Ski mountaineering, then and now

Phil Brown, who pens the Adirondack Dispatches blog for the Times Union, had a great post on Monday about two accomplished "ski mountaineers," Mike Whelan and Ron Konowitz, who have teamed up to make a mini-documentary about skiing down Slide Mountain:

Last winter Mike enlisted Ron for a video about the first ski descent of Slide Mountain, the highest peak in the Catskills. Mike wanted to record Ron on the same route used by Irving Langmuir when he skied Slide in 1907 ... In the video, Mike intersperses historical footage of Langmuir with video of Ron. The historical footage is not from that first ascent of Slide, but it gives you an idea of how the sport has changed—and how much it hasn’t.

The video that Whelan shot of Konowitz skiing the mountain this past February is above. It serves as an excellent introduction to folks who not only climb mountains, but lug their skis up with them, too.

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