Formed in 2022, May River Mountain Press is the book publishing arm of imediaSmith, owned by Greg and Janet Smith. The press’ first tome is Altitude Adjustment: A Book of ‘Chairlift’ Pictures, published in 2022. The book takes a whimsical look at the skiing and riding experience common to most snow sports enthusiasts. Its 96 pages, 150 pictures and a dozen written essays are wrapped in a unique 8×10 softcover with French folds inside the cover. It shares Greg’s take on the average schmo’s skiing experience, in-bounds at public resorts.
Living 30 years on the tidal May River in South Carolina, the Smiths had long planned to form a self-publishing press or imprint with that estuary’s name. But in 2013, they moved from the South Carolina Lowcountry to the High Country of Colorado. When they published Altitude Adjustment in 2022, they wrestled with their dated idea for a brand. And despite having plenty of Colorado peaks to choose from, they combined two amazing places where they have spent their lives together into a company with a moniker for an imagined peak: May River Mountain.
Future projects include a compilation of Greg’s longtime, black-and-white documentary project on the small town of Bluffton, as it grew from a coastal backwater to a retirement hub and tourist destination a few miles from Hilton Head Island; and an ongoing look at Grape Creek, which drains the Smiths’s Wet Mountain Valley home, collecting runoff from ranches and homes to regularly grow toxic algae in DeWeese Reservoir. That lake is less than 20 miles from the creek’s origin in springs and snowmelt from Blueberry Peak, yet its waters flow – via the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers – some 1,500 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Greg’s pictures document how this happens and his book will ask why – much as his award-winning 2009 documentary “Keeping the May River Wild” asked about his former home.
Order ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: A BOOK OF ‘CHAIRLIFT’ PICTURES
$32.95
LOOK FOR ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
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All the Range
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Westcliffe, CO 81252
imediaSmith office
59000 Highway 69 North
Suite B
Westcliffe, CO 81252
Poor Richard’s Bookstore
320 N. Tejon Street
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
Salida Books
109 N. F Street
Salida, CO 81201
Between the Covers
224 W. Colorado Avenue
Telluride, CO 81435
The Edge Ski, Paddle and Pack
107 N. Union Street
Pueblo, CO 81003
Monarch Mountain
1 Powder Way (just below Monarch Pass)
and Monarch Outpost
F Street (downtown)
Salida, CO 81201
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Salida, CO 81201