Winter arrives quietly in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

A thin shimmer of frost along the riverbanks. A dusting on the peaks. A hint that something vast and ancient is stirring. Beneath our feet lies a super volcano—shaping one of the most remarkable winter landscapes on Earth.

For thousands of years, the first people have honored this land. Today, it continues to inspire anyone willing to step beyond the plowed roads and into its deep silence. For my family, these snowy kilometers are more than play; they’re the spark that keeps me drawing and dreaming, trying to glimpse Yellowstone in winter the way a child might—wide-eyed, open, and full of wonder.

It all began—like so many Montana stories—on skis.

Coming Home to the Snow
My dad was a Forest Service ranger, my mom an English teacher, and growing up in Dillon meant long winter days in the Pioneer Mountains. My father woke me with a firm tug on my ankles—hauling me out of bed for another ski day on the trails he had blazed for the Forest Service.

We drove the snow-packed mountain roads in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, a far cry from today’s sport utility vehicles with custom snow tires from Finland and traction control “snow mode.” The heater was basically a fan blowing hot air from the engine through the cab, which was insulated with thin wool spindles—cold drafts at the doors and windows, frosty as we drove. We wore layers in the car. I wore a hand-knit sweater, crafted with love by my mom, and it was heavy and itchy. These adventures with my dad were cold and uncomfortable, pushing me well beyond my comfort zone, but looking back, absolutely perfect.

Years later, my wife and I built our careers in Washington while raising our twin daughters. We traded alpine climbing packs for child carriers, exploring granite ridges, river valleys, and the rugged inlets of the Salish Sea. Every weekend, we packed the car to film and map new trails, encouraging families to get out into their own wild places. Then one winter day, my daughter and I spent four hours in a traffic jam on Snoqualmie Pass, inching toward a Nordic trail we never reached. We turned around. It felt like a turning point. Within a month, we sold our house.

My wife accepted a job at Bozeman Health.
I moved my creative studio, SINTR®, to my hometown.
The truth? I moved for the skiing.

Tracing the Lines of a New Story
When we arrived in February, we jumped straight into the snow—golf course loops, Sunset Hills, Sourdough, and then, with reverence, Crosscut (once Bohart Ranch), where I had raced as a kid. Coming back to Bozeman, I realized I wasn’t just returning home—I was returning to a rhythm that had shaped me.

As we explored, I did what I’ve always done: took photos, sketched, mapped, and later—during the lockdown quiet of early 2020—picked up a pencil again. Those drawings grew into my Discover Montana Treasures coloring book, my ski and bike books, and eventually The Last Best Trails, which won Bozeman’s Choice Award for Best Local Book and Author.

But something was missing. The trail books connected with committed explorers—but not with the broader community. And yet, the heart of what we experienced as a family was profoundly universal: unplugging from technology, moving our bodies, breathing cold air, and sharing moments that stay with a kid forever.

I realized that some experiences are better told through a story.
Through imagination.
Through the magic of animation.


Real Places, Real People, Unreal Adventure
My films blend hand-drawn illustrations with modern motion graphics—twelve individual drawings per second, layered through a virtual multiplane camera inspired by Disney’s golden age. Every frame begins with a memory: my daughters on a snowy bend in the trail, my wife’s breath hovering in the cold, a fox diving headfirst into powder.

Every drawing carries the weight of real footsteps in real snow. I can only animate what I’ve actually lived or imagined from these real-world experiences.
The Snow Day was born from our ski adventures in Yellowstone over the past decade. A fantasy born not from escape, but from profound observation of the place we call home.

Inspired by Yellowstone
Winter in Yellowstone is not simply another season—it’s another world entirely.

Day-to-day life falls away the moment we head south, leaving the familiar patterns of town behind. Traffic thins as cellphone reception does, and the world of information loosens its grip. By the time we reach Gardiner, it feels as though we’ve stepped out of the present entirely. Then we pass beneath the Roosevelt Arch—those towering stones etched with For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People—and the transformation is complete.

We enter a landscape where time slows, where the world appears much as it did an epoch before humans dominated it. Bison swing their massive heads through chest-deep snow, clearing narrow paths the way their ancestors always have. Foxes vanish and reappear in perfect arcs as they dive for mice tunneling beneath the crust—frost clings to the lodgepole pines like spun glass, glittering in the low winter sun. And along the rivers, steam drifts in opalescent sheets of blue, rising exactly as it has for centuries from the hidden fires deep below the Earth. Here, in our own backyard wilderness, we are transported—carried back into a world both ancient and alive.

We drive to the end of the plowed road to the trailhead, pull on our boots, and strap into our touring skis.

Moving to warm up, we pass the terraces at Mammoth; other days, we hear the frozen roar of Tower Falls, and the vast quiet of the Blacktail Plateau. Tracks tell ancient stories: ermine, coyote, deer, elk, moose. Occasionally, the subtle rise of a hibernating bear is tucked into the hillside.

And then there are the small wonders—a ponderosa pine whose bark smells faintly of chocolate, a reminder of the hot cocoa waiting in our pack.

We break trail as a family, climbing toward new vistas, knowing the return glide will be fast and full of laughter, maybe with a few uncontrolled wrecks into the deep snow. We end the day with sore legs, cold cheeks, and the feeling that we have not simply visited the park—it has inhabited us.

Every outing becomes a sketch to save the memory.
Every sketch becomes a scene I bring to life, distilling the day’s feeling.
Every scene becomes part of the story of our small but connected place in a vast world.

The Gift of Winter
Every winter trip became another memory pressed into the snow—another spark of inspiration carried home in our cameras, sketchbooks, and conversations. These quiet moments, the surprising scents of ponderosa bark, the steam rising from geysers at dawn, the fox’s dive, the weight of deep snow beneath skis—each detail became part of a growing archive of Yellowstone’s winter soul.

And then, if you’re lucky, you’ll hear it—the wildest sound of them all. A long, rising call lifted into the cold air, a thread of ancient song pulled taut across the valley. Wolves.

Their howls echo over the snowy basins and drift through the timber, haunting and beautiful, a reminder that this land is still ruled by its original music. You follow their presence not by sight but by sign: broad paw prints pressed into the snow like stamps of authority, each step a quiet declaration that the wild endures.

Over the past decade, these journeys have been far more than family outings. They have been a slow, patient form of location scouting, revealing the park’s most memorable vistas and wildlife.

When we pass beneath the Roosevelt Arch—the basalt blocks stacked like an ancient gateway—and step into a realm where time swirls differently, slower, deeper.

Here, winter sculpts the world into elemental forms.

Bison heave their massive heads through chest-deep snow, sending crystalline plumes into the air, foraging for meager amounts of dry grass. It is hardly worth the effort. Survival here in the winter is hard.

And rising from the canyon depths, the great Lower Falls roars—a living forge of water and air. In the bitter cold, its spray freezes mid-flight, layer upon layer, building a shimmering tower of ice hundreds of feet tall. It grows through the season like a cathedral sculpted by the elements: every gust chiseling edges, every night hardening its gleaming ribs, until it stands as a monument to winter’s relentless artistry.

In this backyard wilderness, the everyday dissolves. What remains is the raw world as it has always been—ancient, untamed—and we, for a brief moment, become part of its story.

From the frozen terraces of Mammoth to the vast, windswept plains of Blacktail, from the hush of sleeping bears to the thunderous stillness of canyon walls, Yellowstone has shown us where stories live. These landscapes are now woven directly into The Snow Day books and animated film—authentic, lived-in places shaped by cold, elevation, and the endurance of the wild things that thrive here. Our aim is simple: to share a glimpse of this extraordinary world with readers and viewers everywhere, so they can feel what it’s like to venture into one of America’s greatest treasures in winter.

Over time, all those ski outings begin to blur into something larger — a single tapestry of grand vistas, wildlife encounters, and small sensory details like the puzzle-piece bark of a ponderosa pine. Little by little, those moments migrate from memory to the page. What began as photographs, field notes, and pencil sketches becomes the foundation for finished illustrations, printed books, and eventually animated scenes. As our ski tracks fade back into the snow, the experiences they came from take on a new life — transformed into stories and images that try to capture even a fraction of what it felt like to be out there.   

May your path be adventurous.

Go in pursuit with courage.

In Yellowstone, every fresh snowfall is a blank page.

Every expedition into the Park is a chance to begin again.

And every child—
no matter their age—deserves a Snow Day.