Thoughts on two Books: The Darkest White and Salt Lake Ski Atlas

So much good information is out there about the backcountry scene. Pete Vordenberg tosses around some ideas relating to The Darkest White and the Salt Lake Ski Atlas.

This is an exploration of two books, and Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life, is not one of them. But I want to start with it anyway. In his book, Keith Richards explains that in order to earn the right to play an electric guitar, he first had to learn and play “Malagueña” on an acoustic guitar he was barely large enough to hold. He described the burning need to practice, to play. And when it comes to autobiographies and biographies, this is what I love: the trajectory, the path, and the burning drive to walk that path to the end. That for Keith Richards the end has not come is a testament to luck and pluck. Against all odds, Keith is Alive and Rocking. 

In The Darkest White by Eric Blehm, we explore the birth of snowboarding and the path of Craig Kelly, one of its most important characters. Kelly’s path is the path of the sport itself.  He literally helped carve it out from its birth. Unfortunately, Kelly’s path is cut short. The Darkest White is incredibly well researched. Blehm combines his deft writing skills with nuanced details and interviews to provide an intimate portrait of Kelly and the sport’s nascent culture. And more. A lot more. 

The Darkest White is a recommended read for those keen on learning who came before.

If anything, unless you are really into snowboarding, the details of Kelly’s rise in the sport, which races and comps he won, and who else was there, all this might be a bit too detailed. But I didn’t mind. In this book, you see the fire catch in Kelly. That is what I love to learn about. 

Why is Keith Richards, Keith Richards? I don’t really care about all the chaos and strife; I care about the fire, the origin of his passion, his drive, and the work it took to be who he is. I love Keith Richards as a kid. I loved Kelly as a kid, too. Both kids seemed susceptible to the pull of divergent paths: trouble or genius. Kelly lucked onto the genius path through sport and, from there, applied his smarts and worked hard. On the other hand, Richards seemed to have melded genius with trouble in a unique fashion.  

But let’s not forget the eight hours of guitar a day. 

I think kids need more recess, not less, that the more trouble a kid gets into, the more action, the more challenge, and the more dodgeball or football, skateboarding, BMX, or boxing they need. I come to this conclusion through observation and experience. All that energy, channeled in a positive direction, can equal excellence.

 At the same time, my neighbor gave me The Darkest White to read, and I also bought a new photo book called Salt Lake Ski Atlas without a moment’s thought. I was at The Gear Room in Salt Lake and saw it at the counter. I picked up the store copy and thumbed through it for about 12 seconds.

Salt Lake Ski Atlas is nothing but photos with a few captions on backcountry runs and the names of peaks and places. When I got home, I poured over the detailed, wonderful, well-organized photos. Oh! Here is where I skied yesterday! Oh, I’ve never been here! Oh, look! It was like an open invitation. And that is about when I began wondering if this thing was actually ok. Or maybe not. 

Craig Kelly goes from BMX kid, to snurfer, to snowboard innovator, to World Champion to freerider, to backcountry splitboard guide. He attacks each stage with fire, and when it comes to his path to becoming a guide, you really see the hours, experience, the miles it takes, that it must take. You see a lifetime of focused experience stack up. 

Ruminating on this is when a knot of apprehension began to form in my gut about this ski atlas. Holy Shit! It’s all right here! 

And yet, none of it is here. 

The Salt Lake Ski Atlas displays some fine images depicting lines to ride.

This book shows damn near everything and says nothing. I thought about my older, wiser friends and wondered at the cumulative time it took them to get a lay of this land, the miles of exploration, the seasons of testing, observing, listening, conversing, the mistake making. And then, boom, here it is in Kodachrome color for all to see. The open invitation from the Salt Lake Ski Atlas began to have a hold-my-beer vibe. 

If the details of Craig Kelly and snowboarding’s evolution are well covered, then his journey as a backcountry guide reaches another level of detail. I mean. You. Learn. A lot. Blehm really gets into it. And for good reason. Even with a lifetime of experience, great mentors, and the intense process of becoming a guide, I am not ruining the story to tell you that Craig Kelly died in an avalanche. But not just any avalanche and not through reckless abandon. It’s a scary story to read. The snow science lessons are tough to parse out, and the human choices are too easy to judge in hindsight. Mistakes were made. And just for that, it is worth reading this book. But one thing seems clear to me: Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. 

And so, I first reached out to Drew Hardesty of the Utah Avalanche Center about this ski atlas.

Now, I don’t care how handsome and poetically inclined he is. Drew is still an old guy with a beard, so I judged him wrongly. I reached out thinking he’d be all Rock and Roll is from the Devil about this book. Instead, he said, in summary, the kids are alright. He reasoned that these days, the kids communicate way more than people did in the old days, that these kids are better skiers, more savvy, and better educated than ever. He figures that this book is just one more tool for people to use to get around in the mountains. He also said he has a copy himself, and we both agreed it was pretty damn fun to look through it. Thank you, Drew, for your kind insight and for disrupting my preconceptions. I should point out that the Utah Avalanche Center does have a full page in the Ski Atlas. I should point out, too, that the Ski Atlas also has all the requisite disclaimers about safety and so on.

(Having this information out there may also be a good strategy if something goes awry. In an emergency, a group or individual seeking help will know the name of the drainage and line they are skiing.) 

Now, Drew wasn’t the only experienced fella I spoke with. And not everyone is as stoked or comfortable with it as Drew.  

But, it turns out, this isn’t really a book review. I have more questions than opinions, and I feel this is a topic for conversation or at least contemplation. In an attempt to set a record for single-sentence-hyphen-use, I want to point out that the soon-to-be-released first edition of The High Route magazine contains an article by Cody Townsend that hits this topic pretty squarely. Shameless plug for magazine: Order it (here). 

Channeling Craig Kelly. Accessing some SLC Wasatch powder. Photo: Pete Vordenberg

Ease of access and safety are entangled. Some might use the term gatekeeping, and in some cases, that could be the correct term: gatekeeping just to keep people off what you consider your lawn. But there is another kind of gate, the gate that only knowledge and experience should open.

Now, one might easily and correctly say the purpose of the Ski Atlas is not really to impart a deep knowledge or that promoting safety was job one, and that it’s up to the reader/user to gain the requisite knowledge to safely ride the imaged terrain. As Hardesty says, more info is out there now than ever. You should and can do your own research. The Utah Avalanche Center does an outstanding job not only forecasting but also serving as a repository for the history of slides in certain zones throughout many, many years. It takes some digging. But, better electronic digging than the other kind. 

The Cody Townsend piece talks about some of the tools available and delves into the pluses and minuses of this explosion of information. It’s very much worth a read. Another good read on a similar topic is a THR article on digital mapping here. 

I am unsure I could look myself in the mirror if I said something like, we should have less information. I might be a luddite but I sure the hell am no book burner. 

More information is better. 

As one of my friends points out, this is exactly where the Ski Atlas fails. Keith Richards had to really learn to play before he could touch an electric guitar. So why just take photos and sell a book meant to show ski/ride routes when you could do the research and really sell something that increases public knowledge, which could increase safety when it comes to the zones revealed in this book? Access to sweet lines is great, and the Ski Atlas provides that, but Richards and many before him likely agree that mainlining a jolt of access and a bolt of yee-haw has pitfalls.  

As I’ve mentioned, one thing The Darkest White does not lack is detail or research. Holy cow. The differences here between the Ski Atlas and The Darkest White are stark. Certainly, both took work. Eric Blehm took the work to the next level.  

The temperature of The Darkest White begins to turn up as you near the crushingly sad and terrifying conclusion. It’s a slow burn until it isn’t. Blehm builds toward the climax with patience and skill, and then… and then. 

I love looking through the Ski Atlas’ photos, dreaming of places to explore, and remembering places I’ve been. It’s a great book for that. Well made, beautiful shots, a thorough pictorial catalog of all aspects of the zones it covers. And it also falls short of its potential. 

Beyond daily reading and some mining of utahavalanchecenter.org, I am a big fan of the app and website wbskiing.com, a site that took a lot of research and input from many of the area’s very experienced skiers, guides, and forecasters. Not everything, but many shots have a link with differing degrees of information about that particular shot. Compared to the Ski Atlas, it is a bit clunky, but there is a lot of good info to be gleaned. It’s called history.  

Here is an example. Recently, there was a skier-involved slide on Pioneer Ridge/Martha’s Bowl—an area easily accessed from Brighton Ski Resort. It’s a tasty and temptingly short hike. A quick look at wbskiing.com shows that there have been three avalanche deaths in this zone over the years. Furthermore, from wbskiing.com, you can link directly to the reports at the Utah Avalanche Center. That info could be helpful if you were planning to hit Pio Ridge. 

I ran into a friend out skiing who has skied these hills longer than most. He’s in his 60s or maybe mid-20s. He sets skin tracks up the hill, baby. Up. The. Hill. He flies up. He flies down. He stacks wood like a woodchuck would if a woodchuck was Chuck Norris. He’s all sinew and gumption, and he has truly skied it all. I asked him about the Ski Atlas. He shrugged and said, pick your day wisely and go have a look. And so, addressing the shortcomings of the Salt Lake Ski Atlas falls to the reader, the backcountry user—to us. 

If we are to live up to Drew’s optimistic assessment, we better do our research, communicate with each other, and not just head out willy-nilly chasing the lines we saw in this book. 

In the closing chapters of The Darkest White, we’re slowly burning toward heartbreak, and it’s hard to put the book down at this point. We begin to get a look into the minds of the main characters. We’ve completely left the original prance through snowboarding’s happy history and are marching grimly toward our hero’s death. The aftermath is just hard to fathom. This is a rough transition. This is a transition I don’t want any of us to make. 

Be stoked, be safe, my friends. Enjoy this brief life we have. And, 

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.