VUE

What's your biggest fear during an expedition? Have you ever been caught in an avalanche or rock fall? Yes I have been caught in all those things—and it's very bad. Last year I got fully buried in an avalanche and was unable to breathe. It was a pretty traumatic experience to live through. It recalibrated my appetite for risk. It's totally reset. My para- digm of what's fun, what's adven- ture, what's worthwhile—it's blown apart what I thought I understood about snow and snowpack. I got caught by an avalanche in a situa- tion that was hard to foresee, and I wasn't guiding on that day—I was with friends. We weren't pushing the limits. We weren't in extreme conditions. It's still surprising that it came together and kicked our asses. It makes me just realize that you've got to draw the way further back. When I'm guiding, it's certainly way further back. I thought the margins I had even in my personal skiing, that I was sort of a prudent person compared to a lot of my friends. Now things have tightened up a few notches. It's a scary game. You have to set limits for yourself before you go out the door. When you're shooting (or filming) climbers and skiers, how challeng- ing is it for you to both weather the elements while still getting the perfect shot? Usually it all comes down to plan- ning. Guiding, you book for a certain week. You have to deal with whatev- er the conditions are that week and choose the right locations accord- ingly. Trying to organize a shoot, however ambitious it is, that whole relationship is turned on its head. Usually the brief—coming from Pa- tagonia or Solomon or wherever—is for a certain type of terrain or im- age that I have in my head, routes I want to take. Hopefully, there's enough time to wait for the right weather window—and that doesn't always happen. Some companies will throw things on your plate with a five-day turnaround and you have to go shoot something to the best of your ability whilst staying safe. Ob- viously, while I'm shooting, I'm not always roped up. When you're con- centrating on taking a photo, you're not 100 percent paying attention to where your feet are and staying on the mountain. I try to modulate the risk: if the shot really requires hard terrain, I'll have a rope on and hire another guide to look aer me. A lot of the time I'll seek out terrain. I love shooting on ridges because you oen get sections where you can have the athletes climbing on really exposed, tricky terrain. It's easier for me to move around without having to cling on for dear life to get the image. Using sections of terrain like that are one of the key ways to get the shot I want. V U E N J . C O M 88

• Cover