TGR Duo Score Their First Powder Magazine Cover
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Durtschi and Alegre are stoked on their first Powder Mag cover! Tim Durtschi photo.
What’s that old saying? 'A picture's worth a thousand words.' When Tim Durtschi and photographer Nic Alegre were wrapping up a week of shooting in Jackson Hole, neither of them expected that a photo from a stack of a few hundred would end up on the cover of Powder Magazine. Early in April, during yet another insane storm cycle in the Tetons, Durtschi found himself lapping Alta Zero, a rarely-open inbounds area, with Alegre running laps on the lift to get the shot.
We caught up with Durtschi and Alegre on a hot summer day at TGR HQ to hear what they had to say about scoring the cover.
“It was just another Monday,” said Durtschi, “it had snowed a good bit overnight, and everyone was chomping to ski Alta Zero.” Durtschi was skiing with TGR grom Kai Jones, picking off lines on the classic face lap after lap. The zone, situated right beneath Sublette Chair, allows skiers to lap some of the gnarliest inbounds terrain in North America.
While Durtschi skied, Alegre would run laps on the chairlift, trying to time his uplift with Durtschi’s drop to get the perfect shot. “For the first few laps, our timing was really off,” said Alegre, “but by lap 5 or so we got it down via radio. Tim would have a few seconds to ski up to the drop and then I would be passing right by him.”
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"Hey, is that me in that picture?" Tim Durtschi photo.
Speaking of the drop, Durtschi recalls, “It honestly was one of the last things you would want to hit in that zone, because the landing is so flat, but for some reason there was this perfectly deep, untouched patch of pow right in the landing.” After running nearly 10 laps, Durtschi was about to call it a day, when Alegre convinced him to head up for one more.
“I actually had no idea what any of my shots looked like that day, because my camera’s screen was broken,” said Alegre, “but I just had this feeling that we would nail it on the last one.” Alegre says he was shooting on his Nikon D4 with a 70-200mm lens, with aperture set at f/5.6 and shutter at 1/2500”, on 3D autofocus, a rarity for him.
Look closely at the photo, and you might notice Durtschi more on the loose side of the Tight/Loose spectrum. “I didn’t notice until I saw the cover that my boots were unbuckled and my jacket wide open,” said Durtschi, “I was pretty worn out!”
