Show Don’t Tell

 

Amidst the Northeast’s tangled second-growth forests, glade skiing comes at a premium. Show don’t tell is a glade skiing maxim. For Andrew Ross, his three year quest to find ski-Nirvana raises some interesting questions about scarcity and secrecy.

 

We backcountry skiers have our own code of ethics. Some of our rules are common no matter what mountain range you call home. You know–basic courtesies, like don’t posthole the skintrack. And don’t pee in it, either. While these are all good guidelines to live by, here in New England we hold one rule sacred above all others: Show. Don’t tell.

You’re already familiar with this rule if you’ve explored the Northeast on skis at all beyond the boundaries of its resorts. It’s in the air. You can’t stumble your way into even the most obvious side-country lines without a local admonishing you, “Don’t tell anybody.” Or “Seriously, man. Close friends and family only.”

If you’ve got a secret powder stash, there is only one morally acceptable way to share it with others: take them there personally. Under no circumstances are you to simply tell someone how to get there without actually going along yourself. It is especially taboo to post any of the following online: detailed trip reports, GPX tracks, and photographs or videos containing recognizable landmarks that might allow nosy outsiders to home in on your secret spot.

If you do blow up someone’s secret zone on social media, you might garner a few thumbs-up from the uninitiated, but the backcountry veterans who have been skiing there since you were serving up pizzas and french fries on the bunny slope will soon let you know that you’re out of line. Diplomatically, of course. It’s best just to follow the rule.

Show. Don’t tell.

Lest you think we denizens of the New England backcountry are greedy or unwelcoming, think about how small and wooded our mountains are, and consider how impoverished our typical winter snowpack is. Even if only a tiny fraction of the millions of skiers who live in the Northeast get wind of a new, easily accessible zone, it won’t be long before we love it to death. Good backcountry skiing is a scarce resource around here. It must be protected. 

See? We’re not greedy. We’re conservationists.

By the same token, when you do get a morsel of intel about a new zone, you owe it to yourself to check it out, even if there’s a chance you might be encroaching on someone else’s territory.

***

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. 

The person who shared the photos with me mentioned the little-known name of a normally overlooked landmark near the glade. It was just enough to give me a rough idea of which mountain the line was on, and an even rougher idea of which aspect. Other than that, I was clueless.

Three years passed before I finally found it. Three years of poring over topographic maps and satellite imagery. Three years of watching the weather for conditions to be right. Three years of trying to convince my friends that the promised land really did exist, and that they should come help me find it.

Three years, and one frigid day of bushwhacking.

 

 

My friend Geoff and I went out together on this particular hunt. The word “snow” had dominated the forecast headlines, but wind turned out to be the story of the day. An angry gale thrashed the trees above our heads as we zig-zagged our way up the side of the mountain, keeping one eye searching for our line and the other aimed upward, wary of falling limbs. 

We would skin toward any promising-looking patch of white we could spy through the trees. Every time we broke through to what looked from a distance to be a skiable corridor, we’d find it choked with hobblebush and birch saplings. After a couple of hours of fruitless wandering, I could tell Geoff was losing faith that we’d ever find the place. The mischievous grin that is a fixture on his face whenever he’s out in the mountains was replaced with a hard expression of grim resignation. It looked as if he was more wary of having to ski back out through all the schwack we had just skinned up, than excited about the promise of the beautiful glade that I kept assuring him was “probably just a little bit higher…” Truth be told, my confidence was wavering, too. Now that we were lost out here on a frozen mountainside, those photos were a much less convincing lead than they had seemed when we were planning this little misadventure back in the comfort of my living room.

Nevertheless, we carried on, picking our way through the labyrinthine forest. The trees became so dense as we gained elevation that if we didn’t find an open line of descent, we were going to have to ski down with our skins on. We finally forced our way through one last spruce thicket and emerged into a vast ballroom of open snow. Just as we were wondering to ourselves if this really was our line, a telemarker drifted by on bended knee, erasing all our doubts. Here it was: the glade I had been lusting after for three years.

Unfortunately, that moment was the high point of our tour. It’s a long story, but suffice to say it involved a long delay due to an iced up binding and a sudden switch from snow to rain. While we had fun schussing the slush, we left feeling as though we hadn’t quite got what we came for.

***

So, naturally, we had to go back. Which we did after yet another year, two days after the biggest storm of the season. The snow was so deep that it almost made up for the wait. This time, we skied the place right, harvesting all the powder our legs could handle.

As we transitioned at the bottom of our third or fourth run, we thought we heard voices off somewhere to our left, but the smothering snow so muffled the sounds of the forest that we thought it might be our imaginations playing tricks. Soon after beginning the ascent, however, our skin track merged with another, and coming up it was a second party of two.

They stopped when they saw us, stunned. The lead skier looked at me like I was a sasquatch; as if he was seeing something that he knew couldn’t possibly exist: a stranger on skis in his secret glade. Yet there we were.

“After you,” I said as friendly as I could, and gestured for him to lead the way up the singletrack skinner.

My words seemed to startle him a second time, as if by speaking I confirmed that I really did exist, and was not, sadly, an hallucination. He blinked. Regaining his wits, he replaced the look of astonishment on his face with one of cold suspicion.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, making no effort to reciprocate my friendliness.

He and his partner led the ascent. Geoff and I loitered for a while, figuring they’d appreciate some space. But it wasn’t long after we resumed climbing that we caught back up.

The first skier, the startled one, slowed down once he sensed us on his partner’s tails, as if to make a passive aggressive point. Geoff and I slowed down, too, falling back as far as we could stand to.

We caught back up again when they stopped for water. I took the opportunity to ask, “Mind if we sneak by?”

“We’ll be moving soon enough,” he said, nursing his water bottle as if it was a beer.

Denied.

I looked back at Geoff, who gave me an uncomfortable grin. Clearly we were not welcome here.

As he closed the cap on his water bottle, the leader opened up a bit.

“Where are you two from? I don’t recognize you.”

He was visibly disappointed when we admitted we were from Massachusetts. I was a little disappointed myself. Deep down, every flatlander like me wishes they lived in the mountains.

“How’d you find this place, then? It’s a locals’ spot,” he asked, as though there was some law of physics that was supposed to prevent Massholes from venturing north of White River Junction.

I answered his question.

“I hate social media,” he grumbled, shaking his head as he turned his back on us to continue skinning. “It’s ruining everything.”

That was oversimplifying the situation. It didn’t give Geoff and me nearly enough credit for the effort we put in to find the place. These glades aren’t on any map. There’s no explicit mention of them anywhere, actually. Just a few disparate breadcrumbs scattered around the internet. In fact, I’d be shocked if anybody else ever has the good luck and patience to piece them together as I did. And even if they do, would they be bold enough—or should I say foolish enough?–to strike off into the trailless wilderness on nothing more than a hunch? But I didn’t bother to argue. It wouldn’t have changed his mind. If I were in his boots, it probably wouldn’t have changed mine, either. 

Besides, he had a point. Who would want to ski in a world where there are no secrets left to discover? When I gaze out from atop a mountain’s summit and wonder if that patch of hardwoods on the slope across the valley is a skiable glade, I don’t want Google or Instagram to be able to tell me the answer. There’s something at once romantic and hopeful to the idea that New England—a region that not so long ago was clear cut from the shores of Long Island Sound all the way to the Canadian border—yet again holds mysteries that can only be solved by physically venturing into the wild.

 

 

We skinned for a few more minutes in silence. Our unwitting leader seemed to be considering what to do about the problem of Geoff and me. But the pace had picked up a bit; maybe he was warming up to us in spite of himself.

“I built this place,” he said at length. “It took a very long time. It’s a special spot. The thing that makes it so special is that no one knows about it. Please keep it that way.” 

There are many reasons to keep an illicit glade like this one quiet, especially if you’re the guy who cleared it. For starters, cutting trees on land you don’t own can be punishable with jail time. Then there’s the potential ecological damage you might wreak upon the delicate subalpine environment (though to be fair to our new friend, it looked as though he had done little more than clean out deadfall and thin some hobblebush). But there was something in his voice that told me neither prison nor the local migratory bird populations were top of mind when he implored us to keep his secret. No; he was worried that Geoff and I might give away his precious powder stash.

“Don’t worry. We won’t tell anybody.”

“Good. Thank you. By the way—where did you park?”

I told him.

He urged us to use a more discreet lot, and recommended an obfuscated route into the zone. It was clear he still wasn’t happy that we had found his lines, but he had come to accept that the best way to protect his secret was to let us in on it. 

That’s not to say that Geoff and I would have desecrated his glade by posting it on Strava or Instagram if he hadn’t been accommodating. As far as we’re concerned, we discovered this place. It is just as much ours to protect as it is anybody else’s who skis there. But I do appreciate him making it easier for us to help keep the secret.

After agreeing to follow the sneaky approach from now on, Geoff and I peeled off the skintrack to hit a virgin line that looked too tempting to pass up, even though it would be a short run. I had wanted to get a couple of action shots of Geoff in the untouched snow–as a personal keepsake, mind you–but he set off down the mountain before I could even pull the phone out of my pocket. I smiled, and shook my head. He’s always doing that. Our hosts need not have worried; as usual, my partner was too enthusiastic about simply skiing the place to afford me the opportunity to accidentally give it away.