About the Author

I grew up with the long winters of Bavaria/Germany and somehow I caught a virus called skiing. Since my childhood skiing is part of my life. When I was 14 years old I became a member of the German Alpine Club (DAV) and started my first excursions on skis into the backcountry. Growing up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen I had all the mountaineering playgrounds in front of our house. For a few years we explored the close by backcountry in our county but soon a proud owner of a drivers license and a car, my friends and I started to venture to the mountains of Bavaria's close neighbors Austria, Northern Italy (Südtirol), Switzerland and France. We became avid mountaineers going out for some alpine projects almost every weekend.

In 1998 my job brought me to North America and the beautiful Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Since then I'm enjoying the American Way of Life, Skiing and Mountaineering. After a short visit of 4-1/2 years in the Southern Appalachian Mountains we moved back to the left coast and now I call the Pacific Northwest my new home.

skiing dream powder in the Stubai Alps, May 2006 · © Claus Seemann

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About the Photgraphs

If you are looking for information about a photograph on this site, just move the cursor over the image and some information will be displayed in a little tool tip. Available not for all images.
The majority of the photographs are taken digital. The digital workflow of image processing beats the analog path of having the film sent to a lab, scanning the transparent and continue digital. I use a Nikon DSLR body and Nikkor lenses, some Nikkor glass is still from the old film days, and fully functional on the new hi-tech digital bodies.

Mount Hood, Oregon - Summer Skiing

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Contact & Ownership

Comments and questions are best submitted by email...>> -- or backcountryfriends (at) gmail (dot) com

The page is owned and maintained by Stefan Gümperlein, Hood River, Oregon, USA.

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Disclaimer

Mountaineering, Backcountry skiing, and all other methods of travel or recreation in alpine environment are dangerous and a potential hazard to personal safety. Each person who ventures into the mountains is responsible for their own safety.

The trip reports on this website may appear to offer information about the safety of traveling or recreating in an alpine environment, but remember that posts on this web site are not evaluated or edited for accuracy and represent the subjective experience of the author.

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Copyright information

All photographs and written material on this web page is © 2004-08 by Stefan Gümperlein, www.backcountryfriends.com, unless indicated otherwise.

You are allowed to use photographs from this web site for private non-commercial purposes, but please let people know where you got them from. If you would like to use a photograph for a commercial purpose, you need to get written permission before using the photograph.

Hotlinking to images on the backcountryfriends.com server is not permitted.