Chili Thon

It’s always hard to say goodbye to a friend. Chili Thom’s artwork is ubiquitous with the Coast Mountain landscape and when he succumbed to cancer late in 2016 it was a blow felt across the entire mountain culture community. As Chili’s best friend, I struggled for months to find a way to memorialize his legacy in the pages of our magazine. Displaying his art on our cover was one way (our first pure art cover) but for the words inside, I eventually realized that a simple story of one camping trip into the mountains was actually the best way to show who Chili was, and how much he loved getting outside.