This page contains a summary of Jeffs travels, adventures,
climbs and experiences.
Jeff lives outside Telluride Colorado with his wife Ursula. Within shooting distance lies the red sandstone walls of Canyonlands and Indian Creek, many world class paragliding sites, and the renowned skiing tucked in the heart of the San Juan Mountains.TRAVEL: 
Born in Boulder, Jeff grew up hiking and skiing in the Colorado mountains. He began climbing at ten and spent the next twenty years traveling and exploring as many ranges and summits as possible. At thirteen he attended the Telluride Guides School, at fifteen the International School of Mountaineering in Lysin Switzerland and the Arolla Mountaineering School, at sixteen he completed the Colorado Mountain Club climbing school in Boulder at which point he began climbing extensively on his own. He spent the summer of his seventeenth year visiting first Peru then Yosemite. These were just the first of many trips to these favorite climbing micas. He has now been to South America seven times, Nepal Four times, India three times, and traveled to climb, ski and paraglide over all of the Western United States, Alaska, and Canada.
After graduating from Boulder High in 1982 Jeff attended The University of California Santa Cruz, University of Colorado Boulder, and then returned to college at Montana State University in Bozeman Montana where he studied Film and Video in 1992-3. He moved to Telluride in 1986 and has generally maintained this as his base since then. He finished building his house in 1999, and now lives with Ursula his wife, a native of Lima Peru, on Hasting Mesa half an hour down valley from Telluride.
Some significant ascents Jeff completed during these years include climbing the Diamond on Longs Peak for the first time at Seventeen, soloing the Enos Mills Wall on the Diamond at Nineteen, climbing El Capitan in Yosemite a half dozen times including soloing the Tangerine Trip, making early ascents of many desert towers in Utah, countless waterfall ice climbs, climbing and soloing many peaks in the Cordillera Blanca, and trekking and climbing for several seasons in the Himalaya and Karakoram.
Jeff began paragliding in 1993, and holds a Tandem Instructors rating with the United States Hang Gliding Assoc. for paragliding. He has traveled extensively with his paraglider showing a passion for searching out and flying sites that he has heard about. The gift of his travels have allowed him to paraglide in Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India. He set the Colorado state distance record of 120 miles in 1992 from his home site in Telluride Colorado. He works as a tandem pilot, year round, flying passengers off the 12,250 foot high Gold Hill launch in Telluride Colorado.
ADVENTURE TOUR PRODUCTION COMPANY:
Turning forty in October 2003, Jeff committed himself to starting and operating Adventure Tour Productions Company. This company is dedicated to adventure tours, something that Jeff spent his entire life pursuing. From his early days in the outdoors Jeff documented his adventures with a camera; developing and enlarging black and white photographs in the early years, then taking slides once in college. With his love of documentary photography and video Jeff uses his intimate knowledge of countless locations to integrate natural beauty with extreme sports and the people who practice them.
Adventure Tour Productions Company offers several different services, all of which utilize Jeff's passion and experience. He has spent years exploring and researching, taking notes on flying sites and logistics. With this company Jeff offers guided paragliding in Peru, Nepal, India, the Rocky Mountain region and Four Corners area in Southwestern Colorado. Acknowledging the importance of weather in the sport of paragliding, he stresses keeping itineraries flexible and proposed flying destination options open. The paragliding aspect of Adventure Tour Productions is guiding based while the other sports included are focused on video documentary.
VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY DOCUMENTARY:
Since learning to ice climb twenty five years ago, Jeff has practiced the sport with an almost religious reverence, with hundreds of ascents spanning many continents. He now brings this experience and knowledge with him, accompanying climbers to routes in the Telluride, Silverton, and Ouray areas, and documenting the ascents by creating short true to life videos.
VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY DOCUMENTARY:
Video captures the fluid motion and beauty of skiing better than almost any other sport. Combine this with the unmatched scenery of the San Juans, and there lies potential for an exceptional personal skiing documentary. From skinning up, digging avalanche pits and of course making tracks in fresh powder the story of a backcountry ski day is a classic short project.
VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY DOCUMENTARY:
Rock climbing, from bouldering and indoor climbing walls, to multipitch desert towers and big walls, all present a canvas on which to create amazing documentary work. Near to Telluride rise the desert sandstone red walls of Indian Creek and the clean solid granite of The Black Canyon of the Gunnison and the Ophir Wall. Utilizing the intensity of climbing and the incredible scenic beauty of climbing locations, small documentary projects call out to be created.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO DOCUMENTARY:
Using in house editing and post, simple one and two camera shooting, and limiting the amount of tape shot, the goal is to produce short and cost effective videos. Bigger, longer projects are of course considered, but the concept of accompanying skiers and climbers on simple day trips, and producing short, simple documentaries is the vision. Also combining several sports in a week visit to the Telluride region is possible, such as skiing one day, ice climbing the next two, and then paragliding tandem at the end of the week, and creating an adventure week video.
With rock climbing photography Jeff learned how an image could capture the moment so completely. Later he experimented with the ease and simplicity of bringing a video camcorder on backcountry ski trips and ice climbing. Ice and rock climbing projects have the added challenge of the slow and static nature of their movement. Both climbing and skiing share the natural beauty of their location and position, but skiing videography fully utilizes the dynamic nature of motion pictures, and with today's technology, experience, and new medias, documentary video is more accessible and has more potential than before dreamed of.
A MISSION STATEMENT:
Jeff's partner and wife, Ursula Cristol lived in Lima Peru until they were married in 2001. Since then she has accompanied Jeff on numerous trips in the United States; south into Arizona and New Mexico to the Mexican boarder, across the southwestern United States to the west coast, up to Washington State and north into Montana. They have had the fortune to also travel throughout Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Sri Lanka, and India. During this time Ursula has learned not only about sharing her life and love, but also to cook, drive, read maps and now has a refined technique as retrieve and support crew. Using the house in Telluride as a base and traveling with either Ursula's 1993 Suzuki Sidekick or Jeff's 1995 Ford F-150 extra cab with a topper, camping with Ursula is the norm on road trips.
Jeff speaks Spanish, some French, Hindi, and Portuguese. Ursula is of course fluent in Spanish, making her a superb liaison when traveling in South America.
THE FUTURE:
After decades of playing, with memories of times shared and lived to the fullest, Jeff now looks back with some nostalgia and appreciates how a project with a legacy as strong as a film makes the experience so much more significant. It is his wish to offer that same legacy to others through Adventure Tour Productions Company.
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