When I lived on Mt.
Hood, there was a bar room legend that used to circulate amongst the
dives in Government Camp about the second ski descent of Cooper Spur.
The spur is a 50-55 degree shoulder that drops off the north side of
the mountain with a whole lot of open air on either side. By today’s
standards, it’s not the steepest descent around, but what makes it
still a rare trophy is the wicked fall onto the Eliot Glacier
awaiting the unwary. Hit a patch of ice up there, and it's 2,000 feet
straight down.
The story went like
this. Supposedly the first descent was made by a famous French skier
in the late fifties or early sixties. At the height of his glory and
fame, this skier, who had done all sorts of crazy things in Europe,
hires a helicopter (this was before the Wilderness Act) to deposit
himself and a crew of photographers on the summit. After making
something of a self-important speech, he clicks into his skis and
trailed by flash bulbs and wearing the latest in designer fashions,
he does the job.
The second descent
was conceived the next day when a farm boy in the Hood River Valley
read about the events in a local paper. Deciding he could ski the
chunk of mountain he had looked up at probably every day of his life,
the boy lugged his skis to the south side. And, without fanfare and
experience gained mostly as a high-school ski racer, pointed his
wooden boards down the north side and repeated the descent.
Is it true? I have
never been able to find out, and the truth is I don’t really care.
The point is why the story gets repeated with such pride in the
Ratskeller and Charlie’s and over Nalgene bottles of whiskey at
Silcox Hut. Skiing, as it was practiced in earlier days in America,
was an adventure that required imagination and cojones. In Europe, it
was a sport that emphasized glamour and athleticism. The thought of
an apple orchardist’s son careening down Cooper Spur in flannels
and leather boots, hay in his pockets and wind in his hair, is an
image of pure freedom, one that made me want to ski the spur. Until,
that is, I watched a climber headed up Cooper Spur fall to his
death.
But the European
spirit has now thoroughly invaded backcountry skiing in America,
turning it into a sporting event dominated by affluent jocks the way
it sanitized rock climbing in the 1980s. Unlike sport climbing, which
after all doesn’t require much more gear than a rope, shoes, and a
rack of quick-draws, there are a lot of expensive gee-gaws for the
aspiring skier to buy and lots of resorts to practice up at. In fact,
the way telemark gear has evolved into a bloated, overweight
near-Alpine style it’s only a matter of time before people realize
that if they just strap the heels of those Scarpa Terminators down
they’ll get a lot more power out of the turn; it’s not like much
of that stuff actually gets used to go uphill anymore anyway.
Personally, I trace
the whole yuppification of backcountry pursuits to the glossy
Patagonia catalogues of the 1980s. On one side of the page were
beautiful shots of hacky-sack playing climbers on Half Dome and
back-of-beyond mountain bikers enjoying premium beers beside Alaskan
streams. On the other side: sexy, well-made outdoor clothing with
eye-popping price tags. The Patagonia catalogues equated the buying
of expensive gear with a life of charismatic backcountry exploits in
the same way Nike ads equated buying $100 sneakers with world class
athletic feats. It’s the same model Martha Stewart uses to sell
leisure time projects to people with no leisure time.
By the time
Patagonia added Deep Ecology to the mix, symbolically marrying the
purchase of high-end polar fleece duds to committed environmental
activism, it was clear that the market for outdoor gear had become
one for people who don’t actually spend much time in the
backcountry. After all, someone who believes that buying clothing
made entirely from petroleum products is an act of ecological defense
is clearly not getting out much.
Now we have
advertising campaigns like North Face’s “I’m an Astronaut on
Planet Earth.” What a sad attitude; to equate the living, wild
backcountry of our planet with the sterile, inhuman expanses of
space. As if the best we can do is swaddle ourselves in high
technology and head out of the cities, groping in the unfamiliar
ether like weekend Neil Armstrongs riding full suspension mountain
bikes across the surface of the moon.
But the farm boy’s
tradition is still out there.
For awhile, I
taught cross-country skiing on Mt. Hood to groups from Portland Parks
and Recreation, mostly middle-aged folk with little experience in the
snow. One cold winter morning, an older craggy looking couple showed
up before the rest, getting out of a beat up old station wagon
wearing cotton jeans and sweatshirts. As they looked dubiously at my
ski equipment and the wife confessed her bum knee might not be up for
a full day of this, the instructor part of me was thinking that they
were going to be students from hell. When other people began showing
up, they quietly walked off to smoke cigarettes.
As the morning
warmed and they shed a few layers of clothing, I could see to my
relief that they were wearing good quality synthetic long underwear
and I began to think they might know a little about what they were in
for. Taking the man aside, I asked if he had much backcountry
experience. “Well,” he replied, “I like to build boats, drift
boats mainly.”
I told him I was
learning how to build skin on frame kayaks myself, and he said, “Oh
yeah, I’ve built a few kayaks.” Becoming quickly animated, he
started to relate how he too had become fascinated with the Tlingit
culture of Southeast Alaska, and had conceived the dream of building
his own boat and paddling around Glacier Bay.
“Well, good
luck,” I said, turning to greet the rest of the day’s clients.
“Oh,” he said.
“I already did that, a few years ago.”
“You did?”
“Sure, it was a
great trip. Except for when I flipped over crossing back across the
bay.
“What did you
do?”
“I rolled back up
and paddled across,” he said with a laugh, and wandered off to have
a last smoke before getting in the van.
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