Hotlinking the Vegetable

OutdoorsPro is a cool blog. Mark S. Nelson is "a 40-year old Alaskan rafting, hiking and glacier guide and Oregon Pro Ski Patroller" who works at, um, one of those Skiing meccas in the Oregon Cascades. Willamette Pass? Bachelor? I just searched for job, new job, work and hired on his blog and came up with nothing. The About the OutdoorsPro link leads me to a page that claims he is "currently spending the winter far away from the snow in the Deep, Deep South" but I'm pretty sure he's just down the road in the ice and snow. One of the first posts I read was about his new job. Maybe it's that Ashland ski resort? Or, perhaps he means he's far from "the snow in the Deep, Deep South" - far from the snow in Antartica.

Forget all that, and go read a bunch of his work related posts, they're great, full of detail about his day, hiking up to the cone to get in shape for avalanche patrol, becoming encrusted with rime on the lift, participating in injury rescue drills, marveling at the wind gauge that pegged while he was safely ensconced below. And more and more! I love it.

OutdoorsPro is cool, especially as I'll never get anywhere near these locales while he is loving his job - I hate snow. But I love the idea of enjoying the cold, and peeking in remotely on a guided tour by an expert is great.

I'm pretty sure he's near Oakridge.

He was so gracious as to mention Middle-Fork in a 27 Dec 2005 post.

And, just for the love of the cold, read Independent People by Halldor Laxness. An Icelander, he won the Nobel Prize, and this is the best of his novels (that I've read.) It's COLD in Iceland in the winter. There's a scene where the protagonist is out in a blizzard and plunges into a thundering river, then goes home and... well. Read it, it's great, and brrrrrrr very cold.

Colophon: As any considerate friend would, the snow comes to visit me now and then. This is the small flurry of snow that came before the ice storm in January 2004. This is the scene looking out into the backyard, and is the first publication of this photo. No one is hotlinking it.