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WINTER 2023
Life’s full of tough choices: red pill or blue pill? Hops or Malts? Bacon or Vegan? On the mountain, similar conundrums await: manicured groomers or challenging steeps? Hidden glades or park features? First tracks, or sunset cruisers? Snowmobile adventures or moonlight turns? High Fives or Blow-‘Em-Up-FistBumps? Here, however, one choice is clear: when in doubt, take one more run. Welcome to Snowshoe.
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. e d i R Rest. Come to ride. To shred miles of downhill trails at the region’s premier winter sports destination. But when you’re ready to rest, discover our cozy cabins, quiet
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cross-country trails and dark starry skies. Come to ride, stay for the rest.
FROM THE EDITOR
This is Frank Rienzo, my grandpa. He was born on April 17, 1923, which means that at the time I’m writing this, he’s 100 years, six months, and 20 days old. He has plenty of stories to tell about his life as an Italian kid growing up in New York, like the time his parents gave him a nickel to go buy a bucket of beer at the local bar. Not a bucket of beer bottles or cans mind you, just a bucket full of beer to bring back home. I love listening to the stories he tells about his life, and he loves hearing all my stories about outdoor adventures in West Virginia. One of the amazing things about having a grandparent live for so long is being able to grow as a person over the course of their lifetime. Some of my happiest memories of our relationship are from just the past few years. He’s not one to stay on the phone for longer than 10 minutes, but we used to call each other every week to catch up. When I didn’t pick up, which was often, he’d leave a voicemail saying, “I bet you’re out biking,” or “I bet you’re out snowboarding. You sure do love to be outdoors.” In the summer of 2019, I travelled to St. Louis to work at a newspaper. My grandpa continued to ring me each weekend to check in. I missed a lot of those calls because I was out biking, but would be treated to a voicemail from him when I got back. In one, he said, “We just wanted to see how you were doing. Our little country girl is down in the big city and she hasn’t got her dirt bike so she might feel a little lost.” He likes to call mountain bikes “dirt bikes,” and after reading a few issues of Highland Outdoors, he decided he wanted one of his 6
HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
My grandpa has been one of the biggest supporters of Highland Outdoors since Dylan and I took it over in 2018. He reads every issue cover-to-cover and then calls to debrief me on all the stories he likes and how good the advertisements look. (As a retired salesman, he’s got a keen eye for the ads.) But above all, he calls to say how much he enjoys reading the magazine and how proud he is of us for making it. After spending the past few days listening to all his old voicemails, I’ve come to cherish how much our magazine has helped him discover a West Virginia he likely didn’t know existed. He can observe our ancient mountains, raging rivers, expansive valleys, and magical forests. He can share in our endless backpacking, dirt biking, and land skiing adventures. And he often says that if he was younger, he’d love to give it all a shot. In August of 2021, my grandparents came to Davis for Dylan’s and my wedding. Every inch of Canaan Valley was carpeted in fields of glowing goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. The weather was lovely all afternoon, but when the reception started, we saw darkgreen clouds billow over Cabin Mountain in the distance. The valley put on quite the show that evening, yet it never stormed upon us. When I talked to my grandpa after the wedding, he said that of all the places he’s been in his life, he’d never been anywhere like this before. He might not get a chance to visit here again, but my heart is full knowing that he gets to read this. I’ll forever be grateful to have a platform where I can share my love of West Virginia, and I hope that he can keep experiencing this place through our words and photos. My grandpa’s enthusiasm and support over the years are gentle reminders of how lucky we are to call this place home. We can never know where our lives might lead us, but I hope we can all find joy and solace along the way. And with that, I’ll leave you with his ending to so many of our calls over the years, “Take care of yourselves and enjoy life.” w Nikki Forrester
STAFF
Editor-in-Chief, Co-Publisher Dylan Jones Co-Publisher, Designer Nikki Forrester Copy Editor Amanda Larch Just A Few Other Things Dylan Jones, Nikki Forrester
CONTRIBUTORS
Kim Ayers, Vicki Capone, Emily Chen-Newton, Gabe DeWitt, Nikki Forrester, Taira Gainer-Sarfino, Frank Gebhard, Paul Golder, Dennis Jarvis, David Johnston, Dylan Jones, David Kiel, Ryan Maurer, Jesse Robinson, Kurt Schachner, Hannah Snyder, Sterling Snyder, Mark Webb, Joel Wolpert, Nico Zegre
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COVER
Mackinzie Dickman launches off a jump at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in Pocahontas County. Photo by Kurt Schachner. Copyright © 2023 by Highland Outdoors. All rights reserved.
A happy Frank at our wedding
own. In another voicemail he told me, “We got your new magazine. You better buy me the best dirt bike you can. I didn’t know I was missing so much fun. Grandma would like to tag along, too.” He also likes to call skis “land skis,” which, although not common parlance, always makes me smile.
Nikki Forrester
CONTENTS 12
16
22
MR. SPRUCE GOES TO WASHINGTON
WHERE LEGENDS ARE MADE
WINNING SHOTS
By Nikki Forrester
By Dylan Jones
34
40
THE CONTENDER
SITTING PRETTY
By Emily Chen-Newton
By Taira Gainer-Sarfino
A racer slices down the giant slalom in the 63rd Governor’s Cup Ski Race, pg. 16.
From the Second Annual Highland Outdoors Photo Contest By Dylan Jones
EVERY ISSUE 8 BRIEFS 42 PROFILE 47 GALLERY highland-outdoors.com
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BRIEFS
IN MEMORY OF KIMMY CLEMENTS By Nikki Forrester and Dylan Jones
On June 19, 2023, our dear friend Kimmy Clements departed from the physical realm. Kimmy was a quintessential renaissance woman. She was indefatigably stoked about anything and everything she dipped her hands into. And she loved to dream big. Kimmy was a consummate and expertly skilled outdoorswoman: an avid telemark skier, rock climber (locally famous for her robust biceps), backpacker, and cyclist. One time, she showed up for a group ride with her aging mountain bike featuring pedals that required a special shoe but wearing regular old sneakers. It wasn’t until halfway through the ride that we pointed out her error, to which she laughed and said, “Well, look at that!” before crushing out the rest of the rugged ride with a goofy grin on her face. She was a hardcore White Grass backcountry skier, often found ripping stylish telemark turns whenever she wasn’t busy tackling some side project or helping out a friend in need. She had a style like no other—hobo-chic as we liked to 8
Kimmy was also a skilled chef, working as a cook for local restaurants like the White Grass Café and outdoor education camps at Spruce Knob and upstate New York. She even had a successful stint selling homemade bagels around Davis. For Kimmy, work and play were always intertwined. Perhaps some of our favorite memories are visiting Kimmy in her wild, sprawling garden. She nurtured throngs of edible and ornamental plants every spring and was never shy about sharing seedlings, growing tips, and supplies. When we asked to borrow pots one day, she sent us into her barn and told us to grab anything we needed. It was filled to the brim with old pots, trays, watering cans, a foosball table, several porcelain bathtubs, stacks of ancient windows, and countless other items for future projects. While overwhelming to us, Kimmy saw it as a space of endless opportunity. Another time we asked her how to improve the nutrients in our soil. Ten minutes later, she showed up at our house with a jar of a
HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
black, goopy natural fertilizer that smelled absolutely atrocious but provided the exact pick-me-up our plants needed. Some of her house plants are now growing vigorously in our living room, a loving reminder that Kimmy is still with us in vegetative form. Beyond her impressive cornucopia of talents, Kimmy shared an equally impressive cornucopia of love for so many in her local community. When we looked around at her memorial service, we were amazed at the range of seemingly disparate groups of people who all came together to celebrate her life. A friend put it best: Kimmy was everyone’s best friend. When Kimmy was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer, she decided she was going to kick its ass. And she did, all the way to the end of her hardfought battle. Toward the end of her first round of chemotherapy treatments, she remained optimistic and somehow felt good enough to mow her lawn and hike to the top of Bald Knob in Canaan Valley—a rugged hike for a fit person. When we last saw her, her treatment seemed to be going better than expected. With unabated energy, we talked about all the adventures we were going to go on in the fall when she was better: backpacking, rock climbing, canoeing, even training to do a 200-mile bikepacking race in Preston County. It breaks our hearts that we won’t get to do these adventures with Kimmy’s physical presence, but we still plan on doing all of them, with trinkets from her home in tow, in her honor. It’s safe to say that Kimmy lived and loved more in her 43 wild years than many do with twice that time. And though life isn’t a contest, we feel that while her time was short, Kimmy won the life lottery with what time she did have. And we won the life lottery, too, by having her life touch ours. Rest easy, friend. We’ll see you on the slopes this winter and in the garden this spring. w
Dylan Jones
call it—featuring old woolen trousers, colorful suspenders, some sort of wild sweater, and f ingerless knit gloves. Her signature style translated into her prowess on the slopes. You could always tell when it was Kimmy’s si l houet te da ncing down fresh powder, especially when it was accompanied by her unique giggle. When she got to the bottom of a run, she’d shout something at you in her hilarious imitation of a British accent, giggle again, and zoom off for another lap.
WILBUR THE WOOLY PREDICTS EPIC WINTER By HO Staff Move over Punxsutawney Phil, there’s a new weather-predicting critter in town! We’d like to formally introduce you to Wilbur the Wooly, a six-legged meteorologist who recently embarked on his new role as official Highland Outdoors winter mascot. Regional folklore has long held that the width of colored bands on the wooly bear caterpillar, which is the larval form of the stunning Isabella tiger moth, can accurately forecast the severity of the coming winter. Wooly bears have 13 segments, and legend has it that the wider the middle brown band is, the milder the coming winter will be. Conversely, the thicker the black bands are on either end of this adorable bear that is most definitely not a bear, the more severe—and awesomely epic—the winter shall be. Way back in 1948, an entomologist named Dr. Howard Curran decided to test this hypothesis by measuring the brown bands of 15 different species of tiger moth caterpillars in Bear Mountain, New York. Curran then averaged the number of brown segments and forecast a prediction for the coming winter and totally nailed it. Well, dear friend, you can toss that Farmer’s Almanac in the rubbish bin because Wilbur is here to tell you that Dr. Curran was correct. Inspired by Curran and eager to corroborate the evidence behind his initial experiment, Wilbur enrolled in Columbia University’s highly regarded meteorology program. But having spent the majority of his larval life among the leaf litter of a pristine forest floor, Wilbur became quite unhappy in the concrete jungle of New York City. He dropped out of Columbia when he realized that his attempt to validate Curran’s theory wasn’t needed—he could far outperform the wintry predictions of his peers simply by looking at his own colors.
Dennis Jarvis, this photo was adapted
So, what does Wilbur have to say about the upcoming winter? While one can scour the internet for all kinds of recent news about weather models suggesting a strong El Niño due to record warmth in the Pacific, why waste your time when you can just look to Wilbur for proof? “You can throw all the nerdy weather hullabaloo out the window,” Wilbur said after calling for over 200 inches of total snowfall across the highest ridges of the Alleghenies. “All you need to do is take a look at how narrow my brown band is betwixt my thick black bands to know that it’s gonna be an absolute rager of a winter. I’m talking civilization-disrupting amounts of snowfall here, folks.” w
THE WATER COLUMN By Nico Zegre My reverence for West Virginia’s plentiful forests continues into winter, long after the last rusty oak leaf has floated to the forest floor. Even though they are dormant and appear lifeless, trees continue to provide awe and wonder during the winter—along with goods like maple syrup. This delicious, natural treat is only produced under specific weather conditions, meaning each sugar maple tree (Acer saccharum) becomes its own water column for a brief period of time. Although syrup makers collect sap during the coldest months of the year, the maple sap production process actually starts during the growing season, when sugar maples are still taking up water, photosynthesizing, and sequestering carbon. Sugars are produced during photosynthesis, but when deciduous trees stop growing and lose their leaves in the fall, they store these crucial sugars in rays—cells that run perpendicular from the center of a tree to the bark. In winter, most deciduous trees produce sugary sap to build new cells and repair bark damage from injury (think woodpecker holes). When the air temperature drops below freezing at night, gasses dissolve into the sap, thereby decreasing pressure inside the cells. When the fluid in the wood freezes, those gasses are compressed in the ice. When daytime temperatures warm to between 40 and 50 degrees F, the frozen sap melts and the gasses expand, increasing pressure in the tree. If there is a syrup tap in the tree, the pressure is released, allowing the sap to flow out and providing the raw material for maple syrup production. Given the specific temperature conditions needed for sap to flow, maple syrup production occurs only during winter. When these freeze-thaw cycles end in spring, sugar maple trees use these stored sugars to start growing leaf buds once again, and the sap production season comes to a close. Beyond the flow of maple sap, trees engage in other awe-inspiring, water-related happenings during the chilliest season. Water that is typically taken up by trees and returned to the atmosphere via transpiration during the growing season instead replenishes the groundwater table. This process provides fresh water for the springs from which we drink yearround. It also saturates the landscape, sending more runoff into streams and creating the boatable flows that make the Mountain State a world-class destination for whitewater paddling in springtime. w Nico Zegre is a forest hydrologist who loves paddling on, swimming in, and telling stories about West Virginia water.
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Three premiere ski resorts, small mountain towns and warm, cozy cabins are waiting for you in Tucker County. With an average snowfall of over 100 inches per year, our high mountain paradise is ideal for skiing, snowboarding, and other seasonal activities. Plan your winter getaway
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By Nikki Forrester
A
The genesis of the Capitol Christmas Tree project began in the 1860s, when the Speaker of the House decided to plant a live tree on the West Lawn of the Capitol to celebrate the holidays. Unfortunately, the tree didn’t survive for long and the would-be-tradition died shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until nearly a century later that the idea for a Capitol Christmas tree was revived by the Architect of the Capitol, the leader of the agency responsible for overseeing the buildings and grounds of Capitol Hill.
USDA Forest Service
light dusting of snow coated the West Virginia highlands on November 1 as two sawyers harvested a majestic 63-foot-tall Norway spruce tree from the Greenbrier Ranger District of the Monongahela National Forest. Out of the nation’s 228 billion trees, this beauty was selected as the 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree. The wintry weather provided a perfect setting for the beginning of the tree’s journey from the crest of the Appalachians to the foot of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
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In 1964, a 24-foot Douglas fir Christmas tree was purchased from a nursery in Pennsylvania and planted on the U.S. Capitol Grounds. It was decorated and lighted each year until it met its demise in a windstorm in the spring of 1967. The following year, two white pines were stacked together to create a 30-foot-tall Christmas tree. Then in 1970, the Architect of the Capitol asked the U.S. Forest Service to cut a tree from a National Forest and bring it to the West Lawn of the Capitol for the holiday season. “That first tree was from the Monongahela National Forest,” said Amy Albright, the 2023 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Project Manager. Since then, every Capitol Christmas tree has come from one of the country’s 154 National Forests. Each year, one National Forest is selected to provide a Christmas tree, kickstarting the quest for the perfect tree. “You think you just cut a tree down and send it to D.C., but this project is so much more involved than that,” Albright said. This year, Albright and her team used aerial photos and maps of nearly one million acres of the Monongahela National Forest to identify areas that could be home to the right tree. The Architect of the Capitol only seeks out trees that are 60 to 80 feet tall, lush with full branches all the way down the trunk, and robust enough to survive the journey to D.C. “We have lots of different conifer species here in West Virginia, but in order to find the trees that met the requirements by the Architect of the Capitol, we narrowed it down to two different species: Norway spruce and red spruce,” said Albright. While equally beautiful, other conifers like Canaan fir, Eastern white pine, and hemlock either don’t achieve the desired height or are too brittle to make the trek. In July of 2023, Jim Kaufmann, Director of Capitol Grounds and Arboretum at the Architect of the Capitol, spent three days visiting eight candidate trees across the Monongahela National Forest— four Norway spruce and four red spruce. He chose a straight and symmetrical Norway spruce with elegant drooping branches from the Greenbrier Ranger District, which happens to be the same species and location of the first Capitol Christmas Tree provided by the Forest Service in 1970. “We’re harkening back to that original Christmas tree,” Albright said. After the 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree was identified, two sawyers were selected to do the honor of harvesting the tree with a crosscut saw. Arden Cogar Jr. is a West Virginia attorney and World Champion Lumberjack who has earned 55 individual world titles. In 1976, his father, Arden Cogar Sr., harvested a red spruce in the Gauley Ranger District for the Capitol Christmas Tree, which was the last time the Monongahela National Forest provided a Capitol Christmas Tree. Ron Polgar is a botanist and biological technician for the U.S. Forest Service who has worked on the Monongahela National Forest for the past 46 years, longer than any other employee on the Mon.
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The two sawyers harvested the Christmas tree, which was then lifted by a crane and placed onto a specialized frame on a trailer. Over the course of two weeks in November, the grand Norway spruce was paraded throughout the Mountain State, starting in Elkins, the headquarters of the Monongahela National Forest. The tree made its way through Summersville, Marlinton, Charleston, Huntington, Wheeling, Morgantown, Upper Tract, Davis, and several other locations before arriving at the Capitol lawn on November 17. highland-outdoors.com 13
Top left: A truck carrying the 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree, a 63-foot-tall Norway spruce from the Monongahela National Forest, stops in Elkins as part of a two-week tour to Washington, D.C., photo by Vicki Capone. Bottom left: One of 10,000 handmade ornaments used to decorate the tree, photo by Vicki Capone. Right: This year’s 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree, photo by USDA Forest Service.
These parades provide an opportunity for local communitiy members to see the tree, learn about the history of the Mon, and wish the tree well on its way to D.C., said Albright. During the parade in Marlinton on November 6, the tree was accompanied by a fire truck and upwards of 60 folks of all ages riding their bikes down the main road in town, said Vicki Capone, who attended the event. “The National Christmas Tree was harvested from basically their backyard on land that they feel a sense of pride and ownership of,” she said. Once the tree was installed and anchored on the Capitol Grounds, staff members of the Architect of the Capitol decorated it with lights and 10,000 handmade ornaments. Many of these ornaments were crafted by elementary school students as well as members of garden clubs, Girl Scout troops, 4-H clubs, and other organizations throughout the Mountain State. “Everybody gets to see the culture and the people through the ornaments that highlight West Virginia,” said Albright, adding that many of the ornaments featured the state’s cryptids and native wildflowers. 14 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
Along the tree’s tour through the Mountain State, visitors were also able to sign a banner along the side of the truck that will be displayed with the tree. “It’s like a big 70-foot greeting card from the people of West Virginia to the nation’s capital,” described Albright. Another part of the tour involved an educational exhibit about the Shawnee Tribe, who has ancenstral homelands in West Virginia. This year, the Shawnee Tribe named the Capitol Christmas Tree wa’feem’tekwi (pronounced wa-thame-tech-we), which means “bright tree” in the Shawnee language. Along with contributing information for the educational exhibit, the Shawnee people crafted handmade ornaments to adorn its flaring branches. After the holiday season ends, the tree will return to West Virginia, where the lumber will be milled and given to the Shawnee Tribe for use on their ceremonial grounds in Oklahoma. w Nikki Forrester is co-publisher of Highland Outdoors. Last year, she cut down a Norway spruce for a Christmas tree. It quickly dropped all its needles, which she’s still sweeping up to this day.
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By Dylan Jones
T
his past March, I strapped into my trusty snowboard to compete in my first-ever giant slalom race: the 63rd Governor’s Cup Ski Race, which was held at Timberline Mountain in Canaan Valley. Before the snowboard portion of the show, we were allowed to “side-slip” the course, meaning we could ride down alongside the icy path containing the gates to gauge where the hardest turns would be. I slid down with my friend and longtime local snowboarder Brian Sarfino, listening to his assessment of the course. I pictured myself way up on edge, parallel to the ground in each sharp turn like a seasoned veteran. When I got to the starting gate, I visualized celebrating at the finish after making it down the run with style and grace. The beeps of the 3-2-1 countdown sounded out, and I was off with a push. I got low and made my first turn, realizing how quickly the second turn was coming up. I went way too wide, but got back on course and cut the second turn on my toeside edge. On the third turn, I realized I was way out of my league. I slipped out on my heelside edge and skidded over a few icy ruts on my arse before eeking my way back up on edge to clear the next gate. My run, although not over, was a throwaway. I carved my way down the remainder of the course with my tail between my legs, feeling humbled and even more impressed by those who were able to rip the course with mastery and finesse. At that moment, I knew that I was definitely not going to win. But what I didn’t know was that I was taking part in a historic and legendary contest that is the southeast’s oldest running ski race.
A Brief History of the Cup The inaugural Governor’s Cup Ski Race was held in 1960, and the contest has happened every calendar year since. The event is typically held in early March, although on a few occasions the race was postponed until December of the following ski season to make sure the slopes were open and the conditions were prime.
The race is sponsored by the Tucker County Alpine Festival, a nonprofit group that hosts a series of annual events outside of the Governor’s Cup, including the well-attended Leaf Peeper’s Festival. The origins of the Alpine Festival trace back to an epic winter carnival weekend that featured a pageant, Snow Ball dance, German Fest, parade, and, of course, the Governor’s Cup Ski Race. “The German Fest was absolute mayhem—polka and alcohol. They had a blessing of the skis at Saint Veronica’s Catholic Church on Sunday morning for the ones that survived the German Fest,” says legendary Canaan Valley skier John Lutz, who became involved with the Governor’s Cup in the early 1970s. “It wasn’t just skiers out here in the valley, the whole towns of Thomas and Davis turned out for these events. Davis was an integral part of the ski scene.” While Canaan Valley is currently home to three ski areas— Canaan Valley Ski Resort, Timberline Mountain, and the White Grass Ski Touring Center—several others have come and gone over the decades. According to Lutz, the inaugural race was held at Weiss Knob Ski Area, which opened in 1959 and is the present-day site of White Grass. Since then, the race has been held at various venues throughout the area, including Canaan Valley Resort (which opened in 1971), Timberline Four Seasons Resort (which opened in 1987 and became Timberline Mountain in 2020), and even Blackwater Falls State Park, where the surprisingly long and thrilling sled run currently exists. A Formidable Format Historically, the Governor’s Cup was only open to alpine skiers, who raced in one slalom run and one giant slalom (GS) run. While the presence of the word “giant” might sound intimidating, the gates are actually further apart, meaning skiers negotiate fewer and wider turns throughout the course. When the race was held on the Ramble ski trail at Canaan Valley Resort, the GS race had just 28 gates compared to 45 on the slalom course. “A lot of people don’t show up for the slalom because it’s a lot more difficult. It intimidates some people because the turns are more aggressive and technical,” highland-outdoors.com 17
says Cary Reed, vice president of the Snow Sports Museum of West Virginia. The Governor’s Cup now offers racing categories for alpine skiers, telemark skiers, and snowboarders. The GS race on Saturday is open to all three disciplines; the standard slalom race on Sunday is reserved for alpine skiers. The total time of each race determines that category’s male and female winners, and the combined time of GS and slalom runs determines the overall male and female winners for alpine skiers. There’s even a special award given out for the Triple Crown: the fastest overall competitor who races in all three categories over the weekend. While the racers challenge themselves to be the fastest, the real challenge lies in setting the racecourse. The course designer is an artist; the medium is the blank, white canvas of a pristine ski slope. Gate placement dictates how dynamic and on edge a skier must be to negotiate the tight turns at speed. “There’s a lot of room for individual expression from the course setter,” says Lutz, who has probably set the gates for more Governor’s Cup racecourses than anyone. The slopes themselves are dynamic, offering various degrees of pitch from top to bottom. “You always use the terrain by making gates straighter in flats and tighter in steep sections—someone’s either going to crash or it’s going to be a nice photo,” says longtime course setter Tim Worden, who has been involved with the Governor’s Cup since the early 1980s and won the event in 1997. “I remember getting really psyched out and working on my skis the night before. I’d be riding the lift up in the dark and waiting for it to get light enough to start setting.” Nowadays, course setters use battery-powered drills with augers to quickly make holes in which they place special poles that are hinged to breakaway and pop back up when a skier makes contact while cutting the turns. But setting—and maintaining—the racecourse hasn’t always been easy. “We started out with bamboo poles and we put them in with a spud bar,” says Lutz. “Then they came out with gasoline-powered augers; hauling mixed oil and gas up the mountain and trying to get those things started in the cold was a mess.” Top: The author, Dylan Jones, carves down the giant slalom course at the 63rd Governor’s Cup Ski Race at Timberline Mountain, photo by Hannah Snyder. Middle: A racer picks up speed in the flat section of the course, photo by Dylan Jones. Bottom: Cory Chase flies down the slope in an aggressive tele turn, photo by Hannah Snyder. Previous: A racer approaches the finish line of the giant slalom course, photo by Dylan Jones.
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“Instead of feeling intimidated by the presence of sponsor-clad aerodynamic spandex suits and official timing machines, the valley’s regulars show up in force, treating the event like more of a reunion than a competition.” A Race For The Ages Besides being the region’s longest-running ski race, what makes the Governor’s Cup such an appealing event is its intentional lack of exclusivity. Although the Governor’s Cup is an annual draw for ski race teams from West Virginia and regional mountains like Seven Springs Resort in Pennsylvania, Wisp Resort in Maryland, and Bryce and Massanutten resorts in Virginia; it’s also well-attended by local recreational skiers and snowboarders. Instead of feeling intimidated by the presence of sponsor-clad aerodynamic spandex suits and official timing machines, the valley’s regulars show up in force, treating the event like more of a reunion than a competition. “We don’t put it on the hardest slopes, so kids from six years old up to people in their seventies race it. I don’t know if we’ve had anyone in their eighties race it or not. If I make it two more years, I might have to make a guest appearance,” says Lutz, who will turn 80 in 2025. Mike Messenger started skiing—and racing—at the age of 12. By the time he graduated high school, Messenger was working at Canaan’s ski school and coaching its race team. “That was just one year after the first Governor’s Cup I ever entered, so I basically learned to race by coaching kids who were racing,” he says. He and the team trained with bamboo poles as gates. “And bamboo fought back. If you weren’t properly padded, your arms would be all knotted up and bruised.” Since then, he’s raced in about 30 Governor’s Cups, taking home a handful of GS wins and the overall title in 1993, earning him the nickname Swifty. “The year I won the Governor’s Cup, I felt super fast and loose, but it didn’t feel like the greatest run. If you feel like you’re in control, you’re probably not going as fast as you could. It’s the fine line between control and abandoning caution.” Old Man Winter’s Fury Canaan Valley, the highest large valley east of the Mississippi, is infamous for its inclement and rapidly changing weather. The 13-mile-long by five-mile-wide valley, which is shaped like a giant bathtub, creates its own weather and is perfectly situated to catch loads of windborne snow. As such, organizers, and racers for that matter, have no idea what to expect come race day. Regardless of the weather, the show must go on—unless it’s simply too gnarly for ski racing. “We don’t call the race off unless there’s boilerplate ice or the winds are too high to run the lifts,” says Reed. Lutz recalls “all kinds of strange weather.” From a cold front roaring through with thunder, lightning, and graupel “like Styrofoam balls” to heavy rain that made visibility nearly impossible, Lutz has seen it all.
Perhaps his craziest inclement weather memory came from a day of flip-flopped, topsy-turvy temperatures. “It was 28 degrees and it poured rain the whole race day. Our uniforms were all frozen up with ice and when you moved, they’d crackle. When the race was over, it warmed up to 35 degrees and changed right over to snow.” Stealing the Show Although there have been a flurry of winners over the winters, longtime locals are quick to point out that the race almost always comes down to the wire. “The difference between first and fifth can be a 1,500th of a second or some crazy, infinitesimal amount of time,” says Messenger. As a result, the winners of the past 63 years of Governor’s Cup races have ranged from local phenoms to dark-horse competitors that stunned with surprise performances. On a few occasions, the race even hosted rockstars of the international ski racing world. Canaan Valley local Andrea Dearborn, who was just 14 when she won in 1994, was the youngest racer to ever win at the time. With an impressive nine titles, she’s also the most winningest skier in the race’s history. Andrea isn’t the only member of the Dearborn family who’s impressed the crowd. Her father, Andrew Dearborn, also made snowy waves. In the 1974 Governor’s Cup, Andrew, who was 18 years old and manager of Canaan Valley Ski Resort, decided to enter the race. “He grew up skiing, but I had never seen him on skis,” recalls Lutz. “He wasn’t there when it was time for his run. Then, all of a sudden, I saw one of our grooming machines coming up the mountain to the starting gate. Andrew gets out, puts his skis on, gets in the gate, and wins the race. That was his only ski run of the year.” Four years later, twin brothers and World Cup skiers Phil and Steve Mahre showed up to compete on a course set by Worden. “They were two of the best racers to ever come out of the U.S.,” says Lutz. “Having them here was a big deal. They were from the real world of skiing. When the race was over, I asked Phil, “What’d you think of that course?” He said, ‘That was an absolutely perfect course.’” In 1988, an unknown skier from Cincinnati named Carol Chedal was called up to the starting gate for her run. While there are often a few racers from Kentucky or Ohio, many of them are new to the West Virginia ski racing scene. “We thought she might make it through the gate, maybe not,” says Lutz. “Then she beat all the other women by six seconds. Turns out she was an ex-member of the French ski team and grew up in Chamonix.” highland-outdoors.com 19
But beyond the de facto trophies for the fastest racers, perhaps the most prestigious honor is the presentation of the Barton Award, which recognizes someone from West Virginia who has made an outsized impact in the state’s storied ski industry. The award is given in the memory and honor of Bob and Anita Barton, a couple who pioneered skiing in Canaan Valley. The 2023 Barton Award was given to Mikey Valach of Snowshoe. One More Run The historic success of the Governor’s Cup is undeniable, but how long will it continue? Even though plenty of racers showed up last March, attendance had dwindled in previous years. But with the revival of Timberline Mountain taking the region by snowstorm, and the Timberline Race Team stacked with little rippers of all ages, the future looks bright. Canaan Valley ’s longtime locals certainly hope to see some fresh skiers take up the reins. “It’s going to take people that are dedicated, and they always have been here in this valley,” says Lutz. “I hope it lasts for another 63 years.” Although Worden hasn’t set a course since 2016 (valley local Bobby Judy has been setting the gates since 2017), he considers himself forever on the bench, ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. “It means a lot to me. Even though I don’t set anymore, I’ll never miss one,” says Worden. “I’m proud that we still have it. And if they need me, I’ll get on that lift at 6:30 in the morning.”
Ian Beckner eyes up the finish at the 63rd Governor’s Cup Ski Race, photo by Nikki Forrester.
For Messenger, it’s all about witnessing the passing of the torch to the young guns. “A great part of it is getting to see kids you coached or people you taught racing and continuing to get better,” says Messenger. “And just the freakin’ bragging rights with your homies—that’s paramount.”
through the icy rut that had stymied my first attempt, I tucked down and got a little more aggressive, finishing the run without incident. I had no chance of being in contention, but I was fired up, in essence competing with myself.
On the lift ride back up to mid-station for my second run, my eyes worked the course in reverse, trying to sus out where I went wrong. As I got in position at the gate for my second run, my stoke had transmuted into a frenetic ball of nervousness. Was I going to slide out again and end up missing a gate, which would disqualify the run? I pushed off and rode a tad conservatively through the top three turns. Once I was
My fellow snowboard comrades hooted and hollered as I sprayed a plume of snow at the bottom—a show of support and encouragement just for showing up and trying. At the awards ceremony after the race, I looked around and saw so many legends and rockstars of the West Virginia skiing world. Even though I didn’t come remotely close to cracking the top ten (I placed 18th out of 25 snowboarders), I was proud to be there as a loser. After all, you can’t have winners without losers, and it
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And special it was: I was one of 222 snow lovers who showed up to race that weekend, eclipsing the previous record of 168 participants in 1980 and making the 63rd Governor’s Cup Ski Race the largest in the race’s history. As Reed concisely puts it, “There were certainly enough individuals last year to justify it. Ski racing is alive and well in Canaan Valley.” w Dylan Jones is publisher of Highland Outdoors and will most definitely be competing again in the 2024 Governor’s Cup. He hopes to see Gov. Jim Justice—and Baby Dog—there competing on a pair of alpine skis.
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WINNING SHOTS FROM THE SECOND ANNUAL HIGHLAND OUTDOORS PHOTO CONTEST I am thrilled to share the winning shots from the second rendition of the annual Highland Outdoors Photo Contest. This production was nearly eight months in the making. From promoting the contest and organizing the steady flow of submissions to multiple rounds of judging and coordinating with the winning photographers, running a photography contest is more work than you might think. But, as it often goes with our little publication, the juice is indeed worth the squeeze. And I must say, what visually appealing juice it is! This year’s podium of winning images is filled with color, action, surprise, awe, and the special sort of Appalachian splendor that can only be found in West Virginia. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural contest, the judges and I were once again impressed with the range and quality of submissions. We received a whopping 173 entries (39 Adventure entries, 75 Landscape entries, and 59 Wildlife entries) from 94 individual photographers, resulting in some incredibly challenging decisions during the judging process. And while the eight winning photographs you see here ultimately rose to the top, there were many other superb shots that are plenty deserving of praise and publication. To all the photographers who took the time and effort to go out on a limb and submit your images, I sincerely thank you for being an integral part of this process and encourage you to submit images again in next year’s contest (yep, it’s happening again!). Finally, I’d like to give a shout-out to this year’s expert panel of judges: Anne Johnson, Nathaniel Peck, and Jesse Thornton. Each of these professional photographers brings a unique perspective and expertise to the table. Those skillsets were on display during the judging process, allowing us to analyze photos at a technical level of detail that would otherwise not have been possible. I highly encourage you to check out their work if you have the chance—they have contributed vastly to the collective body of work that makes the West Virginia photography community so special. Dylan Jones, Publisher
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OVERALL RUNNER-UP
BIG SHOT IN THE BIG ROOM Ryan Maurer PRIVATE CAVE SYSTEM, GREENBRIER COUNTY This otherworldly image is a technical masterpiece. Capturing the depth of such a massive subterranean room with both sharpness and vivid color is an extremely challenging task, resulting in a shot that successfully provides a sense of scale to the 700-foot-long room. Typically, pitch-black negative space wouldn’t be an asset in a photograph, but its presence here helps frame the cave passage and provides additional perspective from the photographer’s point of view. Even more fascinating, the rappeler on rope and the three figures extending further into the cave are all the same person—an impressive feat accomplished by stacking successive exposures taken each time the caver fired off a single-use flashbulb as they moved through the massive passage, all while the photographer stood in the freezing spray of an underground waterfall. “I got on a rope and went down a series of ledges in the waterfall. I set up a tripod and held the shutter open and signaled over radio to them to fire the flash, and then move and do it again and again. Those lights, which are about five and a half million lumens, last for about a sixtieth of a second and are quite literally as bright as they get—that’s why the picture is so crisp,” Maurer said. “By the time I was done taking pictures, I lost most of the feeling in my legs from standing in the cold water.”
OVERALL WINNER
AURORA BOREALIS AT BEAR ROCKS David Johnston BEAR ROCKS PRESERVE, GRANT COUNTY It doesn’t take long to notice that there’s something extraordinary going on with this spectacular image. The secret sauce that elevated this shot above the rest is the incredibly rare appearance of the aurora borealis, known by most as the Northern Lights. The vertical light pillars amidst the neon pink and yellow tones of the aurora ignite the barren plains of Dolly Sods with a surreal glow beneath the smattering of stars; the blurred branches of the iconic flagged spruces—resulting from the long exposure required to see the aurora—offer an ideal foreground subject and impart a sense of motion to the image. I can feel the cold, biting winds that incessantly blow across these high plains just from looking at this photo. We chose this shot as the overall winner mostly due to its outstanding technical merits, but what tipped it over the edge was the accomplishment of capturing a phenomenon so rare that it will likely not be replicated for quite some time. “There was a lot of solar activity in April 2023 that resulted in potential aurora possibilities on the Sods,” Johnston said. “I had been monitoring the activity and decided to take a chance and drive all the way up to Bear Rocks. I stumbled around in the dark to look for a good composition with the flagged spruce. I couldn’t really see the lights with my eyes, but started taking pictures and saw how extraordinarily good the aurora was coming through the camera. It turns out I was shooting at the peak of the night’s display. I guess you could say it was a combination of taking a chance and good luck.”
WILDLIFE WINNER
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED Kim Ayers GREENBRIER RIVER, SUMMERS COUNTY The instant I saw this stunning shot of a bald eagle coming in for a perfectly posed landing, I knew it was the likely wildlife winner. The image exudes why humans are astonished by raptors: those piercing eyes, aggressive beak, razor-sharp talons, and, of course, the sprawl of feathers. I couldn’t help but see this as a real-life version of the iconic bald eagle in the Anheuser-Busch brewery logo. There was lengthy discussion among the judges about the branch in front of the eagle’s wing, but I particularly like it, as the branch imparts scale to the tightness of the landing zone and provides a visual cue to the giant raptor’s adroit flight skills. “We have a camp on the Greenbrier River, and I had been noticing the bald eagles for a few weeks, but I had no idea where the nest was. The male and female were flying together and landed in a tree, but the background was horrible. When the male flew off and turned against the background of the mountains on the other side of the river, the difference was night and day,” Ayers said. “I was in my vehicle and couldn’t get high up enough, so I climbed halfway out of the sunroof with my heavy 500-milimeter lens and waited for around an hour for him to make that landing move.”
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WILDLIFE RUNNER-UP
CURIOUS KITS Mark Webb PETE DYE GOLF COURSE, HARRISON COUNTY If this precious portrait of an inquisitive fox kit doesn’t push your cute button, there’s something wrong with you. One of the tenets of wildlife photography is that the animal’s eyes must be in focus, and this shot exemplifies that with the sharp detail in this lil’ feller’s fuzzy face. The crop is perfect, offering a range of fore, mid, and background elements that provide excellent contrast and depth of field. The second kit in the midground is nicely framed in the rocks as well, making this image even sweeter. “I do graduation photo shoots, and two graduates wanted to have their senior shoot at the beautiful Pete Dye Golf Course in Bridgeport. While we were rolling around the course, these three fox kits came right out of the rockscaping and checked us out,” Webb said. “I only had a 24 to 70-millimeter lens, so I stopped my golf cart and tried to get as close as possible. They seemed pretty chill, and I probably got about three or four feet from them before they decided I was too close.”
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ADVENTURE WINNER
THE REALM BELOW Gabe DeWitt CHEAT RIVER NARROWS, PRESTON COUNTY This ethereal image of John Bell expertly engaged in the mysterious sport of squirtboating is aquatic adventure personified. Squirtboaters seek out deep sections of river where a vertical hydraulic pulls them down, allowing them to spin and dance freely in the underwater realm. The sepia-stained color palette imparted by the Cheat’s slightly tannic waters provide a timeless feel to the image, while Bell’s muscular form seems to disappear into the impossibly thin blade of his boat, making him appear as half man, half watercraft. “Roaming the underwater world of the Cheat River Narrows is an experience like no other. To get this shot, I had to be underwater before John was and stay under until he went back up,” DeWitt said. “I feel like I’m having just as much fun as he is, like I’m chasing a giant, colorful fish. My favorite thing is to swim with tropical fish and explore the ocean, but swimming with Appalachian fish-people in West Virginia is the next best thing.”
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ADVENTURE RUNNER-UP
THE POINT David Kiel ROARING PLAINS, PENDLETON COUNTY From the lone, stunted red spruce tree and fractured sandstone outcrop to the serrated ridgelines and scalloped hollows, this image is the epitome of the West Virginia highlands. Gazing triumphantly with a stoic hiker pose, David Kiel’s self-portrait also epitomizes adventure. Traversing a remote promontory of the Allegheny Front, the hike to get to this iconic-yet-secluded overlook is an undertaking; to do it solo with a full camera setup is even more so. The various leading lines and their convergence with the fore and midground subjects that comprise the photo provide a textbook example of the rule of thirds. “This was my second time way out here and it was just a great day in the fall,” Kiel said. “The image was hard to edit in postprocessing because of the strong midday light, but the actual hard part was getting the picture. I had to set my timer and jump down from one rock stack over to the other, then climb up and get myself in the frame, which was about 20 feet away from the camera.”
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LANDSCAPE WINNER
BOGGED DOWN Frank Gebhard BIG RUN BOG NATIONAL NATURAL LANDMARK, TUCKER COUNTY At first glance, this striking photograph, captured via drone over the rare upland bog at the top of Big Run, feels disorienting. When I first laid eyes on it, I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a closeup of lichens and mosses or a photo of a river delta system from 30,000 feet in the air—until I looked closer and saw individual plants and dead spruce snags adorning the verdant landscape. Big Run Bog is an oasis of rare plants, and this composition perfectly captures the beauty only found in such a saturated environment. If you look closely at the right edge of the dark water that looks like a river channel, you can see the remnant logs from an old beaver dam along with the lodge in the upper-left corner. “I was up there on an eco-tour of rare plants in the bog and decided at the last minute to whip out the drone since it was overcast. The drone was about 375 feet up in the air when I shot this,” Gebhard said. “If you look in the top-left corner, there’s a bit of a red hue—that’s because it’s covered in purple carnivorous pitcher plants. There are so many you can see the color from the sky.”
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LANDSCAPE RUNNER-UP
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN FOREST MEETS NEW RIVER Jesse Robinson NEW RIVER GORGE, FAYETTE COUNTY We loved this fresh and tasteful take on a place we’ve all seen photographed countless times. This photo’s shining quality is its composition: the converging lines of the ancient gorge—and their reflections—create the paradox of asymmetric symmetry. The pleasing shapes of the image are further accentuated in both reflection and foreground by the late-autumnal color palette. My favorite touch is how perfectly the splash of golden color on the sandstone boulder in the foreground matches the golden leaves above. “My husband and I took a scenic drive down Fayette Station Road so I could hike down and get a good composition of the New River Gorge Bridge with the river in the foreground,” Robinson said. “The sun wasn’t really hitting right on the bridge or the trees, so I ended up turning around 180 degrees, looking upstream in the direction of the sun. The light was really popping through the trees, and I immediately noticed the pretty composition.”
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By Emily Chen-Newton
Dickman, who goes by Kinzie in her small mountain town of Snowshoe, is somewhat notorious for her fearless spirit. “That time when Kinzie...” is a common refrain among the local skiers and snowboarders who share stories of her exploits. Though she’s originally from Ohio, her childhood vacations were spent at Snowshoe Mountain, and she moved there full-time with her husband Ted Dickman at the end of 2020. Now, living only a 30-minute drive from the top of West Virginia’s second-highest peak, the couple is among the subset of Snowshoe’s early risers who rush to get first tracks in the fresh corduroy. She says her ski-bum parents enrolled her in ski-school at the age of two, and snowsports have been a part of her life ever since. In 2017, Dickman was in a car crash that left her pinned under the dashboard. Two years later, when she was in her mid-twenties, she started slowly losing the use of her legs due to a complex medical condition that developed from the accident. After more than a year of feeling like she was “pulling her legs through quicksand” when she
tried to walk, and continuously losing more sensation and motor control, she began using a wheelchair. In the summer of 2020, she and her family were told there were no viable surgical interventions for her condition. Just 24 hours after her neurosurgeon delicately delivered the news, she and her husband started researching how to get her back on a board without the use of her legs. She says she was a boarder bum to the bone. “Anything with a board, I did.” Dickman’s brother-in-law manages a wakeboard cable park in South Carolina. The ability to be safely towed on the water by a cable offered an obvious choice for her first adaptive sport. Using GoFundMe, she and her family fundraised for the gear she needed to get on the water.
A BLACK DIAMOND BREADSTICK After a summer foray into adaptive wakeboarding, Dickman set her sights on skiing. She started taking sit-ski lessons through the Challenged Athletes of West Virginia (CAWV), a non-profit organization based at Snowshoe Mountain Resort that provides adaptive gear and lessons to children and adults. Sit-skis, (sometimes called monoskis) are ridden in a seated position with a single central ski. While she picked up adaptive wakeboarding relatively quickly, she says the sit-ski was much harder to learn. For most skiers, there are various ways to get down even the most challenging runs. “You can pizza-wedge your way down a whole black diamond,” she says. But with only one ski, sit-skiers like Dickman must rely on other techniques to control their speed. “I’m a breadstick, I only got one,” she says. Dickman had to learn how to use S-turns and hockey stops to decrease her speed while using an outrigger in each hand—a crucial tool for balance and control with this style of skiing. “Mono-skiers are beautiful skiers to watch,” says Dickman. “It has to be done perfectly if you don’t want to fall down.” To perfect her skills, she studied everything
34 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
Kurt Schachner
F
or Mackinzie Dickman there is nothing better than those moments when a heavy snowfall quiets the mountain with wintery stillness. “It’s just you and the snow,” she says. “Snow for me, is my soul.”
Kurt Schachner
“Without many other sit-skiers to compare herself to, Dickman didn’t realize her progress was anything out of the ordinary. But that all changed in 2022.” about sit-skiing. “I got down to the nitty gritty,” she says. Dickman described her process as trial and error on the slopes. She soaked in her lessons from the CAWV and watched YouTube videos of other sit-skiers, then applied those techniques to her “new body” on the powder.
Eventually, everything she learned started to click into place. “I have my riding buddy back,” Ted recalls, as he watched his wife begin to master the sit-ski. He thought to himself, All the falls, all the lessons… it’s paying off.
But learning the mechanics of a sport performed in a metal frame was particularly frustrating for Dickman, who had been a gymnast for as long as she had been on the slopes. “I learned to backflip in a day. Those things came so natural to me, and now I don’t have any coordination from the waist below” she says. “Now I’m relying on metal.”
Now, as Dickman rides up a chairlift with her sit-ski, she can pick out a nice deep carve or a run of solid S-turns that she’s left in the powder below. Seeing her lines gives her a sense of accomplishment because of how hard she’s worked to get back on the slopes. When thinking about all the sacrifices, early mornings, doctor appointments, falls, and bruises, she reminds herself that this experience was worth the effort. Later in the day, when other ski and snowboard tracks are painted across the mountain, she can still tell which tracks are hers because she has one ski track with two little outrigger lines. With a smile in her voice, she says, “Those are mine.”
Dickman says her mother had to stop watching her lessons because it broke her heart to see her fall. Even her husband Ted struggled to watch her take hard falls. “She would take a lesson and then need about nine or 10 days to recover,” he says.
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Kurt Schachner
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ACTING LIKE A PARALYMPIAN Without many other sit-skiers to compare herself to on Snowshoe Mountain, Dickman didn’t realize her progress was anything out of the ordinary. But that all changed in 2022. Dickman had competed in just one race with her sit-ski before attending the Ski Spectacular Race Camp in Breckenridge, Colorado on a scholarship in December of 2022. In February of 2022, she placed second in Snowshoe’s own Cupp Run Challenge, a famed downhill race on the resort’s longest run. The race featured the first-ever adaptive category that year after Dickman lobbied for it, another of her many successes on the slopes. Even though she only had one race under her belt, online footage of her carving and painting S-turns across her home slopes earned Dickman a reputation at the Breckenridge Race Camp before she arrived. On the first day of camp, coach Scott Olson, who had seen the videos and recognized her potential, approached Dickman and told her she was “the contender.” “She had this real coachability to her,” says Olson, who became Dickman’s mentor. He was impressed by her positive energy and how quickly she picked up minute changes in technique like adjusting her hand position or the tilt of her chin. Olson is a previous coach for the National Sports Center for the Disabled Alpine Ski Team and has worked with countless winter Paralympic athletes, including three-time gold medalist Alana Nichols. After only two years of official race training, Nichols won four medals at the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010, “an incredible feat,” says Olson. “Kinzie is the first person that I‘ve met that I thought could do the same kind of thing.” He said with the right equipment and opportunities he believes she could go to a Paralympic game and be a contender for the podium.
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During the camp, Olson gave Dickman the speed suit worn by Nichols in the 2010 Winter Olympics, telling her, “You need to look like a Paralympian. You’re acting like one right now, let’s look like one.” Other athletes and coaches, some past Paralympians themselves, encouraged Dickman to think about making a bid for the 2026 Winter Games throughout the week of Ski Spectacular. Dickman was shocked at the time, still feeling relatively new to the sport. But, months later she had a similar experience at the National Sports Center for the Disabled (NSCD) in Winter Park, Colorado. Along with programming for adaptive outdoor experiences such as skiing and rafting, the NSCD offers training for competitive adaptive athletes, including prospective Paralympians. At the NSCD, she skied in front of heavy hitters in the ski-racing world, including Erik Petersen, head coach of the competition race team and a member of the International Paralympic Committee. After watching her, assistant coach Jordan Atwell told her, “We can mold you into a racer.”
A PATH TO THE PARALYMPICS Dickman’s experiences out West shifted her approach to skiing back home in West Virginia. She wants to spend as much time on the snow as possible this season, aiming for 120 days of skiing by the end of winter. She also started focusing more on techniques for speed and gaining experience competing in races sanctioned by the International Ski Federation (FIS). As the 2023–2024 ski highland-outdoors.com 37
season approaches, she has a full training schedule on the docket. She’s going into it with an open mind. “I want to be very coachable,” she says. “I want to be moldable.”
he learned how to sit-ski, now he kneels on the trail next to her adaptive mountain bike to see the rocks, roots, and dirt contours from the same angle she sees them.
In addition to competing in FIS races, Dickman will attend training sessions at Ski Spectacular Race Camp and the NSCD. She plans on living in a converted van to make her training plans financially feasible. At the NSCD, she’ll join other competitive athletes with disabilities, such as visual impairments, sit-skiers, and standing skiers with neurological or limb differences, in race training from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., five days a week. The rest of her time will be spent at the nearby community center weightlifting, swimming, and cross-training. She also plans on skiing throughout the vast trail system at Winter Park. “It’s a beautiful mountain with backcountry trails and good runs all around. I’m going to utilize every part of that mountain,” she says.
When Dickman first began to lose the use of her legs in 2019, the couple had to go beyond their outdoor pursuits and adapt their whole life together. One of the hardest things, she recalls, was having to do everyday tasks at a slower pace—an irony for an athlete now seen as a contender in the U.S. ski-racing scene. But Ted was right there with her as they learned how to slow down. “He was like, ‘This is my wife…this is my teammate. I’m going to have to learn how to play our sport at this speed.’” She clarifies, “When I say, “our sport,” I mean our life.”
At home, Dickman is focusing on getting acclimated to ski-racing by exploring her gear options, learning about the FIS competition structure, and preparing for the medical exams required for the Paralympic classifications. “Would I love to be on team U.S.A? Absolutely. But this season, for me, is to just go out and learn the ropes,” she says.
THE POWER OF FALLING The Dickmans recently started mountain biking during the summers as a way to spend more time on the mountain. “We do everything together,” Kinzie Dickman says. “Ask anybody on the mountain, you don’t get a Ted without a Kinzie, and you don’t get a Kinzie without a Ted.” They even have the same hairstyles: wild dreads under baseball caps, a preamble to their personalities. “We’re almost the same person,” says Ted. Dickman says her husband often puts himself in the same physical position as her, trying to understand her perspective. First, 38 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
“I was constantly working through a lot of mental blocks as a gymnast,” says Dickman, who, thinking back on the car accident, began speaking boldly, but through tears. “You just have to learn that it’s not going to stop you… get back up and try again.” She says these experiences prepared her for the physical blocks she faces as a wheelchair user. “You just have to live your life really fearlessly and say, ‘I’ll figure it out’.” Perhaps the thing Dickman has really figured out is that she doesn’t have to do any of it alone. After all, her connection to snow was formed by her powder-loving parents, and is supported by her husband around every berm. The love the Snowshoe community has grown for her is palpable across the mountain. And now, with her infectious positivity and “zest for life,” as Coach Olson puts it, she’s winning over the Mountain West as she aims for an international podium. w Emily Chen-Newton is a freelance adaptive sports reporter working in both print and broadcast. Living with a chronic medical condition herself, her journalism centers athletes, not their disabilities. When she’s not reporting, she’s rock climbing with her husband and their two cats.
Sterling Snyder
Dickman also emphasizes that for athletes with disabilities, cross-training sometimes comes in the form of daily chores: shoveling snow, salting the driveway, and putting pellets in the wood stove. All the chores of van-life this winter, like shoveling around her van and rolling her chair through slush to get to the training facilities by 9 a.m., are part of her cross-training routine.
Dickman regained her speed with hard work and a fearless mindset that the couple attributes to her background in airborne sports. “We’re in sports where falling is part of it,” Ted explains. “You’re going to fall learning all this stuff.” Voicing a truth his wife has learned both athletically and medically in her life, he adds, “You can’t be afraid to fall, because you’re not going to progress.”
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By Taira Gainer-Sarfino
Sitting pretty at 3,840 feet in elevation, Spruce Knob Lake is the highest lake in West Virginia. A prolific year-round fishery, this gemstone of a lake annually ranks near the top of the state’s trophy trout waters. On any given day during the spring through fall, anglers can be seen dotting the shoreline or floating out on a jon boat.
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Typically seen as a deep azure lake surrounded by hunter-green conifers, Spruce Knob Lake’s frozen terrain appears quite different today, yet it still feels just as welcoming. As I crest the earthen dam and lay eyes upon the lake, I feel as though I am transported to another world. The 23-acre reservoir boasts scenery that rivals a high-alpine lake in the Canadian wilderness. Towering red spruce trees surround the lake; their snow-encrusted branches scrape together as the wind sifts through them. Breathing in the cold, dry air ignites my soul. The ice grumbles underneath my feet as I test out the glazed surface, and the old adage about judging ice races through my mind. Thin and crispy is way too risky, but thick and blue is tried and true. I should probably note that this adventure was not a spur-of-the-moment, impromptu notion. Based on my own research and conversations with knowledgeable folks prior to the trip, a general guideline is that ice should be about five inches thick before setting foot upon it. Thankfully, remnant holes of past ice fisherfolk around the edge of the lake allow me to check the depth. The ice is plenty thick, so I grab my gear—pole, tacklebox, and ice tip-up—and begin making my way across the lake to an idyllic fishing spot. I have always been told that you can’t call it an adventure unless it’s tinged with a little bit of danger. And although there are plenty of risks today—falling through the ice, hypothermia, getting my car stuck in a ditch—I feel prepared. Wearing plenty of layers and making sure my extremities are covered makes the cold a little more bearable. I’m also wearing a solid pair of insulated waterproof boots and full-body thermal suspend-
Courtesy Taira Gainer-Sarfino
S
olitude, silence, and stillness await in the splendor of a snow-covered forest. Trekking up the Mountain State’s highest peak in the dead of winter is not for the faint of heart; a four-wheel-drive vehicle is a requisite. It’s a little daunting perhaps, stupid even, but the lure is strong. This blue, cold January day is biting, but the thrill of finding a new way to fish in West Virginia feels warming and enticing.
ers. In my car are extra blankets, food, water, and clothes in case I get wet—or stranded along the snow-covered road. To be sincere, sitting in one place for hours in the cold did not initially enthrall me. In fact, it was the primary aspect of this quest that I was least thrilled about. In my typical fishing adventures, I’m hiking several miles along a stream bank, blissfully fishing the entirety of the warm day away. But now, I find myself sitting on a bucket in the middle of a frozen lake, repeatedly bobbing my fishing line in and out of the cold, dark water, waiting patiently for something that might not even happen. I embrace these moments where I need absolutely nothing, so I let my mind wander into the realm of self-introspection and reflection. That’s the beauty of fishing regardless of the conditions—it’s just me and my thoughts. I developed an appreciation for the beauty and wonder of the outdoors at an early age—some of my most precious and vivid memories were fishing with my dad as a kid. I was fortunate to grow up in Randolph County, where I could fish the hundreds of trout streams, rivers, and lakes—including Spruce Knob Lake— that wind their way through these beautiful West Virginia highlands. I treasure my many moments that bring an overall sense of wellbeing when exploring these Appalachian waterways. Even though the windborne squalls are swirling around me and I can no longer feel my cheeks, I truly am content. I find inner peace and tranquility in the simple things: the glint of a stream rushing across the rocks, the wind whispering its deepest secrets, the crispness of snow at dawn before the sun peeks over the hills. Sometimes the quality of silence found in nature itself can bring a calmness that defies explanation. With winter’s chill deterring most anglers, I find true solace in this secluded setting high up in the mountains. Yet the frozen forest is alive with the shifting earth, the chorus of songbirds, and the soft rustling of a woodland critter scurrying through the untrammeled snowfall. Although I can’t see them, I imagine the lake’s numerous trout flitting around below the thick ice. It’s moments like these that help me forget my daily troubles and immerse myself in the serene sounds of solitude. Fishing is the only activity that allows me to escape the hectic pace of life. It’s a meditative state where time simultaneously stands still while the hours fly by unnoticed. Even the flow states I find while skiing or mountain biking can’t quite capture the feeling. Ultimately, it’s about finding the time to just sit and breathe. I snap out of my thoughts and back to reality when I feel a tug on the end of my fishing line: the anticipated bite! But my movements are so slow and delayed that I lose the fish. Despite my frozen limbs, my blood is pumping with excitement. I continue to fish for another hour or so before realizing that it’s time to pack up and head home. Even though I’m leaving emptyhanded, I trudge back to my car feeling satisfied. The serenity I experienced during this magical winter day resulted in much more than a sought-out fish. w Taira Gainer-Sarfino is an avid adventurer who was raised on the brook trout streams of Randolph County. If she’s not fishing, she’s mountain biking, skiing, or gardening.
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PROFILE
What brought you to West Virginia? I grew up in western New York in a town called Orchard Park. In high school, I dated a girl who moved to Pittsburgh. One time when I was visiting her, we decided to go see one of our friends in Morgantown who had a swimming scholarship at West Virginia University (WVU). There happened to be a home football game that weekend. After beating Boston College, I remember these huge bonfires in the street in Sunnyside. I thought Morgantown was the coolest place I’d ever been, so I decided to transfer to WVU for college. I moved there in the summer of 1977, a few weeks before classes started. I was into riding dirt bikes at the time and became friends with a lot of locals. I never went back home after that.
What did you do after graduating? My undergraduate degree was in resource economics. I also got a master’s degree in forestry. I worked at the WV Water Research Institute at WVU for quite a while, which focused on finding solutions to water problems like acid mine drainage and sedimentation. I also did some landscaping and gardening. Through the 1980s and early 90s, I helped promote motorcycle events, including motocross and off-road races like the Blackwater 100 in Davis. Around the same time, I started working with some nonprofit organizations, like The Nature Conservancy, to help with their forest protection efforts.
By Nikki Forrester When I spoke to Dave Saville for this profile, he was sitting in a cozy room in Nairobi, Kenya. He spends months there each year working to restore the beloved mpingo tree, which is used to make clarinets, oboes, violins, and other musical instruments. The high demand for this precious wood has nearly driven the species to extinction. But over the past 10 years, Saville has worked with local organizations in Kenya and Tanzania to restore the tree by collecting seeds, growing thousands of seedlings, and planting them throughout the region. Saville’s roots in restoration trace back to his childhood, and the impact of his efforts can be felt throughout the Mountain State. Driven by a love for the forest and strong conviction for protecting natural places, Saville has left a lasting impression on the West Virginia woods. Over a winding two-hour chat, we spoke about how he collects seeds and grows millions of seedlings for forest restoration projects, advocated for increased Wilderness protection in the Monongahela National Forest, and what drives him to speak for the trees. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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My family had a fruit and vegetable farm with a garden center and greenhouse complex, so I’ve been growing plants since I’ve been able to walk. We also grew Christmas trees. In the late 1980s, I found out there were balsam fir trees in Canaan Valley, which are popular Christmas trees. An exotic insect pest, the balsam woolly adelgid, had entered the state by then and was causing a lot of the mature balsams to die. People were concerned that the balsam fir wasn’t going to survive the adelgid infestation. In the 1990s, I started collecting seeds from the West Virginia balsam fir trees, which are also known as Canaan firs, to preserve their unique genetics. I also helped build deer exclosures to protect stands from browsing. Over time our restoration strategy changed from building deer exclosures to planting a lot of balsam fir trees with the understanding that some would be browsed and others wouldn’t. In 2023, we planted at least 30,000 balsam fir trees in Canaan Valley and the Monongahela National Forest.
Why do you collect seeds and grow seedlings for restoration? It’s in my genes to collect things. The first seeds I started collecting in West Virginia were from balsam firs. Soon after, I started collecting red spruce seeds. Conservation organizations throughout the state are working to restore the red spruce ecosystem by planting not only red spruce trees, but also the other species associated with red spruce forests. Most of those species, including red spruce, aren’t commercially grown since there’s not much demand for them, so we have had to grow our own. Now, I collect seeds from about 60 different species of trees and woody shrubs in West Virginia to be grown for various conservation and restoration projects. I have an urban micronursery in Morgantown, where I grow hundreds or sometimes thousands of plants of various species. This year, I’m growing seedlings of 10 or 12 species. I have a company called Appalachian Forest Restoration, where organizations like the Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Trout Unlimited, and others buy seedlings for restoration projects. I started out growing 1,000 red spruce trees in 1999. The next year, I grew 3,000. Then 5,000. Over the years, I developed connections with commercial growers for balsam fir and red spruce since the demands outpaced what I could grow in my nursery. Now, we’re growing a quarter million red spruce trees per year.
Courtesy Dave Saville
DAVE SAVILLE
What sparked your interest in restoration work?
Top left: Dave Saville was an avid motorcycle and motocross racer when he moved to Morgantown in 1977, photo courtesy Dave Saville. Bottom left: Saville lobbied in support of the Wild Monongahela Act, which protected nearly 40,000 acres of Wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest, photo courtesy Dave Saville. Right: Saville processes red spruce seeds for research and restoration projects in Appalachia, photo by Joel Wolpert.
What does the germination process entail? It took me many years to learn to identify all the different species, where they grow, when they flower, and how to collect, process, and germinate their seeds. Every species is different. First, you have to figure out how to get the seeds out of the cones, berries, or catkins. Then you have to store them properly and learn how to germinate them, which is especially difficult for woody species. It’s not like growing tomatoes or sweet corn in a garden; seeds of woody plants have dormancy built in so they only germinate under very specific conditions. Some species can take two or three years to germinate.
Where do you collect red spruce seeds? Spruce only produce cones every four to eight years, so when there’s a cone crop, you have to be ready to go out and collect them. There was a cone crop a couple of years ago, so I went up to New England and collected seed in the Adirondacks, the Poconos, and the Catskills. I also collected seeds throughout the central and southern Appalachians. Now, we have a collection of red spruce seed from all these different locations that are used for research and to be grown for restoration projects.
What inspired the state’s red spruce restoration efforts? There was a lot of interest in the red spruce ecosystem starting
in the 1990s because of the endangered species that live there like the West Virginia northern flying squirrel and Cheat Mountain salamander. Red spruce used to cover over a million acres in West Virginia. But the advent of the geared locomotive and Shay engines really opened up the West Virginia mountains, and mountains throughout Appalachia, to logging in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They all suffered the same fate, with millions of acres of red spruce forests being converted to northern hardwood forests of beech, birch, cherry, and maple. In West Virginia, red spruce forests have been reduced by over 90%, with only about 50,000 acres remaining. Furthermore, these remaining spruce forests have been fragmented into thousands of “spruce islands.” Over hundreds or thousands of years, as a climax species, red spruce will reclaim its rightful place in the forest canopy. Because spruce are very shade tolerant, they can exist in the understory for decades. They patiently wait for the overstory deciduous hardwoods to fall over or die. Then they’ll spring into action and start growing two feet a year instead of two inches. A lot of our restoration work is focused on expanding and connecting existing areas of spruce, and trying to accelerate their growth into the canopy through selective release and other practices.
What benefits do red spruce forests provide? There’s a whole suite of animals and plants that depend on the red spruce ecosystem, not just the endangered species. The soils highland-outdoors.com 43
Tell us about your Wilderness campaign. In 1999, I started a campaign to legislatively protect more land in the Monongahela National Forest. It was a 10-year effort that resulted in the federal designation of more than 37,700 acres of the National Forest as Wilderness. It’s probably one of my life’s greatest accomplishments. The Wild Monongahela Act created three new Wilderness areas: Big Draft, Spice Run, and Roaring Plains. It also expanded the Cranberry, Dolly Sods, and Otter Creek Wilderness areas. I built a coalition that spent two full years of the campaign identifying which areas of the National Forest qualified for Wilderness. Then we built a proposal with 15 areas, knowing that they wouldn’t all be protected. We had to get five people—three members of Congress and two senators—to adopt a Wilderness bill, shepherd it through the process, and get it passed in Congress. I went to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the bill every month for nearly 10 years. When President Obama took office in 2009, it was one of the first bills he signed into law.
What other advocacy projects are you proud of? I helped establish the Cheat Lake Park and Trail, which includes a 5-mile rail trail in Morgantown, and the West Virginia Botanic 44 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS WINTER 2023
Garden. I also spent five years getting the Morgantown Farmers Market started and was its first president. In 1994, Steve Hollenhorst and I founded the West Virginia Land Trust. I was on the board for quite a few years. It’s phenomenal what they’ve done, recently protecting the Moon Rocks and Yellow Creek Preserve in Tucker County. I also attended every meeting of the Canaan Valley Task Force, successfully advocating for the establishment of the National Wildlife Refuge.
What motivates you to engage in advocacy? I’ve been an advocate my whole life. Anytime you’re an advocate, you have adversaries. There’s a lot of people who don’t agree with some of my positions and the things I’ve advocated for, and there’s a lot of people who are very supportive of what I’ve done. And that includes red spruce restoration. We wouldn’t have to advocate for red spruce restoration if there wasn’t somebody who didn’t want that to happen. But for me, I just have strong feelings for natural forests and I’m not afraid to speak out and work hard towards what I believe in.
Why do you want to protect red spruce? I fell in love with the Cranberry Wilderness on my very first backpacking trip there in 1983. I had never seen spruce forests like that before. They were these beautiful, fairy tale forests. It’s difficult to place a value on what red spruce forests do for your psyche. To justify our restoration work, we hang our hats on the scientific and economic benefits, but the reason I want to protect red spruce forests is because I love them. I think the forest gives gifts to everybody in their own personal ways. I’m pretty introverted. I’m not somebody that seeks out crowds and you don’t see me out at the bar every night. I’ve traveled all over the country backpacking, mountain biking, and paddling, and half the time I was by myself. The forest is where I find my solace—it’s my happy place. w
Dylan Jones
of red spruce forests also have a massive capacity to hold cold water, which is great not just for native brook trout, but also to help prevent flooding and support the whole aquatic ecosystem. Spruce forests sequester way more carbon than deciduous forests. In fact, the Monongahela National Forest is in the top 10 National Forests nationwide in terms of carbon richness. This is because the organic matter generated in spruce forests is acidic with a low pH, which inhibits the microbial activity responsible for consuming the organic material and putting carbon back into the atmosphere. These benefits only come from mature red spruce forests, which is why it is important to return red spruce to the forest canopy.
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A Special Note to Our Readers Readers, rejoice! We’ve made it five wonderful years at Highland Outdoors, and what a wild ride it’s been. If you’ve been a reader for a little while now, then you might recall that when we took over as publishers in October of 2018, our big goal was to keep the mag going for five years. It’s hard to capture what it truly means to make it here. Some days, it felt like time was flying by—I can’t believe this is our 21st issue! But on others, it felt like we would never reach our lofty goal. We’re not shy about sharing all the hiccups and roadblocks we’ve hit along the way, but as long-time readers hopefully know by now, your endless support and encouragement is what pushed us across the line. When we first took over Highland Outdoors, we were simultaneously elated and slightly concerned. Now that we had this thing, what were we going to do with it? So, we sat down and made a list of everything we hoped Highland Outdoors would become. We envisioned a magazine created by and for the people of West Virginia. We wanted to be authentic, funny, and honest in our storytelling, so our readers felt like we were accurately capturing their experiences of living and playing here. We strove to highlight the people we admire, the places that bring us joy, and the efforts that make this state better each day. While we might not have realized it at the time, sticking to our dream for this publication over five years is a far greater accomplishment than just keeping it afloat. We’re proud of every magazine that’s reached your hands, and we’re even more proud to have garnered such wonderful humans as our readership. Highland Outdoors would be nothing without people like you. You share ideas, write phenomenal stories, submit stunning photographs, and provide thoughtful feedback and much-needed encouragement. You’ve bought tons of ads, subscriptions (over 500!), T-shirts, and hats. You’ve plastered our stickers on your cars and given our magazine to friends and strangers across the world. You make this magazine what it is, and because of you, we’ve been able to stay true to our original vision for Highland Outdoors. The time has come to start thinking big about what the next five years will hold, but one thing we know for sure is that we’ll always stay true to what Highland Outdoors is all about. We’ll continue offering it for free at 175+ locations across the state. And we’ll keep delivering it ourselves because we love visiting your businesses and catching up with friends! For our wonderful 400+ subscribers, we’ll keep processing every issue at our kitchen table. And we’ll keep striving to support our advertisers however we can. One big goal we’ll continue to strive for is reaching 1,000 subscribers, a benchmark that would allow us to keep doing what we’re doing while feeling far more certain about our future. We’ve got a long way to go, and with this being our only annual reader appeal, we’d like to encourage you to consider buying a subscription. If you know someone who will love the magazine, consider getting them a gift subscription. And if subscriptions aren’t your thing, we have plenty of HO merch available at the Highland Outstores on our website: www.highland-outdoors.com/store. But above all else, we wanted the letter this year to be about sharing our appreciation for everyone that’s helped us along the way. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for giving us the support and freedom to publish a print magazine (in this era!) that we can be proud of. We hope you’re proud of it, too. Wishing you many happy adventures in 2024, Dylan Jones and Nikki Forrester
GALLERY
When autumn comes to a close in Appalachia, the high mountain knobs and ridges are the first to be graced with a blanket of white. Some, like me, feel an undeniably strong call to come catch a glimpse of the reawakening of our wintry playgrounds. On that cold and moody day, my pup Tessa and I began our hike as we normally do. But as we came near the turn in our regular loop, she insisted we keep climbing higher into the frozen mist. She soon slipped out of sight and over the top of Bald Knob. When I crested the knob and saw her sitting still, I too fell into a state of shock and awe. She glanced back at me for moment and turned again to gaze at the first snow of the winter as if to say, “See, I told you it would be back.” Photo and caption by Paul Golder.
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