Ambassador Archives - Winter Wildlands Alliance

RIMS 2023-24 Review – Aug 2024

Emily Scott — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 21:03:43 +0000

Winter Recreation Data Collection: 2023-2024 Season Review

Winter Wildlands Alliance is using data to shape the future of winter recreation and protect your favorite snowy escapes.

Photo courtesy Kelly Bessem

How does Winter Wildlands Alliance collect winter recreation data?

Over the past three winters, Winter Wildlands Alliance has partnered with trained volunteers and nonprofit organizations to collect winter recreation data. This data helps inform Forest Service planning and implementation for winter recreation. In the 2023-2024 season, our focus was primarily on the Stanislaus, Lassen, and Inyo National Forests in California, while our key partners in Colorado focused on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, Gunnison, and San Juan National Forests.

What tools are used for data collection?

To ensure consistent data collection, we encourage our partners and volunteers to use the Colorado Mountain Club’s Recreation Impact Monitoring System (RIMS) mobile app. This tool aligns with the data collection methods used by the Forest Service, providing a standard format for gathering information. Some organizations with longstanding data collection efforts utilize different methods, but the type of data collected remains the same or similar. For more information on the CMC RIMS app, please click here.

What kind of data is collected?

Data collected includes:

Parking lot surveys (how many cars and trailers present)
Visitor use assessments (people observed at a trailhead or on a trail, and the activities they’re engaged in)
Condition of signs and facilities
Number of dogs (and whether they’re on a leash)
Violations of management rules
Use conflicts

While the data is not based on a predetermined random sample and therefore should not be used for statistical purposes, it provides a general overview of recreation use patterns. As with any data collection effort, the more information gathered from a specific location over time, the more useful that dataset becomes.

Therefore, as we plan for our 2024-2025 season of data collection, we will continue to focus on collecting meaningful datasets from forests that have either completed winter travel planning, are in the process of drafting winter travel plans, or plan to begin this process in the near future.

What were the findings in California?

In California, 95.4% of winter visitors recorded through RIMS visitor use assessments were human-powered, with 79.9% engaging in some form of snow play. Although violations and conflicts are always a minor element of the data collected, they highlight common issues across public lands.

Lack of signage or inadequate signage at non-motorized and parking areas
Parking areas without guidance (e.g. absence of white lines)
Ability for motorized vehicles to breach snow berms onto non-motorized groomed trails
No etiquette signage where multiple uses occur, or signs indicating safe places to pull over (e.g., sledding or snow play into dangerous roadway areas)
Insufficient trash cans, dog poop bag receptacles, and etiquette information in areas with frequent dog visits
Lack of recognition and signage related to snow depth requirements for motorized vehicles

These issues have relatively straightforward solutions, provided that resources are available.

READ THE FULL REPORT

What were the findings in Colorado?

Over twelve percent of Colorado’s population participates in skiing or snowboarding, and the state is a national draw for winter recreation. Despite the importance of winter recreation for Coloradans, and for Colorado’s economy, limited data exists concerning backcountry winter recreation use on National Forests in the state. A better understanding of where and how winter recreation occurs on National Forest lands is crucial to better recreation planning, including informing winter travel planning.

In Colorado, most RIMS data was collected was by Colorado Club Snow Rangers and Grand Mesa Nordic Council volunteers on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests. The San Juan Mountains Association Snow Ambassador program also collected visitor data using similar methodology on the San Juan and Rio Grande National Forests. In these areas, over 80% of winter visitors recorded by either RIMS visitor use assessments or Snow Ambassador observations were human-powered, with nearly one-third engaging in family-friendly snowshoeing or hiking.

READ THE FULL REPORT

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Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes.

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Beyond Acknowledgment: Embracing Imperfection

Emily Scott — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:24:15 +0000

Beyond Acknowledgment: Embracing Imperfection

By Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada

Vanessa, once silenced by self-doubt, now glides through the backcountry sponsored by Fischer Skis. Unceded Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Eastern Shoshone, Shoshone-Bannock, and Cheyenne lands.
Photo by Jr Rodriguez @jrrdrgz

This write-up was originally featured in our Spring 2024 Trail Break issue.

Like many immigrants, I grew up with some pretty rigid expectations of who I should be and what I should do with my life. Perfection was the baseline, but the goal was always to break paradigms and create higher levels of success than I knew. The goal was to be so good that they could not look away.

The drive to do better pushed me further. I removed the word “difficult”from my vocabulary. Describing things as difficult was a privilege; it assumed that some things were easy. For a young undocumented immigrant living in a conservative wealthy white suburb, nothing was easy.

I kept my head down and worked hard. But what I didn’t know is that I was tightly weaving my identity and worth with my ability to produce and succeed. The better grades I got, the better person I became. The more extracurriculars I did, the further I would go in life. This pattern got interrupted very harshly by one of the biggest fears an immigrant teenager carries: college rejection letters. Seven of them, to be exact.

I had been selected for a highly competitive scholarship program for low-income students. I felt over whelmed with pride when I read the names of all the Ivy Leagues on the pamphlet: this was it. My hard work had finally paid off. When all of the responses came back negative, the world of meritocracy I had lived in my whole life vanished. My family didn’t have the right legacy, I thought I didn’t have the right legal status or enough money. I wasn’t good enough. I would never be good enough.

What started as despair eventually became freedom. Knowing that I would never be good enough to succeed in a white supremacist world gave me permission to stop trying to fit into their boxes. It gave me permission to get creative, build my own world. All of this led me to skiing.

I hit the skin track with fervor at the age of 22. As an adult learner, expectations were low and perfection was impossible. So I kept showing up imperfectly. The joy I experienced learning to ski gave me the bravery to keep trying. But something was different: for the first time in my life I allowed myself to stand out and embrace my culture. Spanish rolled off my tongue like water rolling down the snowy creeks, my gold hoops caught the first rays of light, my snacks served as curiosities and inspired stories. I carried my culture and my ancestors with me in this frozen and foreign territory.

Embracing imperfection gave me permission to show up as my whole self. I quickly learned that all the parts of me that I carried around shamefully as a teenager were the most beautiful ones. I learned that I don’t need to be the best at everything. Being an immigrant is all about being a trail breaker. The space we create is only the beginning.

VANESSA CHAVARRIAGA POSADA @vanessa_chav is an environmental sociologist and outdoor athlete from Medellín, Colombia. She is a three-culture kid whose childhood was split between Colombia, the US and Mexico. As an immigrant and woman of color, Vanessa recognizes the systemic barriers that purposefully keep BIPOC out of outdoor spaces. Taking up space in the outdoor community feels revolutionary. Her work now focuses on the intersections of race, identity, and nature through sponsored content, DEI education, public speaking, and writing. Vanessa’s film “Soñadora’’ was the first recipient of WWA’s Human-Powered Film Grant in 2022 and toured across the country with our 19th annual Backcountry Film Festival program.

Read the Spring 2024 Trail Break

Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes.

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Skin Tracks: Connor Ryan

Emily Scott — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 16:56:04 +0000

Skin Tracks Playlist

Indigenous skier and all-around radical human, Connor Ryan, shares his skin track playlist.

Connor wants to ensure the tracks he leaves behind are worth following. Unceded Ute lands.
Photo by Isaiah Branch-Boyle @isaiahjboyle

This story was originally featured in our Spring 2024 Trail Break issue.

The skin track is the place I try to clear my head and put down some of the daily obligations I carry in order to lighten the load that our troubled world puts on my heart. I exchange the internal heaviness rooted in causes beyond my control for a pack weighed down with personal responsibility. Most days the sounds of the wind between the trees and peaks or the scratching of my outer wear through the brush is the sound that renews me and draws me to the present moment… but some days I need a little more auditory encouragement.

If my headphones are on, they are probably blaring. My playlist usually starts with something to set me straight like a lyrical compass, a ballad for the times. These first songs have a message I would scream to the world from the treetops in hopes to make the obvious as apparent to them as it seems to me.

The first songs I hear while my skins glide along help me to let go, the next ones help me to flow. I start to seek out emotion above all else, honoring the parts of me that feel unrecognized. I seldom give enough voice to the gratitude I have for myself and what it has taken for me to become who I am, so I also lean into transmuting my grief and anger into fuel that propels me against gravity. Inevitably, by the time I reach the top I let the volume fade and drop into a chaotic world with new found flow ready to dance with life and the mountains again. Flow with me?

Listen to Connor’s Skin Track Playlist on Spotify

CONNOR RYAN @sacredstoke is a proud Hunkpapa Lakota and passionate skier. Connor was born and raised in the homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples, who have become some of his biggest inspirations and closest relatives, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Skiing is his dance and prayer, a ceremony of its own, one that offers a chance to center himself within nature and the Great Mystery of the universe surrounding him. Connor works to inspire others to deepen their connection to the places they live and play in order for us all to be better relatives to our planet, our communities, and ourselves.

Scan the QR code to access Connor’s Skin Track Playlist on Spotify. Please listen kindly and responsibly.

Read the Spring 2024 Trail Break

Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes.

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Noah’s Picks: Audio Fodder for your Next Outdoor Adventure

Emily Scott — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 06:29:12 +0000

Noah’s Picks: Audio Fodder for your Next Outdoor Adventure

Winter Wildlands Alliance Ambassador and Flylow Gear team member, Noah Howell, shares his latest favorite books and podcasts for you to enjoy on your next trip to the trailhead.
By: Noah Howell

Self-regard in the Wasatch Range, Utah. Unceded Cheyenne and Ute lands. Photo courtesy Noah Howell @noah_i_howell

This letter was originally featured in our Fall 2023 Trail Break issue.

I spend a lot of time doing chores in the mountains, driving backcountry roads and hiking along a skin track. So, I love the companionship of a good audiobook or podcast.

I often get stuck exploring genres or themes for a time, and lately I’ve been excitedly scurrying through the rabbit hole of Animism. Yeah, the real, connected- to-earth hippy shit. I’m very shy of “isms” and dogma and religion, having grown up Mormon and experienced the shame and judgment it teaches.

I was somewhat aware of Animism conceptually, but Becoming Animal by David Abram really sets the stage for this powerful reframe of our place as natural human animals—part of the world, not separate from it. Feels good to see oneself not as broken and evil, resigned to suffer through existence begging for salvation, but as a natural flowering expression of life itself.

When I was young and impressionable, my mountain heroes were the “daring” and “brave” alpinist types testing themselves against nature. I was shown as a man that I was supposed to carry a spear or sword to cut and divide my way through life with a sharp intellect and quick decision-making, while always thrusting forward wherever and whenever I wished to tread and explore. Living almost fully from the mind or the rational, I ignored emotions and treated the body as a servant.

For example, on ski outings we used terms like we “crushed,” “slayed,” or “killed” it that day. The Flowering Wand by Sophie Strand has been most helpful in putting down my sword and finding other tools that are more helpful, softening my ways so I can move towards nature and life as a relationship, not a conquest. I no longer go to the mountains to “get” anything, but instead to be in this world, to lose my sense of self, not build it up.

My gateway drug that I continue to devour is “The Emerald Podcast” by Joshua Schrei, where he weaves together a series of magical mystical journeys exploring our connections to something/everything/nothing with each episode. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake is also a mind-blowing book on the messy interconnectedness of life and how it’s not so easily or cleanly defined and separated as our cute little sciences would like us to believe.

This discovery and dive into Animism has been a wonderful pendulum swing from the previous rational materialist perspective I used to hold. It feels good to trust my body and allow its emotions and feelings. I am only now really understanding and experiencing what it means to live this experience of life sensationally, and I like it. I hope you find something here to explore in your mountain meditations and explorations.

Enjoy!

Read the Fall 2023 Trail Break

Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes.

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Member Profile: Jason Hummel

Melinda Quick — Mon, 08 May 2023 04:04:24 +0000

Member Profile: Jason Hummel

Adventure Photographer, Skier, Bushwhacker, RV Enthusiast, Winter Wildlands Alliance Ambassador (Gig Harbor, WA)

Photo by Chris Starling (Mt Adams, Washington)

This profile was originally featured in our Spring 2023 Trail Break issue.

“What’s important to me when ski touring is a wilderness experience. Through Winter Wildlands Alliance’s efforts, they work to maintain and create those spaces for future generations.”

Jason Hummel has spent decades skiing and exploring the vertical landscapes of Washington State. He has skied all ten non-volcanic peaks over 9,000 feet, pioneering 5 new ski descents and adding to nearly 100 others. He has skied across both east and west sides of the Olympic Mountains, across Washington State from Oregon to Canada (in sections), and circumnavigated four volcanoes—Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, and Glacier Peak—as well as Mount Olympus.

He has curated a list of 300 glaciers throughout Washington that he calls “The Glacier Project.” It includes not just those officially named by the USGS, but also those with unofficial names from guidebooks, old maps, photographic documentation and word of mouth. At last count he had skied “250ish” of them, some of which no longer exist. He has been a primary mover in our recent coalition effort to re-establish sustainable winter recreation access in Mt. Rainier National Park.

Aside from his propensity to drag his friends through tangled rainforest hellscapes, he’s the nicest guy in the PNW.

Read the Spring 2023 Trail Break

Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes.

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Emilé Zynobia

Melinda Quick — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:41:02 +0000

Emilé Zynobia

Snowboarder, Environmentalist, Writer

Home Base: Jackson, Wyoming

Instagram: @Curlsinthewild

Emilé is an avid splitboarder, environmental writer, and conservationist. She is pursuing her Masters at the Yale School of the Environment focusing on land management, ecosystem conservation, and climate change. She is broadly interested in natural resource management and conflict resolution. At Yale, she serves as the executive co-director of the Environmental Film Festival. She has worked for the Bureau of Land Management as a range technician, an instructor for National Outdoor Leadership School, and taught at Teton Science Schools. She is leveraging media and writing to better communicate the nuances of our modern socio-ecological context. Emilé is currently working on her first snowboard filming project this Winter 20/21. As a black female outdoor enthusiast, she is deeply passionate about increasing accessibility for the BIPOC community to experience winter landscapes through the vehicle of winter sports. She works with brands like Patagonia, The North Face, Vans, Smartwool, and Rivian.

Meet Our Ambassadors

Emilé Zynobia

Ambassador Archives - Winter Wildlands Alliance

RIMS 2023-24 Review – Aug 2024

Winter Recreation Data Collection: 2023-2024 Season Review

How does Winter Wildlands Alliance collect winter recreation data?

What tools are used for data collection?

What kind of data is collected?

What were the findings in California?

What were the findings in Colorado?

Beyond Acknowledgment: Embracing Imperfection

Beyond Acknowledgment: Embracing Imperfection

Skin Tracks: Connor Ryan

Skin Tracks Playlist

Noah’s Picks: Audio Fodder for your Next Outdoor Adventure

Noah’s Picks: Audio Fodder for your Next Outdoor Adventure

Member Profile: Jason Hummel

Member Profile: Jason Hummel

Emilé Zynobia

Emilé Zynobia

Meet Our Ambassadors

Sofia Jaramillo

Sofia Jaramillo

Meet Our Ambassadors

John Huston

John Huston

Meet Our Ambassadors

Jason Hummel

Jason Hummel

Meet Our Ambassadors

Vasu Sojitra

Vasu Sojitra

Meet Our Ambassadors