A Release from FOMO

We’re just a wee bit into the start of September. Like death, sex, and taxes, there’s skiing and riding, for the time being, in the Southern Hemisphere. In Chile and Argentina, by the time you read this, it will be late winter. And on the cusp of the spring equinox. As true as there is equal day and night on September 22, 2025, if you’ve swiped your finger across the ​​oleophobic coating on your phone— which, no doubt, feels oh so silky—you’ve plunged into the world of posted pow shots and steep lines from the Southern Hemi. 

We are here to enhance your inner strength and complement your inner beauty. You are amazing. Believe it. 

Not that this is a plug for Issue 2 of The High Route journal, but I was introduced to a term called sympathetic joy while researching an article for that issue. Sympathetic joy, as I have come to learn, is a lack of envy. Essentially, by embracing sympathetic joy, one feels a sense of joy (read as stoke) for others’ accomplishments. So, if you find yourself in the Southern Hemisphere and enjoying the nightlife or the backcountry, I, at least, as one who is aspirationally sympathetically joyous, am happy for you. But, I am and will not fall prey, at least this year, to booking a flight and chasing snow. I have no need. In fact, I’ve never had the need. And we are here to explain that it is okay to simply stay put, wherever you are, and gaze lovingly at your skis or board after a trail run, a mountain bike ride, a walk, or even a nap.

What we are talking about here is geolocated FOMO: The sense of missing out when others are getting the goods in Chile or Argentina or some high altitude volcano, somewhere, anywhere, in the Southern Hemisphere. A few solutions to this are simple. A few of us at The High Route have adopted this, in fact. We’ve scraped social media from our phones. It helps. As our brains have been conditioned in the past decade to need a swipe and a like on, say IG, it makes it oh-so hard to resist the temptation to gaze, or swipe, like (or even better—see that you’ve been swiped and liked). The easiest way to get the rush and the pending FOMO is with your ubiquitous phone. It’s a drug, they say. Literally, a drug.

This next piece of advice is to demonstrate your strength, in other words, that inner beauty we mentioned earlier. Feel free to check out the desired socials on your laptop. Somehow, checking in on your pals down south, chasing the pow, and probably not breaking the bank as they’ll tell you it’s “totally cheap” down there, feels marginally better on a laptop. And likely, because the technology is so old-school, it’s even better on a desktop. 

Holy crap, just writing that makes me think I shouldn’t trust myself on the topic, and you should book a ticket to Santiago pronto. For kicks, let’s just see what a flight costs.

Ok. I’m back. If I leave in about a week and remain until the end of October, $1300 round-trip gets me to Santiago and back. Not exactly cheap. However, if you are truly unable to suppress the FOMO, then by all means, go. $1300 is cheaper than most monthly rents in mountain towns.  

But. Exhale. For. A. Moment. Inhale. Repeat. Maybe forgo the airfare. 

Here’s how a PubMed article says Fomo may manifest: “It may exist as an episodic feeling that occurs in mid-conversation, as a long-term disposition, or a state of mind that leads the individual to feel a deeper sense of social inferiority, loneliness, or intense rage.” 

And now here’s a diversion. About 30 years ago I was riding lifts at A-Basin with a friend who claimed to be a Buddhist. He had prayer flags and lived in the PRB and attended a tidy East Coast school (the kind where his parents probably stuck a sticker across the station wagon’s rear window), so I took him at his word. 

So, this one time at A-Basin, we were a few hundred yards above the base when a too-fast skier hit a jump near my then pal—let’s call him Kris—and hucked a gaping spread eagle. His left ski edge nearly nicked Kris (remember that’s a pseudonym) in the ear. Seemingly oblivious, the spread-eagle guy schussed to the base and stood with two other friends. This was a time of high fives, very pre-fist-bump, and so they high-fived as if something cool had happened. According to Kris, however, this was not the case: something very uncouth had transpired.

Kris muttered something under his breath that was definitely not Buddhist in nature. He tucked and gained speed and hit the spread-eagle dude at mach-schnell as if a linebacker were flattening a crash test dummy. The spread-eagle guy released from his bindings and flew backward about 15 feet. Then Kris pounced. 

Kris’ claims of Buddhism aside, what I witnessed was unbridled rage.

We are here to request you never go there. Please. Which means do what it takes to prevent FOMO and any related “intense rage.” Intense rage at anything is most often never a good thing. Basically, we want you to come to The High Route for the right reasons. Although we won’t turn you away if you are here for the wrong reasons. The bottom line is that we hope you are finding kindness, happiness, and joy here. And definitely not intense rage. And zero FOMO. 

If, for an instant, you begin to sense episodic doldrums because others are out there skinning and making turns and you are not, know this: You will make turns. You will gain vert. And just as it is supposed to be here in the Northern Hemisphere—in November if you are lucky, but probably by mid-December, and for sure by New Year’s—you will get some approximation of turns. 

The other side of the FOMO coin is an interesting thought experiment, too. The ski industry has a massive reach. For the most part, it is centered in North America and the Alps. Imagine being that kid, then that teen, onto young adulthood, and then old age—you’ve been bombarded all spring-summer-fall long, for decades, (in the Southern Hemisphere), with the open faucet of ski and riding content/media we produce here in the Northern Hemisphere. I suppose we should embrace our brethren in the Southern Hemisphere for what we have made them endure: that somehow it’s better and deeper and lighter in the Northern Hemisphere.  

We have it good. You probably have it good. Is there a need to feed the beast and bump many time zones because others have it right now? Probably not. They’ll not have it when you have it a few months from now. This is how it should be. How it will be. The balance of all things is fine. Never in excess. And always wishing good fortune on others, whether in Chile or Argentina, while you, dear reader, think about a Halloween costume and when to carve the pumpkin.