I made my annual pilgrimage with a buddy to ski American Basin over the weekend. We try to hit it when the road (Cinnamon Pass) gets plowed to the basin which is pretty high up. Our timing has always been pretty good on these trips and this year was no exception! 

It's was like a mid-winter powder day! Great fun and we skied a new line, Independence Couloir which was fantastic. I carried my Pentax K-3 with my trusty ski lens, the weather resistant DA 18-135. Great combo for adventure!

We left at 4am to get skiing as early as possible. 

After a couple of miles we put the skis on our backs and booted up the first objective. 

Hard work!

The payoff was well worth it!

We skied another run on the flank of Handies after this. It was also fun but the flat light made skiing tough and photography less rewarding. 

An amazing day overall, especially considering it was May 9th!

I also had a chance to try out the new Merge to Panorama function in Lightroom 6 with a series of four photos I took on the way up Cinnamon Pass. Seems to work well and was very easy to do.

It's really nice to be able to stitch raw files right in Lightroom. Very convenient and the results look good to me!