nothin’ like a friend pointing out that you landed a magazine cover to make it feel like Christmas
Who doesn't love Canada?
Getting the shot while Wissman Gets the shot
Argentina from a skier’s perspective is known for it’s Lomo(steak), Malbek(wine) and skiing that has the potential to be the best or worst you’ve ever experienced. Naturally then, I’ve been rolling the dice five out of the past six years in hopes of catching the legendary Santa Rosa Storm.
It’s a long way to travel, leaving the best part of a short summer for the opposite hemisphere in search of a storm that is famed to leave so much snow atop the Andes Range that people generally don’t even survive to count it all. (Or so goes the modern myth of the Santa Rosa). I’ve hit it right and I’ve hit it wrong but never regretted a few weeks of trading the flip flops for ski boots, especially this year.
The first Ascent ski and snowboard team showed up after three days of travel to a blue bird day and a tracked out mountain but our Guide Jose found us the goods none the less. My first turns of the summer were yummy and I felt lucky, but I had no idea they were only a predecessor to what would come to be some of the greatest skiing I’d ever known. Jose claimed a meter would fall in twenty four hours as the mountain shut down and the flakes began to fall. We didn’t think much of it but three days and almost two meters later we found ourselves first in line at the gnarliest chairlift in the world accessing over 3,000 feet of untracked, untouched perfectly stable POW!
It was one of those special moments even to a professional skier where you know this opportunity may never come again and in humble recognition, we put our camera equipment down and shredded the most famous line in Las Lenas, Edwardo’s, top to bottom.
We all agreed it was the best lift access run of our lives and it only got better from there. Six more days of hiking, skinning and exploring offered us unheard of descents in some of the most beautiful terrain I’ve ever known only to collapse into our rooms at the end mending our shin banged, wind hammered, frost bitten, and for one, food poisoned wounds all in the name of powder.
It will be a trip worth talking about for a long time and to paint the picture for you, I was inspired enough to sit down for three days straight to make a video about it. Enjoy.
FA Ski/Snowboard Team Gets Lucky in Las Lenas 2011 from Lynsey Ann Dyer on Vimeo.
A Season with Pro Skier Lynsey Dyer: 2010-11 Season Full of Travel, Volunteering, Filming, and Heli Skiing
With a calendar full of travel, work with her non-profit SheJumps, Filming for ski movies, Creating new artwork, and Heli Skiing in war zones; Lynsey Dyer is one of the busiest professional skiers on the planet.
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November started the season off with a 6 week volunteering trip to some of the most remote and poverty stricken places in India donating bikes to kids in need and teaching them to maintain and ride them as well on behalf 88 Bikes.org and Free the Slaves.org. Lynsey visited two ashrams on opposite sides of the country one for boys, one for girls. While there, Lynsey painted a mural with the young girls focused on what they wanted their future to look like after being freed from the slave trade. “This trip taught me that the best thing us westerners can do to make the world better is to make ourselves whole, that way everything we do is an act of service.” Dyer commented upon returning. Which probably encouraged her to take the next leap on her adventure through rural India to an authentic Ayruvedic clinic, to learn about the oldest form of medicine in the world.
India: Lynsey spent three weeks in an Ayruvedic medicine clinic, participating in an authentic Panchacarma, which includes prescriptions from two doctors for herbal medicines, yoga, meditation, bodywork, cleanses, chanting and nutrition to balance the body, mind and spirit in the same way it’s been done for thousands of years. When asked about the experience, Lynsey said, “wow, I’d never felt more centered in my life, I’m learning now that real health can’t be found in a pill. I wish more westerners would give themselves this gift, I watched people be cured of cancer there for pennies!”
Late February: Lynsey returned from skiing with Warren Miller on the war torn boarder of Kashmir and Pakistan ironically 70 kilometers from where Osama was eventually found. Bagging some first descents at 15,000 ft on a disputed boarder with snow monkeys all around was a crazy experience for Lynsey. When asked about the experience, Dyer said, “This was the trip of a lifetime. Being blond brightly colored westerners, we got some looks but were surprised at how friendly and supportive the community was. It was like we were waving the white powder flag of fun so neither side, from Pakistanis, to Indians to Kashmirians, seemed threatened and celebrated the snow along with us. I never imagined that skiing could bring opposing sides together on the same page even for a moment. This trip made me proud of my sport.”
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March/APRIL: Lynsey returned from a month of filming with Rocky Mountain Sherpas in British Columbia with a Cineflex. The ridiculously expensive image stabilizing unit takes ski footage shot from a helicopter take to a whole new level and though the group only had a few days of sunlight in over a month, the few shots captured are sure to inspire. The film focuses on the environment and has been predicted to be one of the greatest ski films of all time. After two years of production “ALL I CAN”, premiers in September.
April/May: Returning to Jackson Hole from Canada, overwhelming amounts of snow made for some big avalanches that almost took the lives of some very good friends. It was enough of a wake up call to send her packing. When asked about her mid-season run down south, Dyer stated, “When the going gets dangerous, the dangerous go SURFING! A scary snowpack sent me down south to surf for three weeks in Mexico, I like the sports that require no gear and temperatures that let me feel my feet are a bonus!”
MAY: Dyer made history by having a full page photo published in National Geographic Magazine of base jumpers launching off Half Dome in Yosemite. Catching this highly controversial act in action and then having it published in such a legendary magazine made history and landed Lynsey not only the closing shot to the cover story but photo of the month to millions of online subscribers as well as the home page of the search engine ”Bing”.
JUNE: Dyer took time for her television career by hosting 18 episodes for the Outside Television Film Festival while in Telluride, CO, that will be televised in October 2011. She commented that, “It was nice to over-exercise my brain muscle for a while, I’m feeling much more mentally fit,” after a week of 14 hour days memorizing scripts.
JUNE: Dyer was invited to show her latest works of art in a popular restaurant and wine bar in Telluride, CO. This show consisted of wearable art in the form of one of a kind silk-screen tee shirts and recycled water-bottles that sold out within a matter of a few hours! 
During the Mountain film festival, Lynsey was also invited to speak on behalf of Treefight, a non-profit she supports that is working to save the high alpine White Bark Pine trees devastated by the pine beetle.
Up to two thousand years old, these high alpine trees are the keystone species of the ecosystem that houses our snow pack and feeds the grizzly bear but there is hope of a solution and volunteerism is part of that. When asked to comment, Lynsey said,” it feels good to be giving back to the places that have give me so much, we have a lot we can learn from the trees.”
Late June/July: Lynsey took the few weather windows of the month to develop her ski mountaineering skills with several ski mountaineering outings some lasting 24 hours from car to car in her home mountains, the Teton range. When asked to comment she said, “ I learned that when it comes to ski mountaineering, there’s very little “skiing” involved and a lot of putting one very focused foot in front of the other.
I might call crampons an extreme walking tool, falling is not an option in these mountains, they’re so beautiful but there’s no room for error and that’s a good exercise in itself.”
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- look closely for the cowgirl!
June, what a great time to get up high! After waiting for weeks for an opening in the weather, we got our chance to summit one of the prominent peaks in the Tetons. Great snow, great weather, and great company made for a perfect tour.
This is only the beginning of spring ski season around here! The Wind River range is next!
