. (In which we commend the photographers for having the cajones to enter the Deep Winter challenge and for inspiring and entertaining us.) 

The stakes of this contest seem to have gotten so high that more established photographers are demurring the invitation to compete. All the more reason to give a shout-out to the six photographers who took up the challenge: Reuben Krabbe, Steve Lloyd, Mark Gribbon, Mason Mashon, Jussi Grznar and Robin O’Neill.

As Vince Shuley tweeted: “way to make hard snow look good.”

Their shows did not disappoint, although the line-up of fresh faces did come with a less intense, angsty vibe than last year‘s Deep Winter Photo Challenge, when Robin O’Neill stepped up for mountain women everywhere, competing alongside Blake Jorgenson, Ilja Herb, John Scarth, Tim Zimmerman and Andrew Strain.

Child prodigy, Reuben Krabbe, who has his sights set on breaking Jordan Manley’s “youngest photographer ever to win the Pro Photographer Showdown”, made an impressive debut, (ultimately coming in 3rd AND taking Best Photo) with an action-packed show jammed with “banger shots” captured with the help of Dan and Dave Treadway.

Utah native Steve Lloyd brought the fresh eyes of an outsider to the game – reminding us not to overlook the everyday beauty of the Canadian flags lined up at the top of Whistler gondy. Mark Gribbon brought the snowboarders into play. Mason Mashon (who proves his version of “lifestyle” means not taking your ADHD meds: “okay, we rode bikes to the hill, we’ve been skiing all day, who wants to go skate on the frozen pond?”) landed a shot of rime-encrusted bikes in the back of a pick-up truck that might be the Best Most Unlikely Cover for Bike Magazine.

2012 Deep Winter Photo Challenge. Day 2 with Mason Mashon from UnofficialNetworks.com on Vimeo.

Jussi Grznar put together an emotive show that started in bed and came full-circle for a 2nd place finish… And what says “and they all lived happily ever after” more powerfully than a guy and girl spooning in bed, with the dog booted to its rightful place on the floor.

But Robin O’Neill’s storytelling about Lifers was the most powerful. With stark portraiture, a few recurring motifs (back-to-back shots that pulled from shallow focus to long focus to tell instantaneous stories about movement and perspective, and triptychs that would fall away to reveal one full frame), and a confident delivery, O’Neill ((#robinneedstwitter) follows her Deep Summer win, deserving her title as All-Season Queen of the Lens.

On the Zeitgeist. (In which we try and read the tea-leaves.)

This year, there seemed to be more love in the air. (Is this a Zeitgeist thing?) There was more ice-skating than Deep Winter has ever seen. We also saw a preoccupation with injury, with the physical and emotional toll that a dedication to the mountains can exact. We saw bigger vistas, that only a stormless Deep Winter week can offer. We saw athletes working incredibly hard and bagging some stellar action shots. And we saw that what makes a photographer a cut above is more than technical proficiency and an eye for a well-composed shot, but the ability to create a mood, even without the moodiness of a storm.

On hard work. (In which we note the concentration of talented passionate hard-working people who make this place, as they say over at WIA, awesome.)

So here’s to hard-working mountain-loving people of Deep Winter. To the marketing and PR peeps at Whistler Blackcomb who work their asses off to come up with fresh and creative ways to engage people with the WB community, to bring people here, to represent this place as authentically as possible. To the athletes who, judging from the recurrence of images shot at the physiotherapist, are pushing themselves to the very edge. To the photographers who are brave enough to step up and showcase their work. (In a 72 hour time frame, the deadline bears down on you so hard, you don’t have time to think, to censor yourself, to second guess. Your naked work is up on the big screen.) So kudos to you all. Thanks for a great night.

On Friday night, I ducked away early from a Christmas cocktail party, sucked my breath in at the cold, and hiked over to Muni Hall to present a seminar on media relations to the last ever class of interns to take LUNA’s remarkable Community Event Coordination training certificate program.

LUNA’s CEC certificate is a perfect case study in sustainable operations and innovative social programing.  A $55,000 municipal budget line-item is stretched like a magic bean into incredible low-cost programming offered all year long to Whistler’s most under-served population, the seasonal young adult workers that staff the town’s engine-rooms. It works thanks to a core group of ‘interns’ who are accepted into the program each year to learn events management in the most hands-on way, graduating from the program only once they have produced their own event. Given the economic importance of events to Whistler, it’s an incredible in-community training program braintrusted and run by the quiet creative talent, Kiran Pal-Pross.

Over the 7 years the program has run, that annual investment has yielded 51 graduates, 6000 volunteer hours, and over 250 events (including the iconic LUNAFliks), attended by 15,000 young adults. According to LUNA’s website, the program has contributed to a 20% reduction in alcohol-related calls to the RCMP. That’s a pretty good ROI.

“We proudly advertise and promote LUNA as a best practice.”  
Norm McPhail, Officer In Charge, Sea to Sky Regional Police Services for the RCMP

After attending my first LUNAflik this summer, and connecting with the smart dedicated women who are LUNA’s last ever interns, I have come to believe that LUNA’s Community Event Coordination program is one of the most remarkable innovations to have come out of Whistler in the last decade. It also offers a wealth of talent and creative thinking that Whistler’s tired [sic]-and-true events sector desperately needs a dose of.

Alas, bureacratic bean-counters don’t share my enthusiasm. They have identified LUNA (as well as the under-attended Youth Centre) as programs that are beyond the core services of a municipality. I’m guessing that the cost of hiring one single By-Law officer, should additional policing of the muni’s liquor laws be needed as this programming disappears, would be approximately $55,000, so the “savings” seems like dodgy math to me.

$127,500 will be saved in 2012 by reducing youth services from the youth centre and LUNA, according to the report.

That means 10% of the $1.2 million cuts recommended come from reducing services to the young (non-voting) residents of the community, the ones, let’s face it, least likely to call up their elected representatives and say, don’t take our programming away!

This year’s class of LUNA interns has shrunk down to just three keeners, hanging on despite the fact that municipal budget cuts will end the program prematurely, so that there’s no chance for them to graduate with the certificate.

They will rally for LUNA’s grand finale event, Hockey 101, on December 30. And then, an incredible social experiment will come to an end.

Skiing The Edge is now available for download on amazon.com and via iTunes.

Deploy today’s coffee budget in favour of story! Just $3.99.

In July, Dave Fonda invited me to judge awards recognising the best feature ski writing of the year.

I said yes because:

1. he promised me a coffee mug,
2. he also promised there would be no more than ten entries,
3. finally, he promised to buy me several fine microbrews if I go skiing in Quebec and I like being owed beer by quality people in groovy locations around the world.

(I subsequently found out he’s in advertising. Tread carefully when being seduced by a professional copywriter.)

I also agreed because:

4. my ego voted YEA, inflating immediately at the prospect, and

5. it seemed like the perfect way to settle in with a glass of wine and the best published ski writing of the year, to learn a thing or two about the craft of narrative, ski and lifestyle journalism, which is kinda my thing.

As it turned out, the best ski writing isn’t getting published.

Whatever is happening out there in Media Land is shrivelling up the market for long form work, and the world of ski storytelling is no different. So what began as a full body immersion in the best ski writing of the year became a glimpse at the declining opportunities for ski writers to tell stories beyond schilling resorts in buffed up service pieces masquerading as features.

Chapter Two. Fast forward to October. Another email pings into the in-box. Jules Older, my one-time editor of the now defunct Ski Press has an idea. (The four most thrilling and dangerous words in the English language: I have an idea.)

Jules has not taken the demise of print lightly. He took to hanging around the Apple store in San Fran, taking free seminars in shooting and editing video, he wrote an app reviewing San Francisco restaurants, and began to maintain an informal e-newsletter connecting an A-list of writers and journalists. Still a reliable arbiter of topnotch work, Jules was receiving (in addition to the bad jokes and tales of woe from his circle of Jokers) the occasional long-form email, outpourings and ventings from long-form journalists with no real forum left.

The trigger event: an email from Gerry Wingenbach, author of the 100 Best Ski Resorts in the World, veteran journalist and disenchanted correspondent with Outside magazine’s Away blog, about spending a night in the Whistler jailhouse.

Jules now had 3 killer stories cooking up his in-box – stories that hadn’t otherwise seen the light of day and had no real prospect of airing.

So he embraced the first tenet of the e-revolution: DO IT YOURSELF.

“Thinkin’ bout an ebook,” went his email. “Are you in?”

20 writers, whose names you’d recognise if you’ve picked up a ski magazine any time in the last decade, said yes.

Leslie Anthony, Michel Beaudry, Michael Finkel, Dave Fonda, David Goodman, Beth Jahnigen, Lori Knowles, Steven Kotler, Skip King, GD Maxwell, Moira McCarthy, Roger Moss, Effin Older, Peggy Shinn, Roger Toll, Kristen Ulmer, Jenn Weede, Gerry Wingenbach, and me.

Skiing The Edge, the collection of tall tales and true does for ski writing what #longreads is doing for long form journalism, what Utne Reader is doing for the alternative press, what Dave Eggers is doing for contemporary writing with his annual Best American Non Required Reading – it culls through all the bullshit and hands you the good stuff on a silver platter. Compiled and edited by a pro, it compiles the best stuff you’ll be glad to sit down with, sometime this winter, with a steaming mug of cocoa/gluhwein/french-pressed coffee in one hand, and your e-reader in the other. (Which I am about to do. With a special sneak preview. To finally immerse myself in the best ski feature writing of 2011.)

Skiing The Edge will be available on 1 December, for less than the price of a ski magazine (or a latte in a ski town.) $3.99. But it will be juicier. Way way juicier. So plan to take a bite. And rediscover what you’ve been missing.

No, really. Take me seriously. I’m a serious journalist.

Actually, yes, I do tend to bite off more than I can chew.

Thank you Feet Banks. I can always count on you to keep me company out in WeirdoLand.

Kokanee Crankworx dropped their promo video this week.

The best mountain bike athletes in the world know that when gravity beckons, you simply say, yes mistress. I’m coming.

Untitled from Crankworx on Vimeo.

It’s funny, but when I wrote that copy, the voice in my head was a woman. Gravity. As played by Carla Bruni.

Still, voiceover by a guy who eats a handful of gravel with his breakfast Scotch works for me too. (I imagine he’d be more likely to say, “hey, rider, get your ass over here and pump”, than beckon with come-hither eyes, but nevertheless…)

Have been thinking a lot lately about holding space, about opening, and the discomfort that comes leading up to release. (And about how overdue I am for my next appointment with the yoga mat.) So dug out this piece I wrote last year in response to an online call for contributions on “sustainable tourism” for Whistler’s TedX conference. We still live in a world in desperate search of the quick fix. I still need to be reminded that everything is a process. So I reminded myself. (I was so smart last year. How did I forget this?)

Frog pose kills me.

My hips creak and lock into place and my ass protrudes like a half-raised flag of surrender while all around me people press their pelvises flat against the floor, their legs splayed out like champion breaststrokers’.  Really?

But every day that I stand at the top of my yoga mat, I set my intention again: today, I will work towards expansiveness. I will keep breathing when my glutes and hips and lower back creak and howl, and expansiveness will start to infuse my whole person, will permeate my being and my interactions with every living thing. (Though honestly, the intention is more like : I will keep breathing even when it fucking hurts.)

Sometimes, at the end of the class, the teacher says: Now that you have created these openings in your body, think about what you will fill those spaces with.

I lie in corpse pose, with salt water leaking out my eyes, because frog pose undoes me, and I think about that tiny space I created and I think: fill it with compassion. Keep that hard-won opening pried apart with a little droplet of compassion.

Being a tourist is hard.

I see it in Whistler’s visitors – this yearning they have to connect, their curiousity about even their servers – where are you from, how did you get here? Their desire to penetrate beneath the surface.

I feel it myself, when I travel. When my husband and I went to Spain on a rockclimbing trip, I was so confronted by a powerful sense of disorientation, my own strangeness, other people’s strangeness. I find the world difficult to navigate when I can barely order a coffee or translate a menu.  (And I’m vegetarian and really don’t want to end up with some body parts on my plate that I’m then going to have to deal with politely and sensitively.) But I dredged up rusty language skills, pushed away fear that people would think me rude or stupid, andI just kept pushing myself forward, out of my comfort zone. And with every stranger who leant forward to listen, to try and parse my mangled phrasing, to give me directions, or take my order, a little opening between us was created.

Sustainable tourism is not a drop-in class, a package, a carbon offset.

It’s an attitude, a willingness to make effort even when you feel like you’re getting nowhere, to expand in tiny ways to let love in.

I interviewed Scott Dickson by email last week for an artist profile for the Kokanee Crankworx Event Guide. Dickson’s art brings a vibrant and vivid energy to the 2011 event poster – it’s a refreshing alternative to the photo-heavy approach that event posters often resort to.

Sometimes the freeride world with its gladiator vibe and bro-down energy intimidates me a little. (I just don’t get those 10 part handshakes.) But Dickson, for all his core-credentials (art director at Freeride Entertainment, illustrator for Troy Lee Designs and the Motocross National, cover artist for the latest Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine)  is so humble and down-to-earth, it’s impossible not to feel a real satisfaction that the young artist behind the Whistler Mountain Bike Park’s first promo poster got a chance to put his mark on the place again over 10 years later.

Our ‘conversation’ rambled all over the place and it seemed a shame to leave these insights from Dickson on the cutting-room floor. So here are a few of his comments on the role and opportunities for action sports artists.

SD: Yes, totally. With the technology that the manufacturers have, they can reproduce images onto the products themselves, like printing complicated pictures on fabrics or oil paintings on skis and snowboards. Then they can use the same image for print, web and moving pictures. That is a lot of value. When you add in the infinite number of styles available in the world from all of the artists out there or even the unique opportunity the brand has to create custom one-of-a-kind pieces for their specific purpose, it can be a powerful mix for conveying an idea.

Does working with an illustrator who lives and breathes the culture guarantee a more authentic look and feel for a brand?  Or will it always be associated with the “freak”y passionate ones? Your style smacks a little of the fringe/counterculture to me – ski-touring, rootsy kind of stuff. But Crankworx is a different energy altogether. Has that been a shift for you?

SD: For being close to the core, I think art is a bit more raw, and because it is hand-made it can feel more personal and unpolished, which makes you think of someone who is more busy at doing their thing than polishing up their drawing technique. But they are going to express themselves ready or not. For these kind of pieces it is the message that matters more than the medium. Also, working with people who have a passion and understanding of what they are communicating is a big advantage as long as they can translate it to a casual observer.

This painting for Kokanee Crankworx was a big deal for me due to Whistler’s rich history so I tried to make sure to hit the points I needed to and refine my style as much as I could along the way.

I recently pulled the dusty old hypewriter from the back of the closet, where it was languishing in semi-retirement, to crank out some verbiage for service as boilerplate and taglines for a somewhat large and kickass mountain bike festival known as the Kokanee Crankworx. (I thought I’d reformed my ways and sworn off  hyperbole forever, but one sniff of Superbowl-sized festivals and the fingers start twitching…)

As the Globe and Mail reported last August,

More than 100,000 people visited specifically for Crankworx last year, and the seven-year-old festival issues close to 300 media credentials. A 2005 study concluded that Crankworx had a $10-million impact on the local economy and a new study, due this fall, is expected to show massive growth.

On Friday, one professional snowboarder made the grudging admission that Crankworx is now superior to the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival, the 15-year-old winter showcase that caters to Whistler’s traditional customers.

Not to mention that the team the Crankworx braintrust, led by Darren Kinnaird as GM, pulls together, rank as the best in their fields, whether that be the founder of original Slopestyle contest, Joyride’s Paddy Kaye, action sports artist Scott Dickson, PR and social media maven Michelle Leroux, creative director Susan Butler, or athletes like Cam Zink, Darren Berrecloth, Thomas Vanderham, Brandon Semenuk and Mike Montgomery, who provided input into the Red Bull Joyride slopestyle course design. Passion is contagious. It’s hard not to spill a little hype when that much stoke is going around. The countdown begins.

Beg for mercy. Beg for more. Gravity beckons.

During Whistler BC’s 10 day Kokanee Crankworx festival, the dirt-adorned put the revel in the free ride mountain biking revolution, bending physics and blowing minds with their tail-whipping back-flipping hard-charging ways. For the eighth year running, the venues of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park serve as a modern day Colosseum, masterpieces of stunt and trail engineering, forum for the ultimate in gladiator contests and public spectacle. 

In less than a decade, Kokanee Crankworx has become the authoritative free ride festival, a supercharged magnet for the world’s best riders, the definitive domestication of dirt in the service of epic endurance, supreme flow, monster air and gravity-fuelled mountain biking. The best mountain bike athletes in the world know that when gravity beckons, you simply say, yes mistress. I’m coming. So make sure you do.

There’s nowhere else that men will look you over so aggressively, quite as overtly, as when you walk into a heliskiing operation. They are trying to suss out if you are one of the support staff – a cook, a massage therapist, an assistant – because that’s what most of the women are. (Of the 104 guides at the world’s largest heliskiing operation, CMH, this season, 11 are women. Of the 5200 skiers who went out with CMH this past winter, 19% were women.) They are trying to ascertain whether they might end up skiing with you, whether you might ruin their day. The chemistry of a ski group is a delicate thing. And no one wants the balance to unravel due to girliness.

I’m not particularly girly. I have spent my adult life chasing after a man. (I already had him from the outset, but on skis I can’t keep up.)

That’s been good training. Because it means that, unless you’re a professional sponsored skier, I can keep up with you. Pretty much guaranteed.

That reality doesn’t shake the niggling feeling of doubt, the lurk of worry in the pit of my stomach when a bunch of grizzled alpha males stare me down as I do the Pollyanna-two-step from the parking lot into the Regent Hotel at Revelstoke, and mentally tally how few days I’ve had on the hill now that I’m a desk jockey.

The “fuck, I hope I’m not in over my head here” fear-flash that burns through my whole body is an intimidation hurdle that keeps a lot  of women away from heliskiing. I’m here to dig into that, to research and write a story about how yin-friendly heliskiing is. We’re off to a shaky start.