Biography

I was born at home in Arkansas, on the edge of a cotton field where my father was a sharecropper, and then raised in Western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. I am the third of eight children. As I grew up, I increasingly traveled alone in the Bitterroot Range, the valley’s western mountains and their canyons. My first backcountry trip, which encompassed more than a weekend, was in 1965. I spent one week in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness with a Boy Scout troop. Except for a few hiatus’s the backcountry has been a part of my life ever since.

I discovered photography in 1969 shortly after entering Vietnam. It was not until 1998 however, that I decided to try to sell my work. My first published writing, which included my photography, was in 2007.

Because I live in Western Montana, I am within two hours driving time from the nearest designated wilderness area, with several more nearby. The driving time to Glacier National Park is approximately four hours.

Through the years, I have come to favor backcountry travel during the winter. I have long believed that during this season the terrain reverts to what it was 10,000 and more years ago, forbidding and dangerous. The lack of people however, comes with mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is the loneliness. Then there is the experience of virgin mountains with the only trail being the one I create with my snowshoes or crampons, coupled with absolute reliance on myself.

Because of the peril of the trips I have undertaken, my name has been in the media (newspaper, radio, and television) on four occasions since 1998. The most recent concerned the Glacier National Park trips from February to May of 2011.

My wife also loves the backcountry, although she does not go on the more extreme winter trips. I have lived in Helena, Montana for most of my adult life.