Category: Narrative Threads
Are We There Yet?
Termination dust outside Anchorage. The end of summer means the start of something else for backcountry skiing.
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Show Don’t Tell
Show don’t tell—a glade skiing maxim.
Years ago, I came across a few photos of what appeared to be the perfect Northeast backcountry glade. Its balsams and birch trees were spaced so wide it looked like you could carve giant slalom turns between them, and the understory was totally clear—a rare treat in the tangled second-growth forests of New England. In a word, it looked like a tree skier’s Nirvana. I knew I had to try to ski it.
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Remembering Kasha Rigby
In mid-February, renowned adventure skier Kasha Rigby (54) was killed in an avalanche in Kosovo....
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Give Monogamy a Chance
Consistent touring partners are a fickle beast. Good ones—the sort you build a “partnership” with—require the confluence of several factors. It’s like dating, but maybe even harder. It’s a very Goldilocks sort of quest.
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The Road to Race Day
I moved to Colorado in 2010. I was invincible, as all boys in their 20s are. When a friend asked if I would do the Grand Traverse with him, I said sure without having any real sense of what I’d signed up for. K2 Coombacks and a 4-buckle boot worked great skiing couloirs in Rocky Mountain National Park, so I figured they’d surely be fine… I left Crested Butte a ski mountaineer, 40 miles later I skied into Aspen a rando racer. Man did it hurt, but I was hooked. Skis got smaller, boots got lighter, eventually I found myself in spandex.
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Sister from Another Mister—A Backcountry Friendship
Mr. Walker had VHS tapes of Scot Schmidt and Glen Plake, and for sure, Brit and I didn’t just want to meet those guys;we wanted to BE those guys. I only ever had two posters of people on my wall—Glen Plake and Andy Hampsten. During the fall, when we couldn’t ski, and Mr. Walker attempted to fire our stoke, he’d get us to do wall sits to get in shape, and he’d screen those “extreme skiing” films. Maybe the most extreme part was actually getting your hands on those movies in the late 80’s in Ohio.
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Driving Over to Say Goodbye to Bill
On July 13, a friend of many in the ski and avalanche community, Bill Nalli, passed away from cancer. I am sure that among the many who miss him already will be the mountains themselves, whose glistening snow-covered faces will be absent for the first time in decades from the ever energetic turns and quick smiles of our friend Bill. Then again, maybe he is out there after all and forever.
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