Graham Gephart Photography & Writing Blog

There will be so much more to post from this trip, but Lulu and I just wrapped up two weeks of travel and skiing through Europe for a well-deserved vacation after an action-packed year. To spend 13 of 14 days outside in the mountains was like feeling the layers of stress peel off, one at a time. All we wanted to do… explore European mountain towns, ski and climb until we couldn’t any more, and eat as much delicious food as possible.

Landing in Geneva, we set off on a week of skiing around the classic resorts of the Alps, in Chamonix, Verbier, and Zermatt, then moved eastward into Italy for a week of backcountry skiing in the Ortler Alps, all in the company of a rotating cast of friends that joined us for different sections.

So much more to come, so for now, the clouds at dusk playing on the rugged peaks above Chamonix…

More to come from this with a bigger celebration in September for my sister and Jamal, but we were so happy to be able to make it back to Boston over the weekend to share their wedding day with them in Dorchester, MA. There aren’t two happier people today in all of the world, and we are so thrilled to see you two together with Kera and to welcome Jamal into the family. Best wishes for a healthy, happy, and long-lived marriage!

Sometimes the most rewarding lines are the elusive ones right in your back yard. A couple years ago, I had a short piece published in Powder Magazine’s Morpheme essays on the value of those local roadside attractions. It was just after arriving in Seattle, and while it was written with a few Tahoe places in mind, there was one Washington line that definitely came to symbolize the piece. After looking at the North Couloir on McClellan Butte for 5 years, every trip up and down Snoqualmie Pass, the conditions, weather, and group came together to give me a crack at skiing.

Day breaks early on a Friday morning in March over Snoqualmie Pass, Washington. With a redeye Friday night back to Boston for my little sister’s wedding, and our ski trip to Europe only a week away, this was the last chance to get out locally for a really long stretch. Conditions turned out to be perfect… recent snow over the past couple days to low elevations, but with a relatively stable interface between the new and the old layers.

After a couple false starts to the morning – digging out a stranger’s car at the trailhead and mistakenly climbing part of the wrong chute – we traversed our way into the heart of the north couloir. About as relaxing as coming into the barrel of a gun, the chute climbs steeply, with sheer walls on both sides.

We switched to bootpacking as the snow got deeper and the slope got steeper. It was a wallow, and our pace slowed past the original turnaround point to get into the office before 9:00am. It would be a late night working to catch up, but the line was in incredible condition. A few more minutes later, and we topped out at the upper reaches of the open slab, looking down on a powdery heaven below us. Steep, direct, and filled to the brim with light powder, the line was far better than I ever could have imagined. How good? I’ll let Eben’s first turns do the talking…

Our local ski area, Alpental, wound up right in the crosshairs of a big snowstorm last weekend. With local convergence centered right over Snoqualmie Pass, it started snowing hard on Friday night, and didn’t let off until well into Sunday. By the time the storm ended, our hill had received almost 40 inches in 36 hours.

The Sunday timing was perfect for a ski photography clinic that I’d signed up for as part of Outdoor Research‘s VertFest. While Lulu spent the morning working on steep skiing techniques, I went out with professional photographer Grant Gunderson and Outdoor Research ski athletes Zack Giffin and Molly Baker to get tips and techniques from the pros. Hearing Grant’s input on metering and composition was awesome, and the perfect conditions let Zack and Molly go after just about every feature in sight, putting on a show for us.

Here are a few of the highlights from the day:

Zack Giffin boosts a small pillow in the old growth trees outside Alpental.

Zack sends the pillow for a tree-tap backflip on his second attempt of the morning.

Molly Baker busting through the deep trees.

Zack finds a nice spine on the lower mountain.

Smooth, floaty 360 over classic Alpental terrain.

Molly reaping the rewards of the weekend.

Zack launches through the snowy pines.

More snow on tap for this weekend. Now time to get a little more practice in and maybe tune up the gear before we take our ski trips to Jackson and Europe this spring. In the meantime, enjoy…

The winter roadshow started this week. After a dry winter so far, I boarded a plane Monday morning for Salt Lake City, and soon Denver, where snow has been sparse. Like clockwork, the PNW wound up square in the sights of a big line of winter storms that have started to deliver the mid-winter powder cycle.

This is the busy stretch, both for personal life and work. My ski season goes on pause for a month or so here, while I travel with my team to tradeshows in SLC and Denver, introducing new 2012-2013 products from my brands, then continues through grassroots events that we have built up, like the Tubbs Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer Snowshoe Series. It’s a long stretch, and always hard to get in the relaxation, skiing, home chores and everything else I want to get done in the week or weekend before leaving. This year was no different, but the weekend was at least a success, with a wonderfully slow Saturday followed up by a great day of skiing at Alpental on Sunday.

The big snows weren’t forecast until later in the week, but Lulu, Chris and I made the best out of 7″ of new on Sunday. With firm boilerplate under the new snow, especially on steeper rollovers, the lines of the day were the ones that snaked through Alpental’s myriad gullies and hard to access areas. Once the backcountry gates opened, the snow got deeper and deeper, with another 4-5″ snowing on us over the course of the day.

I couldn’t have imagined a better way to wrap up at home before the long roadtrip. While packing late at Sunday night was a challenge (I almost forgot to pack pants, seriously), the feeling of a good powder day will stay with me for this stretch. Hard to capture all in words, but below is a quick pic I snapped of Lulu, making a couple steep turns in the Alpental BC before dropping into a thigh-deep gully.

I hope my WA friends get out in all the new snow over these next couple days and enjoy it for me. More travel photos from the tradeshows to come soon…

Vermont winter has gotten off to a slow start this year. Early snows and cold temperatures got the bigger ski areas running around Thanksgiving, but there hasn’t been enough snow since to open much more. Smaller resorts like Mad River Glen, who have limited snowmaking and grooming, had to sit on the sidelines until the natural snow came to the Northeast.

There was just enough on the ground to make it a white Christmas, but the snow showers have been picking up for the last couple days. We spent a snowy day traveling to see friends in Waitsfield at the 1824 House Inn and then up to Burlington for a dinner party on Wednesday. It turned into a bit of an epic, with traffic on I89 slowing to stop and go for miles. Given the state of the roads, we spent the night in Burlington with the gracious hospitality of friends, and elected to drive home Thursday morning.

The blanket of new snow that coated the landscape was brilliantly illuminated with blue skies, bright sunshine, and crisp temperatures in the single digits. The rural Vermont towns looked resplendent on the way home, and we made a few stops in Warren and the Granville Gulf to snap some photos of the wintery landscape.

Fresh snow and ice coating Freeman Brook in Warren.

A single set of snowed-over footsteps leading up the stairs to the United Church of Warren, VT.

The Mad River flows peacefully through Warren Village, its banks scoured clean from the flooding of Hurricane Irene.

Snow showers from a couple maple trees in the Granville Gulf at Moss Glen Falls. Lulu spent a bit here Thursday morning photographing the sun streaming through the snowy trees.

It’s snowing again this morning, and the buzz is out that winter is here. Mad River opens today, and while we didn’t bring our ski gear with us this year, it feels a lot more like Christmas time in Rochester right now. Time to get outside for a breath of fresh, cold air.

It’s been two years since Lulu and I have been back to my parents’ house in Vermont, so we’ve been looking forward to spending Christmas there for a while. With lots of friends and family around, it was perfect to see the extended family from Connecticut and New York. We met Hannah and Kera in Boston and made the drive up on Christmas Eve day, while Hannah’s fiance Jamal came down from Montreal to meet everyone at the house.

While it’s been a dry start to winter, there was at least enough on the ground and a little new snowfall to make it a white Christmas. With all the family gathered together, the presents overflowed underneath the tree! We were thankful for a great family and all the wonderful and thoughtful gifts that we got and could give to others.

From Christmas classics to our own pleasure reads and new books for Kera, we did a lot of relaxing and reading.

Our niece, Kera, stole the show for most of the Christmas weekend. At 2.5, she has pretty boundless energy, running from room to room and toy to toy. Books, blocks, cooking toys, dolls, tea parties, and her microphone, she goes through it all.

The Kera and Jamal show… complete with Fischer Price Little People, “Dolphin” the doughnut-eating Orca, and Kera on the mic.

Making play cakes and brownies with Grandpa.

Reading new books with Aunt Lulu.

Merry Christmas from the Gephart family (Marty, Jeff, Hannah, Kera, Jamal, Lulu, and Graham)! More photos from Vermont to come soon…

Two weeks ago, I was on the beach in Hawaii for our sales meetings. Yesterday, deep in winter’s snowpack. If last year’s La Nina season is any indication, there will be much to be thankful for again this year. With a couple big storms in the last two weeks, the season is off to a great start in the Cascades. Freezing levels are up today, but yesterday brought over a foot of new snow and blue skies. While many people went out to shop there way through Black Friday, I met a few friends at Crystal Mountain for what we termed White Friday.

Rainier poking out through intermittent clouds over the White River valley from the top of Crystal Mountain. What a phenomenal start to the season. It’s pretty rare to start the season off with faceshots, but there were a couple off High Campbell, and hitting a late day Northway opening held even more good turns. There were a few rocks to be found here and there, but overall, the snowpack is solid, especially for November. Can’t wait to get back out there again!

A quick pic with a lot of happiness… Lulu and Sarah stock up at Theo Chocolates in Fremont – a full chocolatier (not just a melter), that’s fair trade and fully organic, and makes some of the best chocolate around.

While we’ve camped on the coast and explored a bit in the Olympic Mountains, we haven’t really seen any of the Hood Canal area, tucked on the Puget Sound side of the peninsula. So this past weekend, we roadtripped out from a gloomy forecast of rain and drizzle with friends Ben and Corey, riding the ferry across the Sound to Dosewallips State Park. With a reservation for one of the park’s three canvas-walled platform tents, the rainy forecast did little to discourage our “camping” plans. A quick tarp build later, and we had a veritable cabin in the outdoors, and an awesome fall weekend to spend it in.

The breakfast of champions – egg and cheese sandwiches, accompanied by oatmeal cookies with Nutella and bananas. In desperate times, we improvised a coffee filtering system with a bandana and our camping mugs. It also turns out that when you go camping in a platform tent, you don’t really bring any less than usual… in fact, likely more.

Fall in the PNW is rich, but in a different way from the foliage of New England. Wandering the back roads reminds me of VT’s orange/yellow/red maples lining dirt roads, but here the bit of yellow blends in with ten different kinds of green. It’s amazing that in the waning season of the Northwest that everything can look so brilliant. Maybe it’s the sudden contrast of a little yellow thrown in, or just that the shine of a little rain makes it all seep with richness. Either way, with hardly a bit of sun, it was still a stunning weekend in the forest.

Taller trees sporting their mossy sweaters, with thick ferns and soft benches in the undergrowth. Every inch is covered in plant life in the Olympics. While the Hoh Rainforest on the other side of the peninsula is better known for it, everything in the Dosewallips area was teeming with moss, ferns, you name it.

Lulu, Corey, and Ben admiring the old growth on the Maple Valley Trail.

A single bright tree shows a little reflection on an otherwise overcast morning on the Dosewallips River. It’s only a matter of time until winter starts to firm its grip!