Fundamental to alpine ski racing and the intersection of the sport and race photography is its physical setting.  Because alpine racing is a gravity sport, it requires both vertical gradients and low-friction racing surfaces. Its ideal and stereotypical setting therefore combines mountains and snow. Aside from satisfying the sport's requirements - gradient and low friction - it is impossible to ignore the aesthetic results of meeting those demands. Perhaps not incidentally to the early alpine racing pioneers, the sport plays out in magnificent amphitheaters situated in and on mountains, sometimes great mountains. It takes place out beneath skies that vary from vast to claustrophobic and that range from impossible lapis blues to the whites, grays, and blacks of snow, fog, and rain. Their magnificence exceeds that of the greatest cathedrals, the most elaborate opera houses.  The sport's setting is elemental in its broadest sense: crystals of frozen water cover mineral crystals. But this elemental simplicity can't obscure the nearly infinite complexities of the setting and the attraction of competing in a beautiful sport in beautiful settings.  

Like a theatrical drama, a race happens on the stage of the race hill. Athletes, like actors hitting their marks, ski a ribbon of snow, whose width is determined by both the script the course setter has written and the athletes’ interpretations. 

Because this is a gravity sport, part of the racer’s art is managing and harnessing gravity.  It is also part of the race photographer’s art.  The low friction surface that allows racing challenges spectators, especially those trying to balance camera gear and take pictures. The locations of the highest race-course drama are not always the best places for stable, secure photography. 

The magnificent surroundings provide some relief. Interludes in racing allow pictures of mountains, peaks, passes, couloirs, cornices. Even the ocean. Landscape photography momentarily supplants race photography. 

Here are some views of what can be seen from the race courses at Alyeska.

A palisade of mountain peaks and upthrust ridges completely surrounds the amphitheater. Here, from the race hill, looking across Cook Inlet:

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Fog lenses can drift in.

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From higher on the mountain during an early morning, early season, race, not yet brightly lit: K03C3874

The surrounding palisade includes glaciers, seracs, valleys, bowls that can be ripped by wind. A92I2503 A92I8708 A92I6600

Closer to home, Alyeska mountain looms over the lower chairlift and the base station for the upper chair.  A92I9339 A92I9331

This was the race arena for the middle part of the U.S. National Downhill in 2007, fenced with red B-Net, from Chilkoot Ridge to the Waterfall.

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Looking up from the Tanaka Hill courses, to see the Waterfall pitch from below, and Alyeska Mountain and its cornice above.

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Landscape photography with a long lens: what the spectator can see from beside the race course:

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For the racer, this is the payoff: launching onto a perfectly prepared downhill course in sun. There won't be time to admire the surroundings.

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