Young Blood

Photo: Steve Rogers, Bread and Butter Adventure Media

A few months back my friend Todd, of The Range Life, sent out an email linking to a slideshow of the previous weekend’s adventure. Usually his shots capture his standard weekend exploits: kayaking and skiing around Washington and British Columbia. These shots were a little different in nature, and had me wondering if Todd had just joined the setup crew for Cirque du Soleil. The first couple of shots focused on a bunch of guys in the woods climbing high into trees, setting all sorts of lines, yanking on z-drags, and smiling really big. The effort looked to be led by climbing extraordinaire Matt Maddaloni, who I’ve personally known as the climbing mastermind behind the zip-line setup used to shoot the whitewater footage in Bryan Smith’s Collective Video, 49 Megawatts, and who has been involved with the construction of most of the zip-line canopy tours around Whistler. With him behind the wheel, this project was bound to be cool.

The remainder of Todd’s shots focused on Matt attempting to free solo a 5.13 named “Young Blood” on a monster boulder adjacent to the site they’d been working on. It seemed like he was making the first few moves just fine, and then kept having issues with the crux of the problem … and falling off. Shots of Matt climbing. Shots of Matt falling in midair. Shots of the ground thirty or forty feet below the boulder. And a few pictures of the mind-blowing creative rope-work that tied the whole event together.

Bryan Smith captured that day on film, and put together a short film, “Young Blood,” that we recently posted to The Collective. Although I’d seen the photos and some small clips of the event, this video really brought home the magic that can happen when a few creative and educated minds go out to expand the boundaries of play. I will be forever impressed and inspired by folks like Matt who have mastered their craft and keep pushing the boundaries of their physical and mental abilities, use available technology in new, daring ways, focus on a minimal footprint, and do it all within a realm of safety. Keep after it!

Check out the video.

A Dozen More Turns

Oregon had nearly tricked us into thinking it was spring, but then it dropped a winter storm on us like a top-turnbuckle flying elbow from pro wrestler Supa Fly Jimmy Snuka. This past weekend we were blessed with another 15-ish inches of fresh pow. People raced to the mountain like kids to the tree on Christmas day. This weekend was another example of how this winter has been epic by all counts. However, in its “epicness” Mother Nature has also brought some near and not so near misses. This powerful film, A Dozen More Turns, portrays a very real example of the avie dangers that exist in the mountains. It depicts a group of friends in the backcountry, but it is worth the reminder because slides can happen at the resort too.

Tired of Sound Bites?

Intelligent Debate. Passionate Media. How rare is that? If you found it, would you engage with it? I ask because I recently discovered Scribemedia.org. That’s exactly what they promise and that’s definitely what they deliver. The folks at Scribemedia travel extensively to capture and deliver speeches, roundtables and interviews of thought leaders across an incredibly diverse range of disciplines from technology, fashion, business, design, media and the arts. My samplings included a talk by Chris Jordan at the recent Greener Gadgets Conference where he artfully illustrates our staggering quantities of mass consumption and a speech by Lord John Browne of Madingley (former Managing Director of the colossus oil company British Petroleum) about the future of world energy markets.

Scribemedia serves up intelligent dialogue, versus the usual sound-bite approach that has become all too prevalent in our national dialogue. As they say, they “deliver content where and how people want to receive it.”