How I Re-discovered Skiing & The Value of Taking the Long Way

Most of us have a specific memory from our early childhood that sticks with us. Something that has staying power and leaves a lasting impact on our lives. My earliest childhood memory is from the first day that my dad took me skiing. At four years old, he had me on the bunny hill at a small ski resort called Holiday Valley located 20 minutes from my childhood home. I have retreade this memory many times - me as a toddler struggling with the most basic fundamentals of how to walk around in clunky ski boots strapped to skis. Climbing up the hill seemed very challenging. In reality, the hill is only 800’ high but in my four year old eyes it might as well have been the peak of Everest. That memory would begin my lifelong obsession with sliding around on snow and lead me on all kinds of adventures all over the world.

I picked up skiing with relative ease largely due to my early start. Even though I am not a particularly gifted athlete, skiing came to me as second nature. I don’t really even remember what it was like to learn since I started skiing at such a young age.

I would pray for snow during the winters of my childhood. Most of the residents in western NY would moan and groan when a lake effect snow storm would dump a foot or more on the region, but I was elated. Thanks to skiing, winter was my favorite season and I would take any and every opportunity I had to go to the resort. When the snow melted in the spring, I was already looking forward to the next season.

My first part-time job was on skis. I was hired as a ski instructor at Holiday Valley when I was 16. The pay wasn’t bad for a high school job - I recall $7.50 / hr (that was 2003, that would be over $11/hr today) . The primary reason I wanted to be a ski instructor was the season’s pass that accompanied employment at the resort. As an 18 year old with a car, plenty of free time, and unlimited access to the slopes, I had the chance to ski 4 to 5 days per week every week. I was practically a ski bum.

As is the case with most of us, after I graduated high school my priorities shifted a bit and life presented fewer and fewer opportunities to ski. I went to college in Florida and lived in the south for over 6 years which meant skiing required hopping a plane and I only skied a couple of days per year. I really missed skiing and it became a major deciding factor when I decided to move back to the northeast. 

My Ski Sherpa

More than a decade has passed since my park rat days at Holiday Valley and I’m taking the Amtrak from NYC to Vermont to visit my childhood friend and neighbor, Corey Potter. I like to say that Corey is my skiing sherpa. If I am obsessed with skiing, Corey should be heading for the skiing equivalent of a methadone clinic.  I likely would have never dove headfirst into the world of backcountry skiing had it not been for Corey

The first time I visited him in Vermont I was still riding the same pair of Rosi Scratches that I rode as a teenager at Holiday Valley. That pair of skis was highly coveted in 2004 but at this point they were old hat. Corey kindly laid it out to me that ski technology has evolved a great deal since I was in high school and I’m a good 15 years behind the times. I decided to bite the bullet and buy some new gear.

If you knew me well, you know I’m not really a gearhead. My outlook on skiing is more along the lines with the mindset of, ‘strap on some boards and point ‘em downhill’. I began to pick my sherpa’s brain about what skis and boots to look at and the most modern gear to keep you warm. As I’m tallying up the cost of these new toys in my head, I realize I’m looking at a couple thousand dollars in upgrade expenses. But that didn’t matter. I was just happy to be out there. Plus, if I made the investment in the gear, I know I would force myself to ski more often.

As we’re diving into all the exciting equipment options I ask him about the bindings he was riding that day as they looked different from the ski bindings I was familiar with. “Oh, this is a touring binding, it’s so I can walk uphill. You’re going to want to get an alpine binding.”

I’m immediately confused. A touring binding? So you can walk uphill? What’s wrong with this perfectly fine chair lift that is taking us up the mountain while we remain comfortably seated?

Corey explains that it’s all about finding terrain that nobody else has skied and that it’s more about an adventure rather than just looping laps at the resort all day like you’re at Six Flags. I’m still extremely skeptical and think the chair lift we’re riding is rather nice.

The following year I took the Amtrak back to Vermont and Corey and I are skiing with his buddy Bob who is a local backcountry mountain guide and has a lot of knowledge about skiing off the resort. After we hit runs for a few hours Corey and Bob start considering if there’s enough snow to try an early season backcountry jaunt that’s nearby. The verdict is we should go for it and they ask me if I’m down to get my first taste of backcountry skiing.

Since we were skiing at a resort that day we ended up ducking a rope and going off the resort to ski what I will later learn is called “Side Country” as we took a ski resort lift up and ski down off the resort in backcountry terrain. We quickly and stealthily avoid the long arm of the ski patrol and duck the ropes taking a traverse several hundred yards through brush and thick trees. We do this for probably 15 minutes until we come to a clearing where the trees open up and become skiable. Along the way there’s lots of chatter between Bob and Corey, “should we cut down here?” “No, I think we need to go this way, that’s where that big open area is…” and it feels as though we’re on the hunt for the fountain of youth.

Bob eventually hollers up to us that he has found the clearing of glades we have been searching for. These glades are similar to the trees I have skied many times throughout all my life, but this time no other skiers had contaminated the snow with their tracks. It was fresh powder and we had it all to ourselves. 

I vividly remember Bob getting ready to make his first pass and he says, almost under his breath, “adventure...”. There’s that word again and that’s when it really clicked for me. This is more than just getting as many runs in as you can at the resort in between visits to the bar. There’s uncertainty.  It’s rugged and the ski patrol hasn’t made sure the conditions were safe. We were hunting for a location that these guys had not seen since the year before and we found it. I’m not going to say, Moby Dick, because this was a rather pedestrian sidecountry excursion. But it was a find that made our afternoon.

We proceed to hoot and holler as we enjoy some of the first backcountry turns of that 2018/2019 season. I hold up the back watching Bob and Corey take the lead and I’m loving every minute of it. However the fun ends rather quickly and in the same way we traversed in, we have to hike out back to the resort.

Bob is a telemark skier and he can effortlessly walk out of the woods in a drainage that takes us back to the resort. I am stuck lagging behind as the new alpine setup I had purchased is showing me how ill-equipped it is for the short walk out. I’m sure that traverse only took 20 to 30 minutes but it was long enough to teach me that if I have any interest in doing a legitimate backcountry tour I was going to need to get my hands on the right gear…

I skied several times throughout that 2018/19 season but didn’t return to the backcountry. I did start saving my money as I knew that before the snow returned again next year I would need to be prepared with proper backcountry gear. Colloquially “a setup”.

Gear Considerations

After another consultation with my ski sherpa on which gear I needed to go on a legitimate backcountry tour we arrived on a frame binding with a pair of all mountain skis. The frame binding looks a lot like your traditional alpine binding that you’re used to seeing at the resort, the main difference is the frame banding pivots near the toe so you can switch from “ski mode” to “walk mode” which makes walking up or across mountains more akin to, well, walking. Similar to the motion of a cross-country ski gate.

There are countless tradeoffs when considering which equipment to purchase. In its simplest form, the main trade-off is weight vs performance. A heavier binding or ski may provide superior performance on the descent portion of the tour, but it will also be heavier on the ascent and thus more difficult and tiring on your way up. If it’s too heavy, you may not be able to reach your objective. 

There’s also the third circle of this Venn diagram which is cost. I learned if you want the highest performing backcountry binding you also need to invest in ski touring boots. I ended up pulling the trigger on the frame binding with a traditional alpine ski to avoid needing to invest in an additional pair of expensive ski boots.

I had my setup, I was ready to slay some dragons and continue the adventure.

“There were no ski lifts from Schurns and no funiculars; but there were logging trails and cattle trails that led up different mount valleys to the high mountain country. You climbed on foot carrying your skis and higher up, where the snow was too deep, you climbed on seal skins that you attached to the bottom of the skis”

• Ernest Hemmingway, “Winter in Schruns”, A Movable Feast

Big Jay

That next winter I found myself in a familiar scene. Back on the Amtrak heading up to Vermont and this time I was armed with my new touring setup - Marker Duke bindings mounted on Black Crows Navis skis and Backcountry G3 Climbing Skins. The plan was for me to join Corey and Bob on my inaugural backcountry tour. The tour they had planned was “Big Jay” found in the book “Best Backcountry Tours in the North East”.

The night before the tour Corey and I are planning out the next day which involves reviewing the tour in the guidebook, checking out maps of the route we are going to follow and ensuring we have all the necessary equipment that we might need if conditions change, equipment fails, or if somebody gets hurt and needs to be rescued.

We left early the next morning and drove up to Vermont’s northeast kingdom where Big Jay and the Jay Peak ski resort are located. It was decided that our best option for this objective would be to take the Jay Peak tram to the resort’s summit instead of hiking all the way to the top of the mountain from the base. Once at the top of the resort, we would descend the west side of the peak and hike the ridge of “Big Jay” to the summit where we would find our descent of Big Jay and ski to the bottom. 

After skiing off the back of Jay Peak, I would get a crash course in how you climb uphill in walk mode. In addition to switching your binding to walk mode, you also apply skins that have a sticky surface that apply to the bottom of your skis. The skins have fibers pointing in one direction which allow you to walk uphill without sliding backward. As Papa Hemmingway taught us, The name “skins” originates from animal skins that skiers used to attach to the bottom of their skis to climb uphill before the advent of today’s synthetic skins.

As we begin the roughly 1 mile trek to the neighboring peak I learn that navigation is a significant part of every backcountry skiing adventure. Unlike hiking in the summertime where you are following a marked trail with blazes, many backcountry adventures do not provide such luxuries and you have to make your way through.  Fortunately, I’m with a professional mountain guide who has maps, compass and GPS to keep us on the path. 

After a few wrong turns and some brief moments of confusion, we are able to successfully navigate our way to the summit of Big Jay by referencing the guidebook and checking the map. 

On Big Jay there is a prominent chute called “the Jailhouse Chute” located. Its name derives from two skiers who experienced a bit of scope creep while clearing brush and trees to provide better glade skiing. This is a common activity of backcountry skiers but Big Jay is located in Jay State Forest and clearing trees and brush is a felony offense.

The main chutes of Big Jay are quite steep which provides a challenging and exciting descent. We alternated taking the lead making 4-5 turns before stopping and watching the next skier come down through the New England forests in a cloud of snow.

I experienced some more of those Narnia-like turns I tasted during the little sidecountry adventure a year earlier. But this time the powder was deeper, the turns a little more buttery and the reward was that much greater. 

When we arrived at the bottom of the main chutes we had to transition back into our skins and put our bindings back in walk mode. We wouldn’t be able to ski all the way down so we had to traverse through some hardwood forests until they open up into more wide open new growth trees and a logging road that we will follow to the car.

I’m having the time of my life as we cruise through the maples and saplings and glide through some fluffy low angle pow. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as we grew closer to the road where our car was waiting. I was starting to fully grasp why anyone would choose to take on the effort of climbing into the woods to ski terrain instead of taking the lift or the tram.

Giant Slaying

Later in 2020, I was skiing with some buddies from high school in Jackson Hole and I decided to take my touring hobby to the next level. I rented a proper Alpine Touring setup - lightweight touring skis with a “tech” binding for better uphill performance and touring boots that also have a “walk” and “ski” mode which provides a greater range of motion on the ascent. 

I hired a guide named Woody to take me on a ski tour in Teton National Park. He said he had a great place for me to go and we planned to meet in the parking lot at 9 am the next day. The tour lasted well into the afternoon and offered so many incredible experiences as I got my first taste of the backcountry in the Teton range. The mountain we skied was called 10,696 (pronounced ten-six, nine-six). The sky was crystal clear on a warm spring day and we were able to see the notorious peaks of the Tetons including the Grand Teton itself. Beyond 10,696 there was another peak at a higher elevation and features more prominent faces and couloirs. We could see two skiers coming down the steep bowl. I asked Woody what the name of that peak was and he said “Buck Mountain”.

The ascent of over four thousand feet to the summit took almost five hours and was a physically demanding endeavor. Following the skin track to the summit we didn’t encounter any other skiers and enjoyed the stillness of the snow-covered mountains. The solitude of discovering the mountain and watching the sun cross the sky provided the opportunity to quiet the mind. When we finally made the summit the views and a snowfield of fresh snow greeted us as our reward for our hard work.

When I first learned about the idea of ski touring the idea of spending most of your day climbing a mountain to ski down wasn’t very appealing. I thought what I loved about skiing was getting as many laps in as I could as long as the lifts were spinning. While that type of day is great in its own right, as we made our way up the mountain and slowly absorbed the magnificience of the Tetons, I couldn’t imagine waiting in lift lines and braving the crowds of the big resort with those comfortable lift lines. My love of skiing just found another gear and I am definitely hooked.

The ski down was the most incredible skiing I had ever done at that point in my life. It was a warmer day so the snow was like cream cheese and I made big sweeping turns on an untouched mountain face. This was something I always dreamed of and couldn’t believe I was actually doing. We continued skiing for the better part of an hour. The entire time we could see the parking lot we left from earlier that day way off in the distance.

I’m completely spent as we returned to the car and incredibly satisfied with the day's adventure. I was even feeling a little proud of myself. After all, that was quite an accomplishment in my mind. I’ve always wanted to tackle what the big mountain skiers did in the films that I watched growing up. I ask Woody if he would classify the tour we just did as a “Big Mountain” skiing objective. He pauses for a minute and says something along the lines of - most serious backcountry skiers would not consider that a Big Mountain objective. 

As I’m brought back to earth with the thought of what we spent the day doing wasn’t even that impressive, Woody pipes back up and says “That next peak we saw those skiers coming down - Buck Mountain. That’s a big mountain objective and you could totally ski that.”

The next day I would be heading back to NYC and my ski season would be over. The world was about to fall apart due to COVID which abruptly canceled my remaining skiing plans for the rest of the season. With the world shut down and the pandemic hitting the pause button on life, all I could think about was skiing Buck mountain that following winter.