Prima donnas, photographers, cinematographers: Kevin “Feet” Banks, the late Dick Barrymore, Christian Begin, Eric Berger, Hide Chiyasu, Lee Cohen, Damian Cromwell, Hank deVre, Mattias Fredriksson, Scott Gaffney, Henry Georgi, Bill Heath, Dave Heath, Ilja Herb, Bryn Hughes, Blake Jorgenson, Ace Kvale, Dustin Lindgren, Therese Lundgren, Ace MacKay-Smith, Scott Markewitz, Wade McCoy, Flip McCririck, Paul Morrison, Pat Morrow, Ben Mullin, Nate Nash, Nolen Oayda, Steve Ogle, Christian Pondella, Bruce Rowles, Magali Roy, Mark Shapiro, the late Carl Skoog, Beat Steiner, Greg Stump, Travis Tetreault, Murray Wais.
Bullies, editors, writers: Mike Berard, Bruno Bertrand, Tom Bie, Fredrik Boberg, Jake Bogoch, John Bresee, Kevin Brooker, Keith Carlsen, Steve Casimiro, Robert Choquette, John Crawford-Currie, Bruce Edgerly, Colin Field, Porter Fox, David Goodman, Bill Kerig, Tove Lillequist, James Little, Ian Macmillan, G.D. Maxwell, Steve Metcalf, Sam Moulton, Jules Older, Hiroshi Owada, David Reddick, Lisa Richardson, Ben Sadavoy, Mitchell Scott, Rob Story, Derek Taylor, Steven Threndyle. Westwood Creative Artists and Nancy Flight at Greystone Books fastened wheels of one form or another to this chattering vehicle; my editor, Lucy Kenward, deserves huge thanks for engineering its currently sleeker lines and driving so adeptly.
Criminals, madmen, visionaries: Ken Achenbach, Christian Begin, Alan Bard and Tom Carter, Team Clambin, Giorgio Daidola, Marc Deschamps, Mike Douglas, Lhotse Hawk, Geny Hess, Jill and Pete, Carole and Brad Karafil, Dolores LaChapelle, Pelle Lang, Pete “Swede” Mattson, the late Shane McConkey, Dan McDonald, Dave and Jake Moe, Glenn Noel, Dave and Doug Perry, Trevor Petersen and Eric Pehota, Glen Plake, Greg Stump.
Crystal balls, blueprints, films: Ski the Outer Limits (Roger Brown and Barry Corbet, 1968), Winter Equinox (Bill Burks, 1974), Blizzard of Aahhhs (Greg Stump, 1988), Loco Motion (Christian Begin, 1995), and the collective works of Matchstick Productions (MSP), Teton Gravity Research (TGR), Poor Boyz Productions (PBP), and Free Radicals.
Tabloids, employers, magazines: bits, bites, and a few choking mouthfuls of dozens of articles, essays, and columns have been liberally sprinkled, repurposed, and undergone DNA-like recombination in the service of weaving this romp through modern global ski culture. These originally appeared, among other places, in Åka Skidor, explore, powder, Ski Canada, skier, and Skiing.
Friends, family, lifesavers: As usual, thanks are due Mary and the girls at Starbucks Creekside, as well as those who kept my head and health above water during the dark and trying winter of 2008–09. I owe you all so much: Jake Bogoch, Caroline Carnerie, Caroline Cossette, Mike Douglas, Lina Edvinsson, Caleigh Garland, Myles Emily Garland, Aki Kaltenbach, Stephen Madigan, Julia “Gabe” McCabe, Paul and Gail Morrison, “Agedashi Tofu” Mullin, Lisa Richardson, Kristen Rust, Grant Stoddard, Elin Sylvan, and, most fondly, “Coach” Laura Robson.
And finally, props to the fortuitous merger of plate tectonics, gravity, and atmospheric chaos that forms the happy template for this collective madness. That means you, too, Ullr. I know you’re struggling hard with climate change and all, but thanks for the continued magic of snow, whenever and wherever you deliver. Nothing can compare.
Nothing.
Skiing . . . is positively thrilling no matter how well or poorly you’ve mastered it. From the . . . moment you begin to slide over snow, feel the tug of gravity pull you downhill, your heart and spirit exults. It is pure thrill. There are, to be sure, more than a few moments of frustration . . . But even during that painful period, there is a constant thrill . . . Once the basics have been reduced to muscle memory, skiing is a non-stop celebration of how good life can be when you live it at the edge of your self-defined envelope, be that envelope green or double black.
G.D. MAXWELL, Pique Newsmagazine, April 9, 2009
I CAN BARELY remember what I did yesterday, but I clearly remember my first day of skiing. Well, maybe not clearly—more like an old Super 8 movie—but you get the picture.
Housebound on a gorgeous spring-break day sometime in the late sixties, my hyperkinetic friend Mike and I were driving my mother nuts with loud Hot Wheels races and house-wide G.I. Joe battles. In a fit of desperation, she insisted we take some dusty ski equipment that was languishing in the garage—unused since the early fifties—to the nearby Don Valley Ski Centre, a riverbank operation in one of Toronto’s newly minted suburban wastelands, and give it a whirl.
“It’ll be more fun than tobogganing,” she said, pretty much selling us.
We wrapped chubby hands around wooden, enamel-painted skis with bear-trap bindings, bamboo poles, and boots far too big for grade-school feet, and schlepped it all to the hill. It was an arduous journey of an hour or so, and when we arrived, impatient and excited at the sight of people zipping down the slope, we still had to figure out how all this equipment worked.
We struggled with the stiff, cumbersome boots, cables, springs, and myriad straps for what seemed an eternity. The bindings seemed to defy any law of engineering gleaned from Meccano sets, Lego bricks, or tabletop hockey, but when the forward throws on the cable finally snapped down, it seemed the boots were attached to the skis. It didn’t last. With each tentative step the bindings would let go, leaving us ski-less and frustrated. Only through the sympathetic intervention of adults who witnessed our comic plight (tsk-tsking over what kind of parent would cast neophyte children adrift like this) were we eventually affixed awkwardly to the planks.
We quickly mastered shuffling ahead on the skis, and eagerly got in line for the tow. As we waited our turn, I watched the fat hemp rope whiz around a small truck wheel driven by a chugging diesel engine and studied the loading procedure. It seemed simple: tuck your poles under one arm, place one hand ahead of your body, another behind your back, and grab the rope. Which was just what I did. My arms were practically ripped from their sockets as I saw snow, then sky, then snow again. I could hear the slurping, wet whoosh of a body being dragged through snow, the clack-clack of skis clapping together, and Mike’s hysterical laughter. My eyes, nose, and mouth filled with snow. Finally, I’d let go of the rope.
I felt sick. The tow operator picked me up and shepherded me back to the line, where I had the satisfaction of watching the same fate befall Mike. Each of us tried a second time, with a similar result. Beaten, we sniveled around like wounded puppies until, again, someone offered to help. When we eventually made it to the top, it was like we’d been airlifted from hell to well . . . we weren’t sure what.
The speed of sliding downhill was dizzying and intoxicating, the frequent wipeouts brutal and instructive. We continued to have our arms yanked numb by the speedy rope tows, fall backward off a platter lift—a spring-loaded metal pole with a plastic disc you tucked through your crotch to pull you along, itself a novelty—and skid helplessly downhill upside down, we plowed full-speed and out of control into hay bales, and generally took a massive beating from the tiny 115-foot vertical. The most vivid frames from this flickering film, however, are not of motion but notion—how it all looked and felt to my uninitiated senses.
Between runs, we sipped scalding hot chocolate from a rancid-smelling machine and queued with tanned, sunglass-adorned hedonists who reeked of coconut and spoke of Collingwood and the Laurentians, the Alps and Banff. Everyone but us—clad in jeans with flannel