The powder train didn't stop...

It's currently raining at my house, and after a week of hot weather, it seems the powder train has taken a different course. In Utah, we hopped on just before Christmas, and we've been riding that train every day since then. A great start to the winter, although with a complex snowpack always on our mind, we looked for safety in the trees. Steep skiing season is upon us, but I sure hope this thing keeps on chugging. We need the water, and a few more deep days.

Steelhead and Spines - Volume Two

"In the spring of 2015, we began another pursuit for big lines and wild fish. Once again, our direction was north to Alaska, just as it was 3 years ago on our first trip to capture steelhead and spines. Since then, our burning desire to explore around the next bend, to see what's on the other side of the mountain, has grown to an inextinguishable level. We found ourselves back in a corner of southeast Alaska where for a few months of the year, some of the steepest, fluted lines in the world can be ridden, while chromed out steelhead run up and down the coastal rivers. This is the place for us to step outside the bubble of modern society, and into a world of our own making, where skiing and fishing and camping is everything. We returned home with these images, and memories of battling storms and mountains on the glacier and of an island where pure fish swim beneath the old growth hemlocks."

             

              (click images for full size)

           

       

 

Is this thing still on? Follow cams and Warren Miller...

Ok, I haven't shared anything on here in quite some time. I'm definitely feeling the effects of an aging website platform. Expired photo galleries and the need to liven things up a bit has me thinking it's time for a major upgrade. I've got some ideas to take this show into the future, but that is a battle I'm going to continue to put off for now. So, this is my little slice of the internet for now. Here are a few videos...



^ Last winter wasn't spectacular in Utah. It was better than California though, that's for sure. I wish we could have sent a few storms their way, to keep the spirits up if nothing more. Anyways, It doesn't take much for me these days to have fun in the mountains. We scored some awesome days at home this year with great stability. What more could you ask for other than more of it?


^ Speaking of awesome days at home in Utah, the Warren Miller movie, Chasing Shadows, will premiere this weekend in SLC and continue to play around the world. Look for a screening near you, here:  http://www.skinet.com/warrenmiller/events 
Neil and I spent about 5 days filming with these guys around the Wasatch, hitting some of our favorite classics. We also got hit with the best storm of the year that week which made for some really nice conditions. And, they put us up in the Cliff lodge, which kicked ass. It was like a vacation!

Good skiing in Utah lately...

A storm arrived around Christmas time and delivered a much needed coat of fresh snow for the mountains of Utah. Things have been filling in nicely ever since. In the last few weeks, I've skied a lot of powder, some of it better than anything I've had in Utah in years. Granted, the last few years have kinda sucked around these parts, so I've been gone a lot. It sure does feel nice to be skiing pow again in our own backyard. Some photos that my brother Neil and I have shot lately.....

^ It got cold for a little while, and deep.

^ we found solitude and untracked deepness in the Uintas

^ Neil doesn't mind grinding out a few thousand feet of Wasatch wiggles

^Trent and his pops. Father and son Wiggles. Bruce laid down an epic figure eight.

^deep, blower pow for Neil

^ Jonny G, the Uinta snow scientist taking pictures of crystals and stuff

^ Aspen trees catching the glow from the first few moments of sunshine. 

^ Mt. Raymond

^Had a great bluebird day with our friend, Nick Russell, hitting lines off Raymond Peak. Huge smiles all day!!!

#filmisdead

^ Watching my brother slash turns between the sharp rock fins of Raymond's east face

^ Nick Russell following my track because he liked how I worked those waves!

^ Even on a down day, I can't help myself from heading into our backyard for some powsurf laps.

What Kind of Meat? - A fly fishing and mountain adventure to Bolivia

   I never would have thought we'd make it to Bolivia when we did. It was a rather spontaneous decision to drop everything and invest it all into something my brother and I have dreamed about for years. Bringing a dream to reality, executing it successfully having researched only enough to do it safely, but leaving plenty of mystery to keep the adventure pure, that is our approach. We made a film that shows our passion and dedication to fly-fishing, in one of the most exotic and threatened locations on earth, the Amazon. We camped in the Cordillera Real, where snow from the 20,000' peaks feeds the great Amazon basin, and had our first experience at high altitude.  It turns out that Bolivia really is an adventurers paradise. From the mountaineering, backpacking, biking, skiing, to the fishing, it's hard to imagine anywhere else in the world where these outdoor pursuits exist on a greater scale, in such close proximity to one another. It's an incredibly fulfilling and organic experience to go from an idea to a film, something thats tangible, something that I can share with others, instead of keeping the memories locked up in my brain. Anyways, I think it's worth sharing. I hope you enjoy :)





If you're interested in a Golden Dorado fishing expedition to the Bolivian Amazon, contact our friends Patrick and Federico from Angling Frontiers, they will take you on the trip of a life time : https://www.facebook.com/anglingfrontiers

Powder surfing in the Monashees

This is some awesome vintage snurfing footage from the interior of British Columbia, sometime in the early 80's...

Skiing in Bolivia: the source of the Amazon

   The last week of our trip to Bolivia was spent in the capitol of La Paz and the surrounding peaks of the Cordillera Real. It was a beautiful, yet somewhat stressful experience. We were pressed for time so we felt like we couldn't fully appreciate the mountains in the way that we wanted. Our headaches lingered for most of the week as we tried to adjust to the altitude change coming from three weeks down in the lowland jungles. I'm glad we were able to get a small taste of the fascinating mountain culture and inspiring landscapes of the Bolivian Andes, and I really hope to go back one day to explore the skiing potential further. Not to mention the EPIC mountain biking.

read the full story here:  http://bit.ly/1ilvFkK

18 minute film:

Roadside runs in Alaska

For half the price of one day of heli-skiing, my brother Neil and I rented a little front wheel drive compact sedan and made it our mobile base camp for two weeks. We bounced around between Girdwood and Turnagain Pass, camping at trailheads and parking lots, and skiing anything that looked fun. I might add that a snowmobile or a helicopter would have been a tremendous help, but on this trip we intended to spend as little money as possible to see what we could manage. It worked out quite well, but really it was the spectacular weather and absolutely bomber snowpack that allowed us to do it. Neil dropped the line at the end of the video at 7:15pm on April 18th, our last day in Alaska for the season, a picture perfect ending to sickest month of skiing I've ever had

firing up the blog: Alaska - Bolivia

Its been a while since I've updated this site, and I'm sure any regular visitors that I once may have had are long gone. My blogging and general media creation abilities have been severely hindered by my 8 year old computer system that can no longer keep up. Although my micro-blogging via iphone has been steady, I'm working to get that upgraded. I haven't stopped documenting fun times with my camera, in fact It seems I've been quite busy with the thing lately. The craziest trips of my life went down in the last 6 months... Alaska and Bolivia. Once my computer situation has improved, hopefully soon, I'll begin editing the video from these expeditions and with any luck, have some fun short films to share. I haven't really been able to watch the footage yet, but if my memory serves me well, we did get some beautiful shots.

^ My brother and I spent a month in Alaska last spring and had ourselves a trip. The weather and snow conditions were sublime. We had the chance to camp out in the Tordrillo mountains for 10 days, where this photo was taken of my brother Neil. To experience Alaska in this way has been a dream of mine since I was a little grom.

^ Bolivia. Bellísimo. I would have to say this was the craziest experience of my life. Early in the summer I approached my brother and suggested that we try and explore someplace new, and far out, and maybe try and make another ski/fish film. We settled on Bolivia. A long time ago we heard that perhaps the best fly-fishing in the world was happening deep in the jungles of the Bolivian Amazon. The place existed in my mind for over a decade as this mythical destination, too far and too expensive for me, but maybe one day. I didn't want to wait any longer to find out if these legends were true, so we went. It wouldn't have been possible without the help of so many people, but I felt that the time was just right. I look forward to sharing more from this incredible journey.

Steelhead and Spines in Alaska...

Steelhead and Spines- The Provo Bros from The Provo Bros on Vimeo.

Our addiction to mountains and rivers has always had us looking north to Alaska, where big fish and mountains existed on a level we had only experienced in our dreams. As the winter of 2012 continued to disappoint in the lower 48, it was obvious that Alaska was being buried in snow. It seemed like the time was right, that maybe after 10 years of "practice" in Utah, we were ready for our journey north. We hit the road in March, putting everything we had into our first and for all we knew, our last adventure to Alaska, with two things on our mind, steelhead and spines.

We joined forces with three of our friends from Utah, for a ski-plane assisted camping expedition in the heart of south eastern Alaska's backcountry. Over 50 miles by wing from the nearest road, our pilot dropped the 5 of us off on a big lonely glacier encircled by jagged mountains, and in the spirit of adventure, wished us good luck. We would need it. From that point on, the feeling of being completely alone in a wild and unknown land for the first time in our lives penetrated every cell in our bodies. Only one person in our group had ever been to Alaska, Chris Coulter. On day 8 when he suddenly left to work in Haines as a heli guide, the feeling of isolation crept deeper into our minds, and it had never felt so good.

We chose to do this trip without any guides, plans, itineraries, or rules simply because we wanted to have our own experience. We wanted it to be raw, unknown, and we wanted it to be an adventure. Of course the style we chose made things much more difficult for us than they could have been, but the feeling of accomplishment was immense. We found glorious spines to ride, and stumbled upon one of the best runs of wild Steelhead in the world. Returning home safely from our first journey to Alaska signified a successful mission, along with the wonderful new memories from the greatest riding and fishing experiences of our lives.

Glacier Bay from the air...

Without a doubt, the highlight of our first trip to Alaska was spending time with Drake Olson in his Super Cub bush plane, 53 Charlie. Between recon flights, glacier drops, and a shuttle to Alaska's premier steelheading river, we spent over 3 hours in the air with Drake frothing over the wildest mountains our eyes had ever seen, as Jimmi Hendrix ripped through the headsets. Drake was absolutely essential for our mission in Alaska and we couldn't have asked for better air support. Non-stop shit talking and jokes  interspersed between serious knowledge of the mountains really made for an all time experience, and he never missed an opportunity to try and scare the life out of us! Here are some photos we shot from the air....

The Man

Drake may be a jokester, but he takes his job very seriously.

Our good buddy, and motivator for the glacier camp, Zach Clanton shooting reconnaissance photos. Choosing a campsite from the air turned out to be a lot harder than we thought.

The heaviest pillow stacks I've ever seen

entering the Fairweather Range, Mount Fairweather in the distance

The shoulder of the Fairweather Range in Glacier Bay National Park. Imagine the Himalaya with 1000 inches of snow, thats the Fairweathers.

McConkey's... a zone made famous by Jeremy Jones and his film Deeper. Our friends Drew Tabke and Chopo Diaz skied the massive panel in the light this spring. F*ck ya boys!

Coming in for a landing. Somewhere down on that broad glacier we would setup our temporary home for 18 days. At this point we are more than 50 miles by wing to the nearest town.

Our first look at the zone we would eventually call "Moonshine Cirque". At this point I was shitting my pants because everything was bigger than we thought. Welcome to Alaska! 

untouchable 

"Hey Drake, Can we come here next year?" "sorry boys thats Canada, but I have an idea......"