How I Filmed Myself Skiing Mount Lassen as a Solo Creator
How I Filmed Myself Skiing Mount Lassen as a Solo Creator
The Problem With Skiing and Filming at the Same Time
Filming yourself ski is a lot harder than it sounds. On a normal shoot, I have someone else behind the camera while the athlete skis, or I am the one shooting while someone else handles the risk of moving down the mountain. On Mount Lassen, during my seven day solo project, I did not have that luxury. I was the skier, the subject, the camera operator, and the only person on the mountain who could make sure the shot actually worked.
That meant every ski run had to be planned twice, once as a skier thinking about snow conditions and safety, and once as a photographer thinking about camera placement, lighting, and whether the shot would even be usable afterward. It is a strange kind of multitasking that most people never have to deal with, and it forces you to slow down in ways that pure skiing never would.
By day three of the trip, I had already skinned up part of the Lassen approach and scouted the terrain from a distance using binoculars the day before. That early scouting mattered more than I expected once it came time to actually set up and shoot my own descent, since I already had a rough sense of where the light would hit and where a camera could realistically sit.
I woke up before dawn that day, around four in the morning, so I could reach Manzanita Lake while the light was still soft and the lake was still calm. That early start was not really about the ski footage yet. It was about getting other shots done first so I would have enough daylight and energy left later for the harder work of setting up and skiing a line by myself.
Setting Up a Shot With No One to Help
Without an assistant, every camera setup becomes a small logistics puzzle. I had to hike up with my ski gear, figure out where to place a tripod or camera angle that would capture the line I wanted to ski, then hike back down or around to my starting point before I lost the light or the energy to do the run properly. On a normal job, another person handles half of this while I focus on the athlete. Alone, I was doing both halves myself, one after the other.
I kept my gear simple on purpose. I was not hauling a full production kit up a volcano by myself. I relied on the Sony A7R4, a single tripod, and a practical mindset about how many takes I could actually afford given my energy and the shrinking daylight. Every extra setup meant more time spent moving gear instead of skiing, so I had to be selective about which shots were actually worth the effort.
There is also a mental shift that happens when you know no one is watching except a camera. You lose the built in feedback of a partner telling you the run looked good or that you should try it again from a different angle. You have to trust your own read of the shot, hike back up, check the footage, and make the call yourself on whether it was worth repeating.
Between setups, I also squeezed in a quick edit session back at the van, going through what I had already captured that morning at Manzanita Lake before heading back out for the ski portion of the day. Doing a rough edit in the field, even a short one, helped me understand what I still needed rather than guessing at the end of the day when I was already tired and less able to think clearly about what was missing.
What the Approach Actually Looked Like
The approach on Mount Lassen that day was not glamorous. I skinned up a section with a few hundred feet of vertical gain, working through variable snow while carrying camera gear I still needed functional and dry once I reached a spot worth shooting from. It is easy to picture a ski shoot as effortless, but most of the actual time gets spent hiking, adjusting gear, and second guessing whether a location is really going to work once you are standing in it.
I also had to think constantly about timing. Light on a mountain changes fast, and I was racing against it while also managing my own physical effort. By the time I made it back to the van that evening, before sunset, I had spent most of the day moving between roles, skier, hiker, camera operator, and editor, sometimes all within the same hour.
That kind of pace is exhausting in a way that is hard to explain to people who have not tried it. It is not just physical fatigue from skinning uphill. It is the mental fatigue of constantly switching between two jobs that both demand full attention, over and over, with no one else to share the load.
Why Doing It Alone Changes the Final Footage
There is something honest about solo footage that is hard to fake. When you are the only person on the mountain, the shots you get reflect real decisions made under real limits, not a fully staged production with a crew making everything easy. I think that honesty comes through in the final footage, even if viewers cannot name exactly why it feels different.
It also means the mistakes are mine alone to fix. If a shot did not line up, there was no camera operator to blame and no do over with fresh legs the next morning. I had to work with what the day gave me, adjust my plan on the fly, and accept that some ideas simply were not going to happen given the conditions and my own energy level.
Filming yourself ski Mount Lassen taught me more about patience than almost any other part of this trip. You cannot rush a solo shoot the way you might with a full crew. You plan carefully, you accept that some setups will not work, and you learn to be genuinely proud of the shots that do come together, because you know exactly how much effort went into each one.
What I Would Tell Another Solo Creator
If you are thinking about filming your own skiing without a crew, my biggest advice is to scout before you commit. Knowing the terrain, even loosely, saves enormous time and energy once you are actually up there trying to set a camera and ski a line in the same window of good light. Do not assume you will figure it out on the fly, because on the fly decisions cost time you usually do not have.
Second, keep your gear simple. The fewer things you have to manage, the more mental space you have left for the actual skiing and the actual shot. And finally, give yourself permission to come home with less than you hoped for. Solo shooting on a mountain like Lassen is unpredictable, and some of the best lessons from this trip came from the runs that did not go as planned.
I would also say this. Do not underestimate how much energy solo shooting takes compared to solo skiing alone. Skiing a run by itself is tiring. Skiing that same run while also thinking about camera angle, exposure, and whether you actually got the shot doubles the mental load, even if your legs are the ones doing most of the physical work. Plan your day with that extra weight in mind, and you will end up with both better footage and a more honest sense of what a solo shoot day actually costs you.
Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.