A Thank You, And Goodbye, From Managing Editor Ryan Dunfee

Internet, it's been fun. I'm on the right. Ian Tarbox photo.

It was on a gray fall day in Whistler, British Columbia that I learned the extent of the priveledge I enjoyed in writing to you, week after week, as Managing Editor here at TGR. I was compiling pads, goggles, and gear for a vacation day in the bike park when word came that two separate avalanches in South America had captured JP Auclair, Andreas Fransson, and Liz Daley.

I whirred my laptop to life, furiously searching for and hoping not to find credible evidence of this awful news. The early reports, none of which could yet be fully trusted, hinted at the dark day to follow. Within an hour or two, I would hit “Publish” on an updated story indicating that all three were dead.

It was a terribly surreal and glum day that would mark a turning point in both my personal and professional lives. JP had been a hero of mine since middle school, when the family VHS player chewed through my first playing of Poorboyz Productions’ 13, and I was shown a bold and creative vision of skiing that would immediate become my primary obsession and which would dictate too many life choices to count moving forward. 

The immaculate backflip mute grabs captured in JP’s closing segment would forever be my standard of grace of skis, but in the years of obsessive magazine reading and movie watching that followed, I’d grow to respect the humble, gracious, and light-hearted way with which he approached his life and career as much or more than his skiing. In my earliest ski industry experience, waltzing around the SIA tradeshow flippantly making fun of whatever was seen or heard for the small audience of BroBOMB.com, a chance encounter led to a handshake with my personal hero. He’d heard of our little blog. I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

Andreas and Liz I never knew personally, but each brought a particularly personal kind of enlightment to the snowsports community that would be forever lost after that fateful fall day. Andreas tackled simply absurd lines while espousing a personal philosophy so much more considered and thoughtful than I’d ever been used to seeing in the outdoor community. 

Meanwhile, Liz shared such an unabashedly hilarious take on life in the mountains – one that brought us all back down to Earth while breaking gender norms in the most fun way possible – that she had a veritable fan base in TGR’s own forums, where her trip reports would be consistently recycled by adoring readers to the top of the feed.

Alone in my hotel room, I felt purely gutted by the horrible news, the awful coincidence of the two avalanches, and charged with the responsibility to bring this news to you all in the best way possible. Both happened in such remote locations, I had to mire through Google Earth for a good while before I was able to even understand where in the continent the accidents had ever happened.

The pixels combining to show an image of Cerro Cochrane, the mountain in Chile where Andreas and JP had died, simply showed a steep, flanked peak of white fading into a brown landscape that extended for mile after mile in every direction. To know a hero I’d idolized since before I could shave was lying dead somewhere in a place that looked so far away from his admirers and so utterly unremarkable forced a dry knot to grow in my throat.

But as the hours crawled by and the news poured in, I began to understand how lucky I was. With each refresh of the story following new details, our connection as a community grew. We mourned together, sharing memories of personal encounters with the deceased along with powerful admirations from as far away as I was after watching that VHS tape in New Hampshire for the first time. 

We processed the news, we celebrated what Liz, JP, and Andreas meant to us, what they’d given to us, and how fortunate we are to thrive in a community full not only of weekends in the mountains and powder days, but of deep friendships and heroes that shape the values with which we take to our lives. “Honor” has been a word whose use I’ve long disdained the use of in our culture of recreation and fun, but that day, I felt just that at being the person entrusted to eulogize three people far greater in their deeds than my own.

Gotta give a shout out to all the TGR interns over the years, too. Often smart, dedicated, and living in a van, they made the job a blast. 

There were many amazing things I enjoyed at TGR, from the free gear to the chance to live among one of this country’s greatest mountain ranges, the Tetons, to the ready excuses to bike and ski in other amazing places, and the chance to work with incredible and passionate people whom I’ll long consider my friends. But the incredible relationship I’ve had the good fortune to develop with all of you – our audience – is something I grew to appreciate like nothing else.

Also, I got paid to do shit like this! Mom, don't ask questions. Jenna Mahaffie photo. 

We’ve talked shop, shared astonishments at world records broken and incredible human feats, been inspired by so many wild examples of perseverance and creativity in the outdoors, and too often, grieved together in loss for a dear friend, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, father, or mother whose life ended on the side of a mountain. 

And yet we’ve laughed, expressed our opinions, and talked of truly living the dream, as many of you do, combining a hard won-combination of professional success and personal freedom in the outdoors, whether by living in a tiny house, a converted van, or by subtler but no less ambitious means. You’ve been honest and admonishing when we’ve gotten things wrong, and we’ve learned from every email, comment, and Facebook message you’ve sent our way. Keep sending them – we’re listening.

Unfortunately, as of July 2^nd, I’ve no longer worked as TGR’s Managing Editor; while I’ll still be writing plenty of stuff for the site, I’ve recently started a new job with the digital innovations team at the Sierra Club. Aside from writing about the outdoors, another lifelong dream of mine has been to protect them, and the time was ripe from me to make that transition, aided in large part by the skills you’ve all helped me develop over the past few years.

Leslie Hittmeier's taking over my gig now, and she's going to kick ass, no doubts. Photo via Leslie Hittmeier.

However, I’m incredibly excited to announce that Leslie Hittmeier, a Montana native and up until now Skiing Magazine’s Online Editor, will be taking over the reins in my absence. Leslie is not only as passionate, active, and skilled an outdoorswoman as anyone out there, but is a graduate of TGR’s own internship program, where she showed a level of deference, maturity, humility, and talent well beyond her young years.

A professional-level photographer, Leslie also started our Women in the Mountains column as an intern, which has since become one of the columns I’m most proud of on our site. It’s told a huge variety of awesome, fresh, and nuanced stories about the outdoors from a woman’s perspective without ever falling back into the tired, oversimplified gender battles that have plagued “women’s content” in outdoor publications for far too long. That's my opinion, at least.

I feel incredibly proud to be handing off my role to the first woman in the Managing Editor role in TGR’s history, and to Leslie in particular. While her Montana-based upbringing may have engendered a more genuine philosophy about life than that of the long line of crass, bitter East Coast types that preceded her, I have no doubts that eventually she will grow jaded and find cause to start complaining about something, so fear not. Keep reading, and keep watching.

So while I’m sure I’ve lost all but 10% of you to your Instagram feed at this point, I just want to take a moment to thank you all for your time, attention, and support over these past three years – it’s been a total blast and a dream come true for me. I’d ask only that, as we close in on this year’s election, that you act on your power as some of the most stoked potential advocates for the good of nature and vote for local, state, and national representatives who you think will support our public lands, protect our wild places, and push for a just transition to clean energy so that climate change might not ravage our future winters. We often forget that we have some of the best reasons out there for why doing so is such a good idea.

Again – thanks so much for your time and support. Be good, have fun, and get outside. I hope to see you out there.

-Dunfee

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stash member Ryan Dunfee

Former Managing Editor at Teton Gravity Research, current Senior Contributor, current professional hippy at the Sierra Club, and avid weekend recreationalist.