I want to tell you story about a single photo Sugarloaf tweeted about 3 weeks ago.

Hidden just under the surface is another story. A story of hustle. Of work. It’s a story about putting in the time now to create opportunities later.

Here’s the photo.

Our Inaugural Mountain Bike Festival is coming. Sept 23-25. Get your passes now >> https://t.co/lnhthpuXXZ #theloaf pic.twitter.com/cwZKOfSXZG

— Sugarloaf Mountain (@SugarloafMaine) September 8, 2016

A bike, the northern lights, and a message about an upcoming bike festival.

Well-matched ingredients often disguise the difficulty required to achieve such a simple, balanced combination. This is very much one of those cases. It’s also the reason I love to follow Sugarloaf’s Jamie Walter who took that photo.

For example, it overlooks Jamie’s all-nighter efforts to catch the Aurora only to be foiled by clouds…

@RobWrightImages NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I'VE BEEN STUCK BEHIND CLOUDS ALL NIGHT NOOOOOO NON NONONO NOOOOOO

— Jamie Walter (@jwalter1337) October 8, 2015

It overlooks Jamie’s enthusiasm and fire about photographing these scenes in the first place…

Hunting the northern lights tonight and I'm very fired up about it. Skies are clear at @SugarloafMaine.

— Jamie Walter (@jwalter1337) August 2, 2016

It overlooks the nights where he couldn’t keep his eyes open and just missed it…

@RobWrightImages I fell asleep like 20 minutes before it lit up. Unfortunately the cloud coverage was bad here last night.

— Jamie Walter (@jwalter1337) December 20, 2015

And it overlooks how many tries it took to get it right…

Im sitting on a mountain at midnight taking photos, eating pop tarts, and drinking a PBR. If that doesn't sum me up, idk what will.

— Jamie Walter (@jwalter1337) December 11, 2015

After all, spending midnights on hillsides covered in pop-tart crumbs doesn’t tell your story unless your story has been filled with many, many, many such nights.

Hustle
A few months ago I wrote a simple post about hustle. This is what I said.

“That mindset where we aren’t just cranking through a to-do list but endlessly looking for opportunities, looking for doors to open, looking for where the people are so they can go there.”

Jamie has hustle. He’s always working. Always improving. Always looking for opportunities.

A bike perfectly placed in the foreground of a beautifully framed aurora doesn’t just happen. Jamie made it happen. And when a killer bike photo was needed, he could deliver.

Nice work, Jamie.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.