Bob.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Steve.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Jason.

Location: Base Area, Mount Hood Meadows, Oregon

Lens used: Canon 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Jeff.

Lens used: Canon 24-105mm f4.0 IS

Jeff.

Location: Top Nettie's Run, Mount Hood Meadows, Oregon

Lens used: Canon 17-40mm f4.0

Matty.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Jeremy.

Lens used: Canon 24-105mm f4.0 IS

Derek.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Brandon.

Lens used: Canon 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Tom.

Lens used: Canon 24-105mm f4.0 IS

Scott.

Lens used: Canon 17-40mm f4.0

Ryan.

Lens used: Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS

Sam.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Stephen.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Nik.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Shane.

Lens used: Canon 17-40mm F4.0

Brent.

No, I don't know why he's all beat to hell.

Lens used: Canon 17-40mm f4.0

Jake.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS w/flash

Kay.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Ed.

Lens used: Canon 17-40mm f4.0

Tighe.

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

A Prinoth BR 350 in new grey livery.

Location: Ridge Run at the top of 2 Bowl, Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, Oregon

Lens used: EOS M w/Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Perfect corduroy.

Lens used: 17-40mm f4.0

Prinoth BR-500.

Location: Bottom of Cascade, Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, Oregon

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Winch flare.

Matty dropping the winchcat into Upper Elevator. That's his cable that's visible.

Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS

Liftline dig out.

While I can't say it's a phenomena unique to Mt. Hood Meadows, here we spend a lot of cat time digging out our lifts. And not just the top and bottom terminals - snow creep pushes against towers and ANSI-required ski-under clearances get lost between the spans. Here, a cat works to restore ski-under clearance on the Cascade Express line where the ski run crosses underneath.

Location: Gulch, Mount Hood Meadows, Oregon

Lens used: Canon 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS

A full lunar eclipse against a field of stars. The glow is the city lights of Portland.

Location: Just up from the top of Vista Express lift

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Occasionally, we get a combination of clouds that does just amazing things to the sunlight. This "electric" light is a great example. That's correct - this photo is all-natural. No Photoshop trickery at all.

The view is of Meadows' upper-most lift, Cascade Express with Mt. Jefferson behind.

Location: Outer Limits Road

Lens used: 17-40mm f4.0

This is Jason cutting the pipe just after the sun dropped below the ridge casting the halfpipe into shadow. I tried shooting while the sun was still shining on the wall, but the mix of light and dark wasn't working well for me so I waited until full shadow and shot this.

This is a four shot panorama stitched together in Photoshop CS3. I wasn't sure how the moving elements of the series would blend together (the cat was moving as well as the spray from the Zaugg), but the 'ol CS3 algorithms did good and it came out both seamless and dramatic, I thought.

I went for the old-style TV effect with my cropping and framing after discovering that if I'd cropped the shot rectangularly, I would have lost much of what I really liked about this image. The white border was an add-on since minus it, something was lacking.

I was tempted to force the whole scene into a higher white balance to warm it, but finally decided the cooler tones (which accurately reflect the scene at the time) contribute nicely to the final 'old TV set' result.

All in all, I like this photo a lot.

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Sometimes photo ops pop up in odd places. Like this one. Scotty and myself were grooming Boulevard when I thought the occurring sunrise was worth a stop to photograph. As it turns out, the resulting sunrise shots were lame. Good thing, then that I shot this one as I was climbing back in my cat to resume grooming, for it ended up being a keeper.

I like the way one's eye is drawn along the track and tiller of my cat in front past Scotty's cat behind (note his perfect positioning and blade/tiller settings for matching the pass) and up to the summit of Mt. Hood.

The alpenglow has everything glowing that lovely pink/orange, also.

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

A strong sunrise one morning.

Location: Above the top terminal of Vista Express

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 with a reverse 3-stop graduated ND filter

View from the driver's seat of a BR350 looking uphill towards the upper part of the Vista Express area and the summit of Mt. Hood.

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

A Prinoth BR350 and a sizable layered cut bank.

Location: Bottom of Dallas Bowl, Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, Oregon

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Ed makes his last pass up and out of the steep pitch of Upper Elevator.

About 20-30 seconds after I took this shot, just before Ed cleared the breakover at the top of the pitch, his pick-point gave way and he slid backwards a ways down the slope. Luckily, he got his tiller lifted in time and managed to avoid sliding all the way to the bottom by backblading himself to a stop.

Not so luckily, after taking this shot I shut off and capped my camera for the hike back up to my cat, so I didn't get any pictures of the action.

We were able to get his cat extracted and the mess cleaned up with surprisingly little trouble. Guess it was our lucky day.

Lens used: 17-40mm f4.0

Looking south along the Cascade crest towards Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters at dawn on a nice sunrise morning.

Location: Texas Trails @ top Vista Express

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

My cat and the lights of the base area as seen from The Talking Tree on a full moon night.

Location: Top of Texas Trails

Lens used: Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS

I thought this lenticular cloud looming just to the east of the mountain made for a nice backdrop for my cat.

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Though enough to stop the night-drive from running, this doesn't qualify as severe icing as far as such things go. This is tower #20 at the top of Cascade Express.

I found the beautiful blue gradient sky behind it irresistible.

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Your snowcat awaits...

Meadows' transport cat waits to do an early morning haul of ski patrol up to the top of Cascade for A/C (avalanche control) work.

Location: Bottom of Cascade lift, Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, Oregon

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Another shot of Brent on Jigsaw, this time with a landscape/horizontal view. It gives a slightly different feel to the shot, doesn't it?

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Ed throws the peace sign while grooming by on his way up Texas Trails.

The killer sunrise was the continuation of the 9.975-rated one displayed elsewhere in this gallery. That was a great morning.

Lens used: 17-40mm f4.0

Here, Mike Rowley winch-packs and -grooms the intermediate run of Boulevard above the tree-line in the morning alpenglow. The 'big rock' seen in this shot is a prominent landmark on the upper mountain at Meadows.

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

This was my first attempt at a long exposure of the team grooming some of our slopes at night. The slope illumination came from the almost full moon veiled behind a thin layer of cloud. There was no wind. The exposure time was just shy of 14 minutes.

I'll continue to try to improve this type of shot - first item to work on will need to be to find a way to tone down the glare from the cat's lights (I had to hit the light trail pretty hard in Photoshop to bring out the streaks even as much as I did). Second will be finding runs where the cats can stay in line without needing to break formation to do a crossover or pick up a berm or whatnot (the last cat in this shot had to jump into the center to clean something up and thus muddied the streak lines). Third will be finding a run where I can set up my tripod and get the run and some sort of foreground/background element into the shot. And lastly, but certainly not least is finding a night where my positioning, our workload and the weather all comes together to make the above happen. Yikes, that's a lot of stuff to pull together...

Location: Outer and Inner Limits, Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, Oregon

Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5

Lingo dropped first pass down the short but steep pitch we call False Teeth.

I probably could have gotten a better shot with the light from the cat less blinding and over-exposed if I'd waited another 15 or so minutes for daylight to illuminate the scene a bit more, but as I was at work my options for loitering and waiting for primo photographic conditions to occur were limited, at best.

Still, other than the details on the cat itself being hidden behind the glare, I like the balance of color across this image.

Lens used: 17-55mm f2.8 IS

Jeremy winch grooming Memorial Bowl.

Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS

I'd been of the mind to try to capture a reflection of the mountain in the morning light for some time, but I'd had trouble finding a location at Meadows where I could get both the mountain and the cresting morning sun without other things blocking the sight-lines.

It wasn't until I was cutting in the Superbowl road up above Cascade Express that I found my spot. For this shot, my cat is sitting on the small bench just below the 'knife-edged' ridge up there.

Lens used: 17-40mm f4.0

A cat downpasses Texas Trails while a bit of alluring morning light shines down.

Lens used: 70-200mm f2.8 IS

The warning beacon in place to warn snow-mobile traffic and others that there is a tensioned winch cable stretched out ahead.

Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS