Trail Runner September_2017

PEOPLE
RUN AMOK
BY
DOUG
MAYER
Posers’ Delight
Lessons learned from
a trail-running shooter
Dan tells me, “You’re missing a leg.”
“I’m missing a leg?”
“Yeah. Here, look. See? You’re an amputee. Try it again.”
I am with the mountain-sport photographers Dan and
Janine Patitucci, and I am flunking trail-running photo school.
Badly. We are in Switzerland’s Jungfrau region, where there’s
something like 500 miles of the best flowy singletrack in the
world, and I am stuck in a 100-yard recursive trail-running
loop. Working with Dan and Janine is like being in prison with
two of the nicest people you could possibly imagine. I am in the
photo equivalent of Groundhog Day.
I make another pass on our alpine runway. I hear the shutter
on Dan’s Sony a7rII whirring. I stop, and Dan stares intently at
the camera’s screen, flying through something like 30 images
in 10 seconds.
“I don’t have it,” Dan says. “We need it.”
Dan, I realize, is one part tweaker, one part Kilian Jornet,
one part Dalai Lama. He has a heart of gold, and he is fully
capable of accidentally grinding fellow runners into the dirt.
But if he doesn’t get the shot he craves, he mopes.
I am not helping. I move through the mountains like a worn
Sherman tank, every inch of ground hard-fought. There’s
someone nimble inside, but he hardly ever appears. Most of
my surfaces have battle scars.
Yet the power of imagery is such that it’s all worth the effort.
Single images have changed people’s lives, mine included.
Years ago, I saw a photo of a climber in British Columbia’s
Bugaboos. He was happily dangling his feet off a ledge, the
forest incomprehensibly far below. “One way or another,” I told
myself, “I am going to do that.” A climbing and mountaineering
life ensued, with celebrations atop remote peaks, funerals so
soul-crushing my eyes still mist at the memories and many
deeply fulfilling experiences between those poles.
In my life’s slideshow, Dan and Janine’s trail-running
images have supplanted the one of that climber. They have
been everywhere I looked, from the Patagonia catalog to Rock
and Ice to this magazine. So, when I needed photographs of
trail running in the Alps for an idea that would become an
improbable career, I hopped a train to their corner of the
Alps, Switzerland’s ridiculously dramatic Jungfrau region.
We talked for a few hours at their local pub, but not once
about work. I caught the last train home feeling like a transfer
in grade school who had found his new best friends.
Everyone knows them, and everybody loves them. Just
mentioning Dan and Janine creates an unspoken bond. In
Colorado, a bartender once overheard my conversation and
blocked me as I headed for the door, pleading, “Tell Dan and
Janine Kathy from Silverton says hi.” One of these days, when
I need a place to crash for the night, I’m going to head for the
nearest brewery in the nearest mountain town and yell, “Dan
Dan, I realize, is one part tweaker,
one part Kilian Jornet, one part
Dalai Lama.
and Janine said I might be able to crash with one of you guys.”
The door will open to someone’s spare bedroom.
The last few summers, I have been training new trailrunning
guides, who will lead running trips on which,
of course, many clients will take photos. I try to convey
what I learned from Dan and Janine: technical tips, bodymovement
insights, advice on clothing choices. But
something’s always been missing.
Last fall, I realized what it was. We were trail running
the Tour du Mont-Blanc, and found ourselves high on the
col between Switzerland and Italy long after the season’s
tourists had come and gone. The day was winding down.
Hungry, we coasted through tilted pastures towards dinner
in the Swiss border village of Ferret. Rounding a corner,
we intruded on a scene that has played out in that spot for
centuries—a shepherd, her flock, dog at her side. Dan was
first through, and he captured a scene both beautiful and
timeless. We were there, I realized, for the simple reason
that he and Janine get out. A lot. They are there when
beautiful things happen. Over and over, day after day, over
the course of years. The important thing, as Kilian Jornet
says, is to keep moving. Dan and Janine do.
These days, I still lumber along. I wear clothing that’s
not quite colorful enough, and I can barely remember the
photographer’s rule of thirds. But I always think of their
example: Get up early, grab your shoes, run through town
and head into the hills while others are reaching for their
first cup of coffee. Be the one who’s there.
Doug Mayer is not sure if he lives in Chamonix, France, or
Randolph, New Hampshire. But he thinks he might be a
trail-running model in a future life.
JOE KLEMENTOVICH
12 SEPTEMBER 2017 TRAILRUNNERMAG.COM