Personal Desire vs Brand Deliverable: Why I Did Not Ski Mount Shasta Even Though Conditions Were Perfect

Personal Desire vs Brand Deliverable: Why I Did Not Ski Mount Shasta Even Though Conditions Were Perfect

The Skis Stayed at Camp

I carried skis all the way up to Horse Camp on Mount Shasta, around seven thousand nine hundred feet, and then I left them there. On summit day I climbed with crampons, an ice axe, and boots, reached the top just over fourteen thousand feet, and came back down on my backside in a glissade with the axe as my brake. The only skiing I did on that mountain was from camp back toward the van during the pack out at the end of the day.

For a skier, that is a hard sentence to write. I am not somebody who dislikes skiing or avoids it. I skied on Mount Lassen earlier in the same trip. Skiing is a large part of why this project appealed to me in the first place. And I stood at the summit of a fourteen thousand foot volcano and went down on my butt instead. I want to talk about why, because that decision is the clearest example I have of the gap between what a photographer wants and what a project actually needs.

What the Project Was Actually For

This was a seven day solo trip built as a behind the scenes brand storytelling project for multiple outdoor companies including Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There. That is the frame around every decision I made for the week. I was not on that mountain to collect personal accomplishments. I was there to produce work that served three different clients, and to do it alone, which meant every hour and every pound in my pack had to earn its place.

When you hold that frame clearly in your head, a lot of decisions that feel agonizing in the moment get simpler. Skiing Shasta would have been a great day for me. It would have added almost nothing to what those brands needed. The story of this project was one person moving through big terrain with their gear, doing real unglamorous work, and the deliverables were built around that, not around a descent that would mostly serve my own résumé.

That is not the same as saying personal desire does not matter. It matters a lot, and I think work made by people who have no personal stake in it shows that emptiness immediately. But there is a difference between letting your passion drive the project and letting it override the project. The first makes the work better. The second is how people end up delivering less than they promised while having a great time.

The Day That Made the Decision For Me

The other half of this is that summit day did not leave room for skis even if I had wanted them. I woke at three in the morning, ate oats, and set up a tripod shot of the tent in moonlight before I took a single step. Thirty to forty five minutes into the climb I realized I had forgotten my helmet, and sorting that out cost me an hour and a half. I climbed Avalanche Bulge in the dark with a headlamp, managing layers the whole way, fleece on and off, gloves on and off, beanie on and off.

Then, near The Thumb, I came across a climber in trouble and spent roughly two hours helping coordinate a helicopter rescue as a Wilderness First Responder. During that stretch I met the owner of Shasta Mountain Guides and we ended up bonding over a documentary I made about Epic Bill Bradley that aired on PBS. After that I still had Heartbreak Hill and a summit push in front of me, on legs that had already been going for many hours.

Now imagine carrying skis through all of that. Up Avalanche Bulge in the dark. Through the rescue. Up Heartbreak Hill. Every one of those sections gets meaningfully harder with skis on your back, and the day already had two large unplanned interruptions in it. Leaving them at camp was not a sacrifice I made grudgingly by the time I was actually climbing. It was a decision that looked better with every hour that passed.

How I Think About the Trade Now

The way I frame this to myself is that the personal thing you want is almost always available later, and the client work in front of you is not. Mount Shasta is not going anywhere. I can go back and ski it on a trip where skiing it is the point, with a partner, without three brands depending on what comes out of my camera. The seven days I had with those clients happened once.

There is also a safety layer to this that I do not think gets discussed enough in outdoor creative work. Solo, at altitude, after a day that already included a rescue and a helmet mistake, adding a technical ski descent is not just an ambition problem. It is a risk decision, and risk decisions made while tired and behind schedule are the ones that go wrong. My decade in this work has taught me that the most expensive mistakes are the ones you make while chasing something you wanted badly enough to stop evaluating clearly.

What made the choice easier was having decided the priority order before I ever left South Lake Tahoe. Client deliverables first. Safety as a hard boundary around everything. Personal goals in whatever space remains. When you sort that out in advance, on the ground, with a clear head, you do not have to relitigate it at fourteen thousand feet while exhausted. The tired version of you just follows the plan the rested version already made.

What the Brands Actually Got Instead

Here is the part that makes the trade worth it rather than just noble. Because I was not skiing Shasta, I had attention and energy for the things the project was actually built on. The moonlit tent shot at three in the morning. The layer management and the honest look at what a solo alpine start requires. The second load into Horse Camp that I should have planned better. Product work in real conditions rather than staged ones.

That last category is the one clients care about most and the one people underestimate. Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There did not need a hero descent. They needed their gear shown being genuinely used by someone doing hard work in a real place, photographed well, over multiple days, in conditions that were not always cooperative. A ski descent would have given me one spectacular sequence and cost me a full day of that other coverage.

Looking back at the full week, I think this is the decision I am most confident about. It was also the least fun one. The unglamorous option served the work better, which is a pattern I keep running into. Nobody writes an inspiring caption about the day you decided not to do the exciting thing, but that decision is often the reason the rest of the project came together at all.

The Question I Ask Myself Now

Whenever I feel that pull on a project, I ask one question. If I do this thing I want, what specifically does the work lose. Sometimes the honest answer is nothing, and then I should absolutely go do it, because a photographer who is excited makes better pictures than one who is grinding. But on Shasta the answer was a whole day of coverage, a large amount of energy, and a meaningful increase in risk on a day that had already thrown two surprises at me.

That question keeps the tension useful instead of destructive. I do not want to become someone who never does the thing they love because there is always a deliverable. I just want to be honest about which one I am choosing and why, in the moment, rather than telling myself a story afterward. On that mountain I chose the job, and I got a glissade and a pack out at sunset instead of the descent I wanted. I would make the same call again.

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.