Founder Daniel Wildey is an award-winning travel writer and has served as editor of Legend - the brand magazine of outdoor company Jöttnar - Senior Photographer for Active Traveller, and Ski Editor for Snow. Below are some examples of his features
Crossing Colorado, for Snow. A winter journey from Denver to Steamboat Springs.
“Rejoining the pilgrimage after an intense backcountry day is a pleasant respite; driving past ranches and deer while the flat blue-grey light turns to a grey-black dark. But the serenity is left on the east of the Continental Divide as the west hits us wildly in the windscreen with a wall of drifting snow.
The fraught journey is all worth it as we arrive at our condo where a private chef is preparing dinner and our waitress is more than happy to pop out for beer. No one can juxtapose the wildest of nature with the fullest of luxury quite like the Americans.”
Full story at Snow
Best Laid Plans, for Sidetracked. Geoff Harper’s attempt to complete the first winter Tour du Mont Blanc by fatbike.
“I woke up in a cold sweat,” recalls Geoff Harper. “I didn’t know if my sleeping bag was too warm, but that’s how I sold it to myself. I’d picked up a slight bug a few days before, but out of frustration I’d ignored that basic human message that I shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous.” Shrugging off a sniffle in the extreme places of the world is something that nature will seize upon, magnify and blow out of all proportion.
Full story at Sidetracked
Ski Touring in Greenland, for Mpora.
“Standing on the summit, ready to drop, the dangers disappear into the background. Matt has scoped the line before, and he has dropped in to test the snowpack. He will direct us carefully to staging points along the safest line. I know how to ski within my abilities. I know how to link tidy, gentle turns so as to minimise disturbance to the snowpack. And I trust my new friends. So what is there to fear? All that lies ahead is a paradigm of what backcountry skiing should look like; a virgin line, up to 45 degrees and falling 700 metres to the frozen fjord, and then a short push, chased by lengthening afternoon shadows to reach the most remote camp I’ve ever visited.
This moment is exactly what I’m here for.”
Full story at Mpora
Slow Burn: Cuban Cigar making, for Culture Trip.
“Not everyone in Cuba smokes cigars, of course, and if they do they often smoke the puros (cigars made with tobacco from one single region) rather than the prestige brands that are the most coveted in the world. However, the extent to which ordinary people on the island partake in something often seen as a luxury in the rest of the world, makes cigars smoking seem like a more proletarian form of recreation. The old lady sitting at the kerbside selling a handful of cigars from a cup is a far cry from the walk-in humidor at Davidoff of Geneva. So why does that accessibility fail to translate to the cigar culture of Europe?”
Full story at Culture Trip