I used to be a freeskier. That even sounds funny to write, but it’s true. What I mean by that is that I used to measure the quality of my skiing by my speed, the steepness of my lines, and how much time I could spend in the air. I lived in Salt Lake City and I skied at Snowbird. The tram on a powder day when the canyon was close was the be-all end-all. Nothing was better than being the first person to hike out to Baldy on a powder day and rip GS turns with face shots all the way down the untracked face.
But something happened to me. After twenty years of skiing, the sport started to lose its shine for me. I went through the motions, hucked the cliffs, skied fast and stomped it on hardpack, but my heart wasn’t in it. This was the winter of 2011-2012: one of the best on record in the Wasatch. I should have been in hog heaven, and on good days, I was. But on the off days when I felt bored on my skis, and spoiled for feeling bored while skiing, I wondered whether there wasn’t more to the sport. That winter I started telemarking more (we all make mistakes, forgive me), and I started to tour more.
In ski touring I found what I had been missing in my skiing: adventure, real risk, and the freedom to go where I pleased. Freeskiing is dangerous at its conclusion: as in mountain biking or base jumping, participants find increased challenge only by assuming more risk, but shrinking margins of safety. Show me a professional freeskier and I’ll show you someone who’s life can be measured in periods-between-injuries. Some are luckier than others, but the bleeding edge of that sport sends everyone to the hospital eventually.
Ski touring put the adventure back into skiing for me, and before I knew it, I no longer owned alpine skis. I ski patrolled on lightweight gear– it was all that I had –and I sat in the shack reading conditions reports, scheming up my next tour. Even on groomer days, I was eager to get out and ski the most challenging snow in the resort on my lightweight gear, building technique for my days off.
Ski touring gives us a medium in which to find any challenge that suits us. That could mean the challenge of exploring new terrain, of skiing steep and technical faces, or of pushing one’s athletic boundaries faster and farther afield. With a pack full of simple tools and a modicum of knowledge, I can set out for a day and cover miles upon miles of mountains, employing a hundred techniques to facilitate my travel across rock, ice, and snow.
I think back on my resort days with fondness. I could never have learned to ski as well as I do by hacking up the breakable crust in the backcountry. I can thank my parents for putting me on skis as soon as I was walking. Because of them, this one of the few things that I have truly spent 10,000 hours practicing.
But ski touring in the alpine, moving fast and light, that’s a new challenge for me. It’s not better than hucking cliffs or ripping on 110 mm boards, just different. It’s the challenge of putting together a hundred little details to execute a tour with fluidity. It’s the discipline to drink less and sleep more, and to train when it’s raining. It leaves me feeling strong and lean, and at the end of the day I can lie down exhausted and satisfied, having employed my whole being in my day.
Three years ago, I would have laughed to look at my skis now. 160 cm? 65 mm waist? That’s less than half the surface area that I used to ride on a groomer day. But these are tools, and by bowing to their shortcoming and accommodating those, they liberate my legs to run all over that hill.
And that’s something that wakes me up early with a grin on my face.
Photos from yesterday’s 20 mi tour around Mt Hood’s North side. Snow conditions were marginal at best, with an atypical Easterly wind gusting into the 30s– Still, nothing beats being out among the trees and the snow as the sun comes up. [divider_line]
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5 comments
amen
church.
Awesome write up! I’m totally in tune with what you are saying. I still love hucking cliffs on a powder day, but those days are few and far between with the season Tahoe has been having and with the arrival of my two sons in the last 3 years. So I tour more and more, and appreciate it in a different way. Don’t think I could articulate my feelings like you did, so thanx!
Yu, Glad that the post resonated with you. Enjoy the rest of your season!