Inside the book, I shared stories and imagery. With that kind of pressure, I had to go all out. I love learning! In the end, if the final vision didn’t come to light, I only had myself to blame. Each step of the way was challenge after challenge. Going out and doing it on my own, with help from Scott Hollis in some of the designing, was an undertaking I underestimated. ***So you just self-published your first book, “Alpine State of Mind” tell me about that?Ĭreating Alpine State of Mind, Volume 1, was a bucket list item at some point I needed to make it happen.

Howling winds swirl snow on stormy Mount Baker. My memory was like a necklace missing a precious stone here and there. What I didn’t always know was the between. Those adventures that were separated by years and even decades were intertwined into this adventure. Countless adventures were all linked into one. While this adventure wasn’t a steep ski descent, what it was was an anthology. Throughout most of my life, I have been dedicating every spare moment I had to tackling the Cascades. We skied 60,000 vertical for 120 miles over 16 days through the heart of the Cascade Mountains. It was called the American Alps Traverse. In the Spring of 2013, along with Kyle Miller, I set out on an adventure that had consumed me since ski historian and pioneer Lowell Skoog had shared the idea in a story about his decades-long mission to link a high route from Mount Baker to Mount Rainier on skis. ***You’ve done some huge trips and a lot of first descents- is there an accomplishment you’re most proud of? Tim Black skinning across Upper Berdeen Lake, deep in North Cascades National Park.

Brocken spectre mount rainier