Peak Sketching

Since he’s my employer at a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, nonprofit, I hate to admit Phil’s good at anything, but he did climb K2 and Gasherbrum II without oxygen, shared the first ascent of the Washburn Face of Denali, led the American Alpine Club for fifteen years, took a climbing fall that should have killed him, and still climbs 5.11 (or so he says, I will fact-check this myself). I’ll allow he’s a decent leader at Protect Our Water Jackson Hole, as long as he listens closely to his staff, and I admit he does some damned impressive Etch A Sketching.

Phil recalls he started drawing on an Etch A Sketch while smoking weed at Hobart College in New York, which he also says is a very good school, an ironic aside given his apparent undergraduate priorities. Since then, he’s created more than a thousand sketches, mostly landscapes, but he can do portraits, too. He does a fine job capturing the craggy contours