The Rules of the Road in Antarctica

I typed an innocuous phrase into the Google—something like “First person to solo across Antarctica on skis.” The algorithms, in all their mighty digitizing glory, populated the search with various headlines, elevating Colin O’Brady as the first person to complete a solo unsupported trek/ski across Antarctica. News to me—despite O’Brady making the claim in…

Response

spencer dillon dillon

January 31, 2024

Ah style. This is a really interesting thing to be reading here. While it’s nominally skiing (BC scaled nor-dork skis, right?), I think the struggle here is similar to what the steep skiing community has grappled with a lot over the years. What’s a crossing? What happens when someone comes in with new tactics, better gear and less pre frontal cortex and smashes everyone’s best efforts to smithereens?

The same feels true in the steep skiing world. The old guys in Chamonix were hop turning and side slipping down the big stuff before doug coombs was even born. But now people are absolutely ripping some of these lines decades later and opening new lines in a way that is almost unrecognizable from the original style. Does a first straight line matter? First to air in off the cornice? First to air the rappel? I think my partners and I generally equate less side slipping, faster turns and not losing momentum as skiing a line in better style, but we don’t count these things as ‘the first respectable ski descent’. It’s just the first controlled fall. It’s perhaps one of the reasons that truly steep skiing (the Lustenburger, Saari, Fransson, Bruchez style) remains a dark art in the larger ski world. How do we rank them? We must, surely.

But maybe your point, which I appreciate more, is that trying to bootstrap these ‘technical’ firsts into sponsorship and renown feels gimmicky and nonsensical. You just wrote an article splitting hairs about a bunch of psychos who (mostly) walked across antartica with little to no help from anyone else. Mad respect to all those folks, regardless of the technicalities (and obviously it was a really interesting insight into a proximate, parallel world). But the question feels like a symptom of the adventure media ecosystem which only values endeavors in the degree they overshadow the next raddest thing, as opposed to the storytelling of adventure. But maybe it was actually never like that and we just have too much to choose from. What’s that quote, “if I was locked in a room with a hundred paintings of Joe Biden eating a mayo sandwich, you’d better believe I’d have opinions about which one was best.” Maybe I’d even teach an art history course on the form.

THR is great, Jason. Thanks for making me think new things about skiing.