100th Post - Uncanny

My 67th day on snow yesterday was one of the best powder days I've ever had, and it's ironic that it's in April, and Park City was scheduled to close this coming Sunday. It was one of those fantastic days where you talk about it for years to come. It's a funny thing, because it seems like I have a lot of those days when I'm riding with my brother Kory. Maybe it's the fact that he doesn't get very many powder days, so I'm extra stoked to see him get some freshies, but he's just a good dude to ride with, as a general rule. He loves snowboarding and just wants to get out there on his board. Granted, he's a park rat, and I've been doing my best to break him of his evil ways, but, to be fair, everyone goes through their insane park rat stage. Some people just break out of it sooner than others. Anyway, I took the GoPro and through together a little edit to a Belle & Sebastian song that I really like. Hopefully you enjoy the deep snow, and Episode 5 of Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast will be coming very soon.

All-Time @ Brighton

It's funny to me how spring storms operate in Utah. Most of the time it'll be calm and peaceful in the valley, and raging up at the resorts, less than nine miles away. I understand the science (at least, I understand it as much as I plan to understand it, or care to investigate it), but it's just really interesting to me how I can meet Blake Nyman as Causwell at 8:30 with partly cloudy skies, and a temperature around 45º, and within 25 minutes be wrapped in the core a wild blizzard, with howling winds and lighting (yes, I said lighting). It wasn't anything unexpected though, because I read the storm forecast, so we went to work. J. Eichhorst and Hayden Price accompanied us and we headed out to the slackcountry. Some of us a lot more slowly than the others. It took me like 25 minutes to boot pack across Millicent Bowl due to the fact that I was post-holing every step up to my knees and often to my thighs. All in all, it was worth it. We were able to get three solid shots, and then take a couple laps on one of the most epic pow days of the season. The snow pack was really sketchy, and I honestly felt like I was tiptoeing around up there to keep slabs from breaking off onto my friends. No wonder Tuesday morning's avalanche forecast was HIGH. Anyway, enjoy these images. Most are screenshots from the video, and I recommend clicking on the images to see larger versions.

Blake looking very satisfied after stomping a decent sized drop.

Before

And after. Fully buried.

Hayden sending it into oblivion.

Blake; half-cab on the fun gap.

Red Bull 1976 Games

Working for Red Bull Energy Drink has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and occasionally I get to participate in really fun events, like last Saturday's Red Bull 1976 Games, held at The Canyons Resort in Park City, UT. I showed up early to help my boss and the infrastructure team get the gates and the venue fully setup, then took a few turns with my longtime friend Blake Stephenson. The event started at about noon, and 863 images later, it was over. The premise of the contest is to wear retro gear to celebrate the Olympics that should have been. In 1976, Denver, CO was awarded the winter Olympic games, but due to political maneuvering, the games were shifted to Austria, so we at Red Bull decided that it was high time that 1976 got the glory it deserves. The contest consisted of a Snowbladecross race, and an old school air contest, where teams were judged based on skill, showmanship, and overall team mojo. I had so much fun taking pictures, the time just flew by, and I came away with about 80 really solid images. Here's a few of my favorites of the bunch. Enjoy.

This guy was on point the whole time

Airing through the gap

Jason  Hindman on an all out sprint to the finish line

Lindsay Jacobellis should take some pointers from this homie

I think the X-Games would be better-off if it were like this.

In high-speed races like this, milliseconds count, so diving across the finish line was a commonly utilized tactic in order to shave a little time off your score.

Those of us who ride the terrain parks at either Park City or The Canyons are familiar with ski trains hitting jumps, but never quite like this.

Third place. The Shred Dogs of War

2nd place. Masterbladers? I think?

The defending champs: The Cream Team

Podium placement is something to truly be proud of.

Two Days in Big Fork

Many of you who have followed my blog for some time know that from time to time I go out shredding with professional skier Blake Nyman, to try to get shots for the Nimbus Independent productions. One of the shots we got when we went out to Dry Fork in February or March ended up in their first En Route feature called Departure. Last Friday he and I went out to Big Fork of Snake Creek on his sled, and tried to get a shot of this little trench drop to cliff feature that he'd scoped about three weeks back, and get a little rebate and a better shot. One of the promotional tools that the Nimbus crew is doing is called Point and Shoot, and it's rider shot and edited features that are being posted daily on their website. We got some shots for that, but while we were out, and I was hiking out on the rock band, I slipped and slid down through some trees and branches and the was tossed off a small cliff, and landed on rocks. It was really scary, because as I started to slide, I reached for Blake's leg to try and hang onto something, but I failed. I couldn't really tell what was going on because there was just too much snow moving around with me and I just remember being bounced around and the sound of trees and branches breaking, then a long fall, and coming to rest face down on some rocks that had about 15 inches of coverage. I popped up to my feet, and yelled to Blake that I was ok, and then started surveying the damage. There were a lot of broken branches and rocks in the debris pile, but all my camera equipment and my body was totally fine. My wrist was a little sore from landing on it, but everything was great. Scary though.

'Twas An Adventure

Andy Earl and I have been discussing the prospects of doing an overnighter just to iron out any kinks we had in our gear/packing habits/oral hygiene, etc. We plan to do quite a bit of multi-day touring next season, so we wanted to get a feel for how things would go; a trial run, if you will. We opted to go up to Wolverine Cirque because the forecast was predicting that steep, north facing terrain would be the best for early saturday morning skiing and riding, and Twin Lakes pass is fairly sheltered from the wind, and totally sheltered from avalanche danger if you camp just near the pass.

Click on the photo to view a larger version, it looks neat. Taken about 1:30 am

Technically it's illegal to camp anywhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon because of Watershed restrictions, and you're also not allowed to do any overnight parking in the town of Alta without a permit (I'm not sure why. I would assume because of a lack of space). We pulled into the Grizzly Gulch trailhead parking lot and I thought we were sunk when an Alta police officer came over and rolled down his window. He asked us if we were going touring, and when we replied in the affirmative, he just reminded us that there was a scheduled UDOT canyon closure for avalanche control in the morning, and didn't harass us at all about parking in the "No Overnight Parking" zone. 

My snowshoes and Andy's splitboard on the way up.

Both my pack and Andy's pack together must've weighed in at about seven million kilograms, and by the time we reached the pass I was totally beat, but it was super cool to be able to get some rad photos along the way, and the just have the experience. 

My buddy David Kaplan met us up near the pass early the next morning and we went up and over Patsey Marley and did one drop on Mt. Wolverine. The snow was pretty variable, and lots of wind loading. Andy popped a decent size wind pocket that sluffed out pretty dramatically (albeit it wasn't very big or dangerous), but it was just an indicator that our chosen location wasn't the safest zone to be shredding in, so we called it a day. Epic knee deep turns down through the north facing slope of Grizzly Gulch ended the day with a bang. I definitely can't complain, and I also learned quite a bit about camping overnight in the backcountry, and expecting to shred the next day. I'll be doing it again very soon.

Twin Lakes Pass, with the BCC cabins and Guardsman Pass glaring in the background

The infamous Wolverine Cirque. Andy and David atop Mt. Wolverine at left.

Getting to the zone is certainly not for the faint at heart.

Portrait Time

For some reason, lately I've just been in the mood to photograph people. Doing portraits is really intersting to me, mostly due to the post-production aspect. Don't get me wrong, I love working with the subject, and that's extremely rewarding, especially when I'm working with my friends, like the stunning Erin McMullin featured in this post. Yeah, that's great, and I enjoy it and all that, but I really get stoked when I pull each image into Photoshop for some minor retouching. Now, although I do mention Photoshop, the caveat is that I really don't use that much. I do a teeny tiny little bit of skin smoothing and eye enhancements, then I dodge and burn sometimes, it just depends on the image and the look I'm going for, but it's been nice as I've gained more experience to learn how to accomplish certain looks with the camera exposure settings so I have less work to do when it comes down to Photoshop. To me, it always seems like it takes a lot less time to tweak a camera setup or exposure setting than it does to tweak something in Photoshop. Anyway, I love taking pictures of people. Thanks, Erin, for coming over and having a quick little shoot. These were all shot with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II and EF 24-70 ƒ/2.8L USM lens, and two Promaster 160A studio flashes with diffusion and reflector umbrellas used. Enjoy.

My personal favorite of the session.

She wanted to show off her curves.

Dan4Sheriff

My buddy Luke Beachley called me earlier today while I was on my way to Park City to snowboard, and asked if I had time to shoot some photos of his brother-in-law Dan Burton. Mr. Burton is running for public office against a sixteen year incumbent and will be launching his website very soon. Luke wanted to take pictures of him with blood dripping from his mouth and a gun in his hand, showcasing how he'll defend American interests tooth and nail, but I didn't think it was the best way to approach a first time run at public office. I'm not sure which one would have been more effective... I'll update this post as soon as the website goes live. If you live in Utah County, check him out, and watch for flyers and posters and such, because they have images taken by yours truly.

***UPDATE***

Here's Dan's website: www.dan4sheriff.com

204 Determination + Giveaway

204 Determination - Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast from Parker Alec Cross on Vimeo.

In response to what viewers like you have asked for, the Wasatch Team put a whole lot of miles on their boots, snowmobiles, and chairlifts to generate the hardest hitting episode yet. With locations varying from the streets of Ogden, to the 11,000 foot faces, Episode Four will leave you wishing the season were longer.

Principle Cinematography shot on Canon 5D Mark II by Parker Alec Cross

Colorist: Parker Alec Cross

Featuring the talents of Parker Cross, Andy Earl, Daryl Young, JP Sokolowski, Uriel Ruvalcaba, Derek Olthuis, Stain Reichman, Cooper Hoffmeister, Ben Millsaps, Jason Hindman and Stosh Lemberes.

Well, it's time for another episode. Check it out above, and make sure to watch it in fullscreen mode for full effect. In order to qualify for the giveaway, you need to become a fan of Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast on Facebook. Since winter is winding down, we need to show the world how much we love the snow. Post a picture of yourself skiing or snowboarding on the wall of the Facebook page, and we'll choose the picture that is the raddest as the winner of this week's Nomis hoody giveaway. Thanks to John at Board of Provo for hooking up the giveaway.

Turning Up the Volume

In my screenwriting class, my teacher is always talking about ways for us as writers to "turn up the volume." My goal as a new media producer is to generate content that gets people stoked and makes them want to come back for more–in essence, my goal is to turn up the volume. The better my stuff is, and the cooler the content, the more hits we get and the better we look to potential sponsors, and the better my peanut butter sandwiches taste because I know that I can actually kind of afford it, instead of pilfering it from my mom's pantry when she's not home.

That being said, it is very tough being the sole camera man/director/producer/creative genius/editor/distributor to get super rad stuff. It's a lot of the supplementary stuff that really makes an episode cool, and it's very very tough to do it solo. We've been trying though, even if it means waking up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a sunrise session, or staying out all night and dodging the police to get a shot on an urban feature, and I think that this next episode will show just how far we've actually come with our progression. Below is a link to the new teaser, and you'll see just how much we've improved in a very short amount of time. I hope you like it.

Ep. 4 Teaser 2 - Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast from Parker Alec Cross on Vimeo.
You asked for it, we delivered. Due to all the feedback we've received on the blog, we decided to make our episodes even more rad than they've ever been. And we're doing it all for your enjoyment. Episode Four is coming at you in a matter of days, so tell all your friends and get rad.

Cameras:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
GoPro HD Hero

Lenses:
EF 24-70 ƒ/2.8L USM
EF 70-200 ƒ/2.8 IS USM
Sigma 15mm ƒ/2.8 Fisheye

Cinematography and Post-production by Parker Alec Cross
Additional camera operation by Andy Earl

http://crossroadstudios.com

Getting Deeper

I'm just now starting to go to the places I've been aching for all season, because we're starting to get a decent base in the Wasatch, and it's filling in all the bony scary sections that were too exposed to ski. I'm also pretty excited of the GoPro HD Hero helmet camera that Andy and I purchased last week. Took her on her maiden voyage today, and she performed wonderfully. The workflow is identical to the 5D Mark II, so it makes things pretty simple for me to work with. Anyway, check out the teaser trailer for the newest episode, which I haven't started editing yet, but I've been compiling the footage and I think it's going to be really good.

Episode Four Trailer - Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast from Parker Alec Cross on Vimeo.
Episode Four is ready to deliver on what everyone has been asking for. More of.......everything. More shredding, more rails, more jumps, more powder, and more intensity. Get pumped because it's coming at you in the next few days. Filmed on a GoPro HD Hero.