My Page: Wayne Sheldrake

Ski Writing

Everyone knows to see the gods face-to-face, you’ll probably have to climb a mountain. Not everyone remembers that pulling that off in winter means you get to ski down.

This book isn’t a book. It’s a little more important than that. It’s a tome of documentation and worship. By the very nature of its large format, “Fifty Classic Ski Descents” is not a page turner. The expansive leaves have the sturdy permanence of roofing shingles. The sprawling photos of menacing but skiable-for-some peaks are arresting.

With each page, it takes a little while to comprehend that the snowbound complexities and complexes featured have been climbed and skied. Indeed, you’ll probably spend more time staring in awe at the book’s photos, including shot after cliff-side shot of skiers tackling breathtaking and death-defying turns to backstraps, chops and rumps of snow steep as walls. Though the text draws from a range of writing ski mountaineers, respected for their knowledge, athletic prowess, teamwork and obvious courage, they all speak the same testimony—as prophets always do. 

Book Review

”In Search of Powder: A Story of America’s Disappearing Ski Bum” is an elegy to a dying alternative lifestyle. Evans has compiled a diorama of the economic and cultural dynamics of the decades that transformed insulated, funky ski towns into glitzy, accessible destinations. He reminds us of what we already know: The ski bum’s habitat is shrinking and, ironically, the ski bum’s iconic mythology contributes to the degradation.

As a recreational pastime became an option for post-Vietnam escape, the very mystique of the free-spirited, ruggedly individualistic, dropout skier fueled the extractive growth of ski areas. Pitiably depressed mining towns became publicly traded entertainment resorts. In those exploited places, Evans observes, the ski bum became an endangered, if not terminal, species.

Evan’s sketches and interviews of former ski bums turned legit (or not) include representative stories from personalities in Lake Tahoe, Mammoth, Telluride, Park City and Jackson Hole. Some characters you’ve heard of, some you haven’t. Some grew up on time and quickly abandoned “the concept of knowing what makes one happy and being undeterred in actualizing it” to cash in.