You know, the funny thing about life in general is timing changes everything really quick.

And yeah, I remember just being like, oh, there it goes.

And that's kind of when everything went a little sideways.

That was the voice of my friend Ben.

And what he's talking about was a moment where I nearly lost my life.

I was captured in a massive avalanche in Alaska,

and that avalanche, in my experience there, changed my life.

And I recount that experience and what happened after it in my new book called Creative Calling.

Wake up call.

Despite all my experience and extensive backcountry Navalanche training, I had butterflies.

It had been storming in Alaska for days now. The snow was measured in feet, not inches.

Then we'd had a break in the weather, and we were going to take it. Would the conditions hold?

With the owner of one of the top heli skiing operations in the world as our guide and a cadre of

some of the world's best skiers, we were setting out to capture some epic photographs.

The images we created that day would serve as ads for Nike as magazine covers

and in editorial spreads for the top action sports magazines. Once we'd started out, my jitters

evaporated. The conditions were perfect and the athletes swept down steep, untouched mountain

faces. They left off cliffs, cornices, and snowy spines

with grace and power. The pictures flowed as easily as the snow under our skis.

I'll never forget one particular peak. The helicopter touched down on a knife-like ridge,

and the guide hopped out and shoveled out a small flat area so that the

three other athletes and I had a place to gather atop the ridge. As the chopper pulled away,

...