Publisher of outdoors books teams with nonprofits

When Kelly and Steve Edmundson realized nearly everything they did for fun, from skiing to paddleboating to spending time with friends and family took place outside, their idea for a business venture was born.

The Weathered Page, the Reno couple’s foray into publishing, is designed to let other everyday enthusiasts share their passion and to benefit select non-profit groups working to protect and promote the outdoors.

“We conceptualized it as a book of user-submitted content, and as soon as we figured that out, we wanted to collaborate with non-profits in the region who help get people out and make less of a mark on the environment,” says Kelly Edmundson, who is also currently working on her master’s degree in marriage and family counseling.

The couple plan early next year to publish four books featuring photos and stories of adventures in four mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, Wasatch and the Rockies.

The Weathered Page is working with a handful of non-profits which will promote the book to their membership and share in half the project’s profits. Groups collaborating on the Sierra Nevada, for example, are the Reno Bike Project, which works to make the Truckee Meadows more bike-friendly; the Sierra Avalanche Center, which provides avalanche advisories for the central Sierra Nevada mountains; and South Yuba River Citizens League, a group working to protect the Yuba River, a tributary of the Feather River in California.

Digital pictures and accompanying text from amateurs only can be submitted at the venture’s web site, designed by Reno design firm Stan Can Design and found at www.theweatheredpage.com. Photos and stories can be submitted through November for possible inclusion in the books, which are to be published in the first quarter 2014.

Books also can be purchased at the site and must be ordered before Dec. 31. Books ordered before Aug. 31 are priced at $65, and $75 thereafter.

If the initial printing is a success, The Weathered Page plans to add books on four more regions in 2014: books highlighting water activities in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; another on the Appalachian Mountains; and a fourth of photos and stories from all over the country submitted by children.