Sky Chair is a long, windy, high-speed quad that’ll take you to higher than any other chairlift at Heavenly Mountain in South Lake Tahoe CA. More often than not, I’ll take Canyon Chair instead as there’s usually a shorter line and you get almost the same amount of vertical down. But if I’m trying to get over to Mott or Killebrew Canyon, Sky is unavoidable.
On the day pictured below, I was headed over to the Canyons. I got off at the peak of the California side, wind blowing 30mph in my face, and started skating the traverse over to the Nevada side. As I looked over my left shoulder, this was the view I took in.
For me, the Sierra Nevada mountains will always be home. Don’t get me wrong, the Rocky Mountains aren’t too shabby either, which is what brought me (like so many others) to Colorado almost 10 years ago. The Sierra just have an intangible quality to them that I love—they’re a little warmer than the Rockies, and a little less intimidating. During the winter the snow falls silently in big wet flakes, and in the summer the smell of the Jeffery Pines calms me down like nothing else can.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the Sierras, just outside of South Lake Tahoe CA. I spent my winters skiing over 100 days a year, and the summers going to the beach and meandering through the forest with my dog.
Surrounded by some of the most gorgeous scenes in the Western U.S., I really developed an appreciation for conservation and environmental awareness. Because it was so beautiful, I also developed an appreciate for photography, which ultimately led me down the career path that founded Hidden Woods Media.
I’m proud to share that Hidden Woods has signed up to donate 1% of our annual net profits to an environmental non-profit of our choosing, and this year we’ve elected to donate to the Sierra Nevada Alliance.
The Sierra Nevada Alliance is a nonprofit organization based out of South Lake Tahoe that acts as a strong resource for a large breadth of environmental issues, including climate change, forest restoration, watershed programs, and species conservation. Their mission is “to protect and restore Sierra Nevada lands, water and wildlife, and to support the health, vibrancy, and resilience of the region’s rural and urban communities.” All that is to say, they’re a great organization that’s working day in and day out to preserve the area that I can so proudly call home.
So the next time I get off Sky Chair and look over my shoulder at Lake Tahoe 2,500 feet below, I can rest assured knowing that the future of the Sierras is in good hands, and that Hidden Woods was able to help play a small part in securing the land for future generations.
