Chris Trajkovski chasing stuff on Mount Mansfield. Photo: Karl Lipsky
Social media, digital mapping, and opening the gates: here’s a perspective on revealing secrets in the Northeast and possibly snuffing out some of the magic along the way.
On February 3, 2025, my high school classmate and occasional touring partner, Chris, texted me a link to a video from Ryan Delena, a New-England-based skier and emerging influencer whose posts have been popping up in my social media feeds more frequently lately, and probably yours, too. Instead of featuring Ryan’s trademark aggressive skiing in one of New Hampshire or Vermont’s more remote lines, this edit was something of a press release. In it, he announced a public CalTopo map of the Mount Mansfield area he had created. Delena said he intended to document and preserve the history of Mansfield’s many underground ski lines and to equip people with the information needed to ski them safely. The link to the map, as they say, was in the description. I clicked through.
What I saw floored me. This wasn’t a ski map. It was a treasure map with explicit directions to “the crown jewels of Northeast backcountry skiing,” as one YouTube commenter called them. Nearly every underground stash in the greater Stowe area—from low-angle in-bounds glades to high-exposure chutes in Smugglers Notch—was highlighted on the map. They ranged in secrecy from lines so obvious that tourists can, and often do, accidentally find their way into them to others you’ll never discover unless you’re close to the inner circle of local skiers.
As I would later learn, Delena is as close to a local as one can get while still hesitating to call himself a local. Though originally from the skiing purgatory of suburban Boston, Massachusetts, he went to Vermont State University, Johnson, where he studied Outdoor Education just half an hour from Stowe. He spent his college years skiing on and around Mansfield. These days, he lives in a conversion van, which allows him to bounce between the Northern Green Mountains of Vermont—principally Stowe – and New Hampshire’s White Mountains, ticking off various ski lines and ice climbs on his hit list wherever conditions are best. Over the years, he has done the work required to develop a mental map of Stowe’s secret lines. This year, he simply put it down on paper, er, CalTopo.
On the one hand, the part of me that’s envious of all the Stowe locals and their easy access to some of the best snow in the East salivated over such juicy information; there’s no way I’d ever find all these lines on my own. On the other, I came up in a backcountry tradition in which we don’t even talk about secret stashes. If you want to share a hidden zone with somebody, you take them there personally; you don’t simply tell them how to get into it. Show, don’t tell. Ryan had broken this cardinal rule in the worst way possible—at the scale of social media. In my Bible, that’s tantamount to a deadly sin, up there with coveting your neighbor’s wife’s new skis and grooming fresh powder.
Less than a month earlier, Chris, who moved to the Mount Mansfield area a few years ago, invited me to his place to tour a zone he helps maintain. Northern Vermont is a magical place for somebody like me, coming from the Boston suburbs. That magic was on full display in Chris’s zone, where the modest three inches of snow in the overnight forecast had transfigured into knee-deep powder. Had Delena blown that spot, too?
My eyes raced to the place on Delena’s map where Chris’s zone should have been. I was relieved to find no neon green lines demarcating its location. At least one stash remains a secret. Thank God for small mercies.
I texted Chris back, and we fed off each other’s quick initial judgements in a spiral of criticism for Delena: this stunt was a misguided attempt to grow his online audience. In the process, he’d alienated the local Stowe community, and, over time, would likely lure untold numbers of unwitting skiers into dangerous terrain they had no business trying to navigate. What was he thinking?
We were not alone in our first impression. The comments section on Ryan’s video had devolved into a turf war between Stowe Locals who have spent decades cutting, maintaining, and skiing the lines revealed by the map, versus just about everyone else, who decried the efforts of the “gatekeepers” to keep them out and hog all the powder for themselves. Nuanced points were raised on both sides, ranging from safety issues to ownership of public recreational resources in an overcrowded resort town (thanks, Vail). Still, nobody seemed to be changing their minds. The controversy continued to boil for over a week.
Then, on February 13, Delena posted an update. In this video, he explained that he had made significant changes to his map based on feedback from Stowe Mountain Rescue (SMR), the local search and rescue outfit, as well as from the broader community of Stowe locals and visitors alike. He had left in-bounds lines on the map, as well as a couple of the most easily accessible high consequence runs that lie just out of bounds, where resort riders often find trouble even without a map, but he had scrubbed everything else, particularly the riskiest lines.
SMR’s perspective was different than Delena’s original thought: this map would lead to more rescues, not fewer, by enticing unprepared riders out of bounds into technical terrain. “These are the people… who pick up the pieces when things go wrong,” Delena says of SMR in the video, “and I feel like I need to respect that.”
Amen, brother.
There was one other, less tangible reason that Delena cited for pruning his map, which resonated with me even more than concerns about safety: “In connecting with some of the locals, I feel like… I might have taken away the magic of finding or being shown one of these places for the first time.”
Alleluja!
I liked what I was hearing. Delena was starting to win me over with this second video. However, a YouTube monologue from the principal suspect was only one side of the story. I wanted to hear from a Stowe local.
My buddy Chris was able to connect me with June, a telemarker who has been skiing Stowe and the surrounding area for the better part of the past fifty years. I’d also get a chance to talk to Delena himself to dive deeper into his map and the ideas he discussed in his latest video.
When I called June to get her take on the map, I expected her to have a few choice words for the young guns encroaching on her territory. But her thoughtful perspective, informed by a long view of the sport of skiing and its evolution on Mount Mansfield, surprised me.
“If you cut it, they will come,” she says of the stealthy lines locals prune in the Green Mountains. “When you cut things, you lower the terrain to people’s ability levels,” making it easier for outsiders to find their way in and shred your stash. June doesn’t sound bitter or angry about this, despite having seen many lines that she discovered become public knowledge over the years—even to the point that a couple of them have been incorporated into Stowe Mountain Resort’s official map. Instead, her tone suggests that blown secrets are just a part of skiing—though, obviously, one should keep the secret as long as possible.
When I spoke to Delena, he grounded June’s hypothetical firmly in the present: “They have cut it, and they are coming… The kids are savvy.” Delena explains how the upcoming generation of young skiers and riders zero in on hidden lines by watching his edits and those posted by the same Stowe locals who want to keep outsiders outside. By cross-referencing the terrain they see on video against topo maps, satellite imagery, and even old skiing forums, Delena says, enterprising newcomers are able to sniff out Stowe’s secrets.
June, though, shares Stowe Mountain Rescue’s concern about skiers seeking terrain above their ability level. Just because your favorite YouTube shredder makes a line look safe and easy doesn’t mean it is. “People see ski porn,” she says, referencing the same face-shot-filled videos of backcountry powder days that Delena pointed to, “and say, ‘I want to do that, too!’ But they don’t understand their lack of skill.”
Delena emphasizes that these edits often fail to explain the hazards inherent in the mountains. “The videos out there only demonstrate the merits [of the lines being skied]. They don’t show [skiers] what they’re getting into. I’d like to put something out there that is well done and explains the risks.” That’s why he annotated his map with amplifying information about exposed, avalanche-prone, and otherwise dangerous terrain.
Experienced backcountry skiers sometimes find trouble, too. A skier-triggered avalanche high above Stowe Mountain Resort. Photo: Chris Trajkovski
June appreciates the idea, but having seen so many rescues in and around Stowe over the decades, she’s skeptical of the general public’s ability to successfully make use of the map, at least in its original form. “Growing up, my father taught me that if you bring people into the woods, you bring them out of the woods,” she says. Delena’s original map can lead just about anybody into the backcountry, but even the cautionary notes he included are no guarantee that the people who follow it will have the skills to safely navigate Mansfield’s more technical terrain or the common sense to know when they’re in over their heads. It is for these safety concerns, rather than a desire to maintain the mountain’s secrets, that June was happy to see Ryan revise his map.
Though we may gain a measure of safety by commoditizing information, as Delena’s original map did, and as social media in general always does, we also risk losing something: the magic Delena mentions in his second video.
The difficulty of navigating the backcountry and breaking into the scene in the first place makes it so rewarding.
I began my backcountry skiing journey like many of the people on the pro-map side of the debate: as a total outsider. I remember the frustration of skinning groomers on a brand-new touring setup because you don’t know your way around the backcountry while helpful vacationers on the chairlift inform you, “You’re going the wrong way!” It sucked, and I would have done anything to access the wild lines I dreamed about—including following a map like Ryan’s.
But I’m glad I didn’t because I would have missed out on a huge part of the backcountry experience, like pulling my head out of The Cloud™, planting my feet firmly into a pair of bindings, and venturing into the mountains to find partners IRL. That’s part of the magic of the mountains Ryan talks about, and there’s no digital shortcut to it.
By simply spending time in the mountains, you meet people. It just happens. Even innocent small talk on an in-bounds skintrack can turn strangers into partners, ignorance into experience.
Like my buddy Chris. Even though we went to high school together, we hardly knew each other until six or seven years after graduation, when a Thanksgiving storm dumped just enough snow on our hometown to give me a crazy idea—why not try skiing the hillside peach orchard down to Main Street? With skis strapped to our packs and grandiose dreams of claiming a 300-foot, fifteen-degree first descent, my Dad and I set out from the trailhead. We were immediately dumbfounded to see two guys from my high school telemarking out of the woods back to their car. Chris and his good friend Josh had beat us to the line.
While I’ll never forgive those two for snatching that epic first descent from my Dad and me (just kidding, guys), we all recognized the adventurous kindred spirits in one another. Over a decade later, Chris and I are still skiing together, and Josh is trying valiantly to teach me the art of ski photography.
“Part of what makes these lines special is not knowing if they’re going to work out,” Delena says, trying to articulate the intangible magic he sees in backcountry skiing. “Even if the terrain turned out not to be epic, the adventure behind it was.” And his map, he acknowledges, could diminish the adventure. I know he’s talking about bottomless glades and gripping chutes in northern Vermont, but this wisdom applies just as well to fruit farms in the flatlands.
If I had had a map like Delena’s when I was a newbie backcountry skier, would I have bothered with seeking turns in a peach orchard? Probably not. Instead, I would have made a beeline to the premier zones along with every other alpine tourer in New England. We would have traded the lift line at the resort for a conga line in the backcountry, and each of these special spots would have become yet another commoditized ski run, trammeled by the powder-panicked masses like those at any resort. Worst of all, Chris, Josh, and most of my other touring partners, who I’ve also found magically in the mountains, would have likely remained a couple of blurry faces in my memories of our crowded high school halls.
Nevertheless, Delena says, “The culture of adventure is changing. The new generation cares more for information.” If he’s right, people will continue to find faster ways to break into the backcountry, even if it means short-circuiting the magic some of us find in taking it slow. In that light, it’s no surprise to see the clash of cultures in the comments section of his videos.
I asked Delena what he would say to someone who thought the ulterior motive behind his map was to spark a viral controversy to grow his audience as an influencer.
“I could get way more engagement for way less effort by teasing these lines in sexy videos rather than doing the research I did,” he explains. “I knew this was going to bring as much negative attention onto myself as positive attention, and I’d never do that to myself if I didn’t believe I was serving the greater good.”
The negative attention has weighed heavily on Delena, who admits to a few sleepless nights debating how to handle it. “I could just delete the map, and all this would just go away.” But he hasn’t done that because, he says, “I still stand by my belief that information makes things safer.” That said, he doesn’t want to lead unprepared adventurers astray. Ultimately, it’s a balance, and he’s working hard to find it.
Ryan Delena assesses the snowpack on Mount Hancock, New Hampshire. Photo: Brett Protsiewicz.
As for the term “influencer,” Delena doesn’t think of himself that way. First and foremost, he is an athlete and a climbing guide. (He’s currently working on ski guide certifications.) Second, he’s an author, having co-written (with his father) the memoir Without Restraint, the story of how skiing changed his life. He includes “Influencer” at the end of his resume, and then only begrudgingly because critics have so often flung the term at him pejoratively to question his motives and his love for the sport of skiing.
“If it was just for the money, I probably wouldn’t work as hard as I do,” he says.
Talking to Delena, it is clear that he does what he does—living in a van, climbing and skiing nearly every day, and, yes, even publishing controversial maps on the internet—because he loves it. He says skiing has “brought me to the most beautiful places on Earth, made me my nearest and dearest friends, and made me look at myself and become a better person.”
Delena’s self-reflection is on display in real time throughout the whole episode of his Mansfield map. It’s rare to see people change their minds in the heat of a disagreement, especially as publicly as Ryan did here. Even more impressive is that he managed to do it with dignity and humility. He didn’t let anyone bully him into it; rather, he kept his mind open, even to the angry voices in the conversation.
Delena ends his latest video by imploring his viewers to find more empathy for one another—locals for the outsiders and outsiders for the locals. I, for one, have gained a lot of empathy and respect for Delena as a skier, creator, and member of the Northeast backcountry family.
Like he says, we’re all here for the same reason: our shared love of the mountains.
I’ve been watching some of Delena’s videos and living in Washington state , am amazed by the scarcity of good lines in the NE. I watch the videos and the thin lines through all those tress and think, thank God I live here.
Many of the local stashes near my home mountain have become overrun with new BC skiers. Mainly young, they find the runs through a mapping app and use the names on the mapping app, in their social media posts and not the names we old farts call them.
I don’t mind it too much and accept it as the a result of the growth of our sport ( although I admit I do resent the guiding companies who use these same areas for clients, showing up with 8 person groups).
The difference from what I can tell is that when i want to escape the crowding , I just go further out into the BC and find all the untracked snow I could every want. This is obviously different in the NE and I have empathy for the old timers that find their scarce resource now overrun.
I understand the nostalgia for the times past ( although I often think of a phrase I read that said nostalgia is just old people lying about how good it was !) but the cat is out of the bag and modern mapping apps are here to stay and entice people into the best runs.
I think Delena’s eventual nuanced approach to the mapping in question was a good compromise and I’m impressed by the young man’s openness and thoughtful approach.
As to Only Show, NotTell….. that is the unwritten rule amongst my cadre of skiing miscreants and we still have a run called Dick Cheney ( it’s in an undisclosed location and you get face shots!) that would result in excommunication if mapped on social media.
Thanks for reading, Scotsman. The more I talk to the “old timers,” the more I’m surprised (in a good way) by everyone’s zen-like acceptance of the inevitable – like you said, the cat is out of the bag. It’s helped shape the way I look at the issue; it was interesting to see my own opinions evolve in real time as I interviewed the people featured in this article.
If you’ve ever been to Talkeetna, Alaska and walked into the Fairview Inn your greeted by a giant mural perched above the bar of a big Griz cresting a high point and (what i like to imagine anyhow) he’s seeing Denali and the central Alaska Range for the first time. That’s the magic Andrew is talking about in his title. I think the title alone is worth contemplating. I’ll never forget the excitement of thrashing our way up a well known roadside couloir in the Sierra and then laying eyes on the most striking, aesthetic couloir I’d ever seen a little deeper in the range. And just like that another adventure was hatched. It’s a nice memory because it happened organically and that is the magic that sometimes gets lost in translation of the over sharing age we exist in. To be clear I’m not anti guidebook, etc but like a nice bottle of tequila the rule of everything in moderation applies here, and maybe just maybe some of the magic won’t die if you leave a little extra in the bottle for the rest of us.
Well said Matt. Amen. And also cheers!
Well said x 2! Thanks for sharing that memory – sounds like there’s more to that story.
I’m not sure this mythologizing of the ” magic of being show a new line ” isn’t just another justification for patently obvious gatekeeping.
Not that gatekeeping isn’t a part of BC skiing, but we should just be honest about it as I think the author is being.
Having, through longevity and frequency assumed the mantle of “local ” , I can with some honestly say that the , and to quote the author,” inner circle of local skiers” can be the most condescending, judgmental and self-important bunch of people I know, myself included.
I’m a local here and don’t want outsiders skiing my secret stash and want to retain the magic of showing someone my stash for the first time but I’m going to Europe next week and spent the morning looking up GPX tracks for tours so I don’t fall in a crevasse and bust my creaky ass or get lost.
As I say, I have empathy for the local skiers in this instance as these are ” underground”, pruned lines and scarce but I think we can all be a bit hypocritical when it comes to “outsiders” discovering our coveted lines.
Never been a sentimentalist and I find all this mythologizing a bit much at times. But thank God we are all different.
Great points, Scotsman. And you’re right – everyone’s a hypocrite. The question is whether or not we choose to recognize that, and whether we allow that recognition to inform how we treat other people… I appreciate your straight shooting take here! The line about GPX tracks in Europe made me laugh.
For me, though, the magic goes a lot farther than seeing/being shown a new line for the first time. The magic is how skiing can force us to interact with the real world, and the real people in it. You meet a lot of cool people that way…
A buddy of mine said this article reminded him of a quote from artist Geoff McFetridge, who sums it all up in one line better than I did in this entire article: “Skiing is my user interface with the world.” (That may be a paraphrase). But you get the idea. It’s not just the lines, OR the snow, OR the mountains, OR the people – it’s all of it. And and and.
I think the notion that nostalgia for the days of exploration, failure, success and discovery is gatekeeping, is misguided. It’s not about withholding information but rather acknowledging that something is lost when you can follow a blue dot and a blue line to an objective with essentially no effort aside from the physical. The new digital tools are here to stay and I no doubt use them along side my analog materials and good old intuition. But we should strive to conserve values in the community. If you’re looking at your phone more than your surroundings, your missing the point. As Emerson said, “life is a journey, not a destination” and there’s no doubt he took this from Zen teachings, “it’s better to travel well than arrive”. It’s not about keeping people out, but about keeping and building the spirit of adventure IN the community. To fail a few times only to eventually unlock a zone and find your way to the top of a line you have eyed for a long time makes it story rather than data in the cloud. Thanks High Route for keeping the spirit of adventure alive.