Snowmass in Summer

That's Greg van Liew, a friend of mine from college, hiking in to ski Snowmass Mountain outside of Aspen-Snowmass, Colorado. This was the first week of July in 1984, and the day after I shot this photo we skied 3,000 vertical feet from just below the 14,092-foot summit right into Snowmass Lake at the base. I was up there in the third week of July last summer, and the gigantic snow mass of Snowmass had almost vanished. Fluke years or global warming? I don't know. Couple of classic pieces of equipment visible in this old picture! Greg is wearing Nike Lava Domes, the shoes that created a category and then inexplicably vanished. And how much you wanna bet he's carrying Fischer Europa 99 skis? Those were the bad old days of telemark skiing—but at least the skis were light.