Telluride Mountainfilm: “Ace and the Desert Dog”

26 May Telluride Mountainfilm: “Ace and the Desert Dog”

Ed. note: Scroll to the bottom of the story to listen to my conversation with Ace Kvale. “Ace and the Desert Dog” is scheduled for 3 screenings: Fri, 5/27 at High Camp, 7-9:15 pm; Sat, 5/28 at the Nugget Theatre, 9:15-11:30 am; Sun, 5/29 at Base Camp Outdoor Theatre, 8:45-10:45 pm. Ace Kvale’s photography is on exhibit all weekend at Gallery 81435, 230 South Fir Street, with a Gallery Reception during the Gallery Walk, Friday from 3:30-6:30 pm. 

Forest Woodward photo

“Backpacking itself is not the thing. The thing is all the places you get to go.” Ace Kvale

You’re sixty years old. You’ve climbed, skied, photographed the mountains and wild areas of Alaska, the Himalaya, Africa. What do you do? If you are Ace Kvale you take a walk with your dog in your backyard. For two months.

If you’ve lived in Telluride, if you’re a regular at Telluride Mountainfilm, if your life has been lived outdoors, you know Ace Kvale’s work: the skier dropping some obscene Alpine terrain, the tiny figures traversing some corniced expanse just back from the edge…

More recently, perhaps you’ve seen the elegiac images from Kvale’s journeys with Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, co-founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project, some of which will be on display at Gallery 81435 during the Festival as part of Mountainfilm’s Gallery Walk.

Ghengis, aka Desert Dog, Forest Woodward photo

I’ll bet the idea of walking your backyard (writ large) has fermented in your mind. I know it has in mine. And I’m sure that Ace and Ghengis (Desert Dog, the author of Desert Dawg Blawg) had long conversations about the subject, but then one day they walked out the cabin door, and covered some 400 miles of the Utah canyon country in the next two months. “Ace and the Desert Dog” (Brendan Leonard and Forest Woodward) is a beautiful short film you should see during 2016 Mountainfilm. This time Ace Kvale is in front of the camera, where he started out all those years ago. And I loved the story. Time to lace up my boots?

Ace & Ghengis, Forest Woodward photo

Click here to listen to my podcast with Ace Kvale.