Who Owns the Cirque? On Localism in the Backcountry

Powder— a locals only private good on public land?

Some thoughts on localism and who owns the cirque. Managing through kindness the scarcity of powder.

The Thought Experiment

Try this for a backcountry skiing thought experiment: a “famous” local has been in town for eight or nine years. You couldn’t pick them out of a lineup, and most certainly not costumed in the season’s latest bro-wear on a cold day: big goggles, go-proed helmet, just the right amount of baggy in the baggy jacket and bibs.

After a cold dump and shred, late one evening, or sometimes two weeks later (it’s apropos in some circles to delay social posting about a pow day until everyone is getting skunked), the skier posts an IG self-salute of the day’s gnar. You’ve seen this self-salute before. There’s the speed check turn, the cursory pause for the running sluff—then a point-em-and-straight-line canvas painting. Sometimes, an air interrupts the artistry or adds to the mark-making. You decide.

On its face, there’s not much going on here. It could be a sponsorship obligation and a paycheck.

Imagine the skier and his videographer routinely post stills and reels from this “locals” spot with some calculated edits. There’s just enough footage of the slope and surrounding area to get a tease of the locale; they crop out obvious landmarks. With that landmark editing, are we clueless about the pow stash’s whereabouts? Not really. You live here too and know that with open eyes and personal tours just slightly off the beaten skintrack, the precise location is clear. Your region has a limited supply of mid-winter steepish skiing and rock drops.

This same local sours when others post about these ski zones, even when editing out location-specific features and no geotagging. Like the rest of us, they can decipher where these shots originate. Lastly, to make matters worse, they stink eye, or verbally confront, those outside his crew when they see you have a tasty day, just like him, at their preferred ski zone.

Who, if anyone, gets to police local spots? Who gets to “protect” our scarce resource, powder, for select locals? Is it the best local free skier who has lived here for less than a decade? Is it the sponsored athletes with a following? Is the true local who has been yo-yo-ing for 20 years and feels entitled to park their sled just beyond the wilderness boundary the enforcer? Should localism even be a concern? 

I don’t have those answers. I also don’t have the answer (only opinions) regarding social media posts featuring the hyper-local powder stash and trying to disguise the hyper-local spot to make it appear as any old spot. There’s a lot of effort and performance going into that geographic masquerading. If you don’t want people to know, don’t post.

Above the bustle of SLC, a place of many locals. Photo: Peter Vordenberg

Powder—A Post-Storm Diminishing Resource

Like surfing spots and good waves, powder skiing is scarce. And like surfing, there’s localism sometimes in the backcountry. Surfers have their longstanding code. Consider the surfing code informal yet well-known rules and regulations that locals enforce. Backcountry skiing has those, too. Often agreed-upon norms like not skiing on top of others, farming powder shots, conveying information about snow instabilities to adjacent parties, and assisting in rescues when others are in need, mitigate any potential conflict.

Although a trope of surfing localism, the use of violence to police surfing spots is real. In surfing, localism can manifest with a defined group having exclusive access and rights to a public good (waves) and enforcing that access with brawn. In other words, stay away if you’re outside the pre-defined local group.

We also see a type of localism that enforces the informal norms, again, the surfer’s code, by allowing outsiders access to a zone but ensuring they adhere to the agreed-upon norms—like not dropping in on another surfer. Non-locals are welcome, but they must behave a certain way. Don’t behave a certain way; the empowered locals might use other means to right a wrong that could hurt or, at a minimum, delay the drive home due to a flat tire.

Some consider powder snow and good waves to be common-pool resources. Economist Erik Peterson, a surfer who has put some thought into the topic, calls a common-pool resource “one that no individual can be excluded from consuming while at the same time any individual’s consumption diminishes the value of the resource for everyone else who may want to use it.” 

We know this as an exploitable resource whose supply is easily outstripped by demand. Show up too late for the powder party in some places, and the skiing is tracked out. (Look at Mt. Bachelor—or any mega industrial ski hill on a powder day. The vibe goes from aloha to gotta-get-mine at first chair.)

Some backcountry terrain is self-policing. I’ve seen several parties hustle up a skintrack, rip skins, and teeter on a slope moments before murmuring 3-2-1-dropping. They eye the committing entry, yawning beyond 40 degrees, and pivot. Many surf breaks have a bathymetric deterrent. A wave builds, peaks, and convulses onto a barely submerged reef. That chaos keeps some non-locals from paddling out—or at least should. The terrain mitigates potential congestion.

I’m not going to lay down any commandments here. We all likely know exclusivity when we see it.

I love seeing others seize a day in the backcountry. And I cringe when I hear about locals flexing in the mountains, making others feel like they don’t belong. If some non-locals don’t adhere to being kind or behave like backcountry ski code infidels, hopefully, they are open to a conversation. By the same token, if a non-local is twice as fit as you, the math will play out like this: they’ll be skiing twice as many powder shots. This may be aspirational, but the bottom line is that locals and non-locals alike in the backcountry should try to share and not put others at risk.

As a community, as far as I know, we aren’t fisticuffing in the backcountry over powder. And behavioral scientists, for now, aren’t writing dissertations exploring how social dynamics in the backcountry are devolving due to a perceived or real scarcity of our precious resource, untouched snow.

Yet, I’m still searching for answers. True fact—I’ve had a ski partner get salty at me for taking my son to a “locals only” spot. Do I need to understand the backcountry skier’s code? Immediate family members cannot tag along? My son moved here when he was five—he’s 20 now. He’ll be a local soon enough.