Earn Your Turn

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

No snow to move from beside a trailer, no snow to rake, pull and shovel from a roof. No heavy, moist snow, the kind that makes an easy snowball, packs into the bottom third of a snowman on just one roll. No snow heavy in a shovel, like shoveling dirt or dog food or rice. No back cracking snow. 

But, then, there is the ride on the snow's back. The surf. The drift. The ride.

Into the backcountry with a friend we climbed and talk and then, after the switch, he cuts telemark turns through buttery snow that is so easy packing. I drifted in and out of hemlocks and over soft hillocks. 

Backcountry skier Jason Scheben enjoying a run in Turnagain Arm. (Photos by Simon Evans)

Yeah. And there were several others up there on tour today, some friends with whom we traded runs. They went right on the first lap when we went left for the ridge and, on the next hike, we stole right and they took a left and we skied similar paths, but criss crossed. There were others, whooping and we whooped for them.

Jane’s Addiction has a wild song that seems perfect for the lift-free mountain. Coming Down the Mountain is an anthem to a hero above, a mountain to respect and thank for her pleasant snow and curvaceous slopes, for her unyielding snow pack, for allowing it all to settle in the broad bowl of her abdomen. 

While cannons tear away at a lifted mountain, ripping snow from its flanks and littering its walls with death cookies, some folks shun the lift entries and exits, the machines that churn day and night, all that industry over there, for an industry for leisure.

Backcountry skier Jason Scheben enjoying a run in Turnagain Arm. (Photos by Simon Evans)

“Earn Your Turns” is the familiar phrase of the backcountry skier or rider. And many agree that hiking through a forest with friends is as good as any chair lift, as good, even, as a ski down a crowded slope, as good as the expensive food and beer at the mountain top café, where people stand in line holding trays, sweating, wet, tired, and stiff like zombies.

We aren’t defensive of our free route. We don’t chagrin the saving of $200 for a day’s skiing or riding at a ski resort. No. We instead relish our fresh, untracked paradise, our poetry of snow, the soft fear of avalanche, the grace of aloneness.

Some call it the "aesthetic" and the untrammeled, unmarred, untouched canvas before them, the zen of movement through it, and the graceful, calligraphic line it leaves are all part of actualizing an art form no stack of "vertical" at a resort can touch.

One and done and back at the cabin with cocoa and gear hanging by the stove.