JANUARY IS OUT: Photo annual, feral skiers and China
This the time of year that matters, and we’re not talking about camping out at "Sprawl-Mart" to get in line to buy some stupid video game console. No, it’s about getting off your ass for those all-important early season turns. This is when you build up those ski muscles so that you don’t keel over and die of exhaustion when you’re lapping your favorite chair in January and February.
It’s also time for the perennial Powder favorite, the Photo Annual. Just in time to help you get out of bed, or even better, go further. It arrives at a time when winter is starting to bear down, and skiers begin fanning out across our beloved mountains in search of the almighty turn. It arrives at a time when the desire to ski borders on irrational lust. It arrives when we need it most.
This year’s Photo Annual gives you the best from photographers Will Wissman, Mattias Fredriksson, Tuck Fauntleroy, Scott Markewitz, Christian Pondella, and Wade McKoy, among many others. Go to Austria, Turkey, Switzerland, and get even closer to Jackson Hole, the Wasatch, and California.
Scott Gaffney gives us a photo essay on the meaning of tracks, and Porter Fox introduces a photo collection on night skiing—the strobes, the flakes reflecting the moon, the whiskey...And Les Anthony goes to China to see how skiing, a very democratic sport, fits in with communism, or not.
But the feature we are most pleased to present is "Meet the Ferals." Last winter, Powder looked deep into ski culture to find those souls who sacrifice everything for the sport. We, with the help of our intrepid writers and photographers, found five "feral skiers," guys you’ve never heard of who live in lean-to’s, busses, backcountry huts, tents, and even the trees as a way to be closer to nature and their first love—skiing.
So let this be a time to rejoice—for winter, for skiing, and for the Photo Annual.
