Month: February 2019

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A Week to Revisit

Hello my beautiful readers! Thank you for coming to this site today and every Friday to read my posts. This week I’m reposting an old favorite titled Things I’ve Learned From the Trees. I’ve never reposted a blog before, so I’ll be transparent as to why I’m doing it now.

This week I traveled to Colorado to visit friends and family and ski until my legs fell off. And during this week I gave myself permission to fully break from all the obligations I manage on a weekly basis and just rest. This break meant that when 10pm Thursday night rolled around my ski bags were packed and my blog had been left unattended. In placing family over productivity something had to get cut and this week it was the blog. But more than that, I have come to value my writing practice, and the small community we are growing here, too much to fire off a lazy post. So for now I’ll leave you with a repost that I love and an image that I took while skiing with my parents this week. Next week I’ll be back with a new post and I hope you’ll be here to read it.

Things I’ve Learned From the Trees

When the world seems a dismal place, I like to think about what we can learn from the trees. The value of silently observing the world as it changes around you. The deep quiet of solitude, loneliness, the simple act of standing witness to the passage of time. Being committed to just one thing: growth. Living in a way that does good for the world; and knowing that even the sentinels of the forest are not without their flaws. For even the most resplendent tree casts a shadow upon the ground that keeps the ferns from growing.That it is impossible to live a life that is devoid of harming others, but, tandemly, simply because something is impossible doesn’t preclude it from being worthy of our attention, our efforts.

After all, it was impossible for man to reach beyond our little blue dot and sail to the mood. It was impossible right up to the moment that we decided to test our hypothesis of impossibility. In doing so we move the bar just that much further, set a new impossible, a vast horizon on which we can build and destroy dreams so grand, that from here, their greatness makes them all but invisible.

When I look at the world and see all the greed and indifference, the shame and confusion, I think of the trees. The old giants.

I like to imagine a stand of soaring pine trees which no man has ever seen. Trees that took root before this great democratic experiment, before you, before me, before anyone you’ve ever had the slightest possibility of knowing came into being. When I look at the trees, not the tame, domesticated blooms that adorn our city street and front lawns, but the wild ineffable misers who live out their lives – which are so inexpressibly different from our own –  away from the prying eyes of humans. When I think of these trees – it feels like the greatest form of hubris that we should endeavor to write our stories on their skin. 

These trees don’t strive to have their names written in the pages of our history books. Instead, they are the pages of our history books, the pages of nearly every human story, the true and the tabloid, the sweeping epic and the stereo installation manual. And if tomorrow, we are called upon by some desire within ourselves to cut these giants down; to bring their soaring-ever-reaching limbs crashing down to earth, they will not complain, but simply acquiesce to our desires and we will have lost something grand and powerful, and very nearly the closest thing we have on this planet to the divine. We will have lost a teacher.

For the trees know we are small confused mammals with minds that are smaller still. They accept us and our hubris, our carelessness, our ceaseless errors, knowing that these flaws are simply part of our DNA, and they forgive us. And in their silence they hold space for us to learn. To grow not as they do, but in our own way.

The trees teach us that there is an awesome power in growth, in being huge, fat, bursting in our liveliness, and that it does not do to make oneself small. Conversely, they also show us that the notions of who is better and best does nothing but divide us, and that living only to take is not only cruel, but so beyond pointless that only a silly little animal like a human would spend their one fleeting, glorious life in pursuit of this pyrrhic victory. 

I like to look to the trees, and know that one day, all of it, all of you, will be gone, as surely and completely as the silence that stood in your place before you arrived. And then what? Just the trees and the dirt will remain, until one day, they too are swallowed up by the gaping maw of space. And we are, all of us, returned to the star dust from which we came.

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Everything I Don’t Know

Sunday Afternoon

I am on my knees in the snow frantically digging. My shoulders are searing from the effort. The shoveler in front of me tosses a wash of snow into my face but I am too focused on chopping my own shovel into the snow to pay any attention to the wet trickles of snowmelt now racing down my neck. “Rotate!” Is the only word uttered as our team of five digs a V pattern towards the tip of the avalanche probe buried a meter into the snow. “Rotate!” Once the person at the front begins to slow. “Rotate!” Even if you haven’t been digging as long as the others. “Rotate!” This isn’t a practice in who can dig the longest, it’s practicing to save a life.

Even though I know this is a drill. That there is no person at the end of the probe, I don’t slow my digging. Because even in a drill scenario with our guide standing over my shoulder I am deeply aware of the fact that the skills I’m developing now could very well be the difference between life and death. And that if it is ever me at the end of that probe I hope my friends won’t slow their digging either.

24 Hours Earlier

I am sitting in a chilly classroom above the Canada West Mountain School’s Vancouver offices. Where I, along with 15 guys with beards, two guys without beards, and one woman, are taking our level 1 Avalanche Safety Training. We’ve spent the day analyzing pictures of avalanche crown lines, snow crystals, slide paths. Talking about safety, improbability, and learning from the mistakes of others.

From the safety of my desk I feel confident in what I have learned today. My Harmonie-ish nature is on full display, answering question after question while my taciturn classmates remain silent, arms folded while our instructors eyes rove over the group looking for engagement. I have a natural skill for classroom learning, good grades come easily for me. Add to this the excitement of procuring new skills which will allow me push further into the backcountry and I’m practically bouncing out of my seat with zeal for this new knowledge.

As the day winds down our instructors throw a final slide onto the projector. It’s one we’ve already seen. The title reads: The Harsh Facts. And below the title, in frank black text it says “Most people fully buried in avalanches die.” Statistically the odds are about 50%.

You’re buried and it’s a coin toss on your survival.

By the Numbers

In the event that you are fully buried in an avalanche there are few numbers to keep in mind. The first being that 50% of people who are buried will die. On average you have 15 to 30 minutes to find the buried person and clear their airway or else they will suffocate before they can be dug out. For others no amount of digging will help. Many people who are killed in avalanches die as a result of blunt force trauma instilled upon the body as it ragdolls down a slope. And no matter how fast you dig, you can’t keep your friend from striking that tree. Sometimes you fuck up and people die. Sometimes you have put yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and all the practice and luck in the world won’t keep you alive.

That’s what day one taught me.

Day two taught me I know even less than I imagined.

Safety Card

Our class is standing a the bottom of a tree-strewn slope looking down at our Avulators–cards that serve as a checklist for determining avalanche safety. In the game of safe backcountry travel the goal is to get as low a score as possible. Fresh snow earns you a point. Slopes over 30 degrees earn you a point while slopes over 35 degrees earn you two. Sparse trees, one point. Persistent weak layers, one point. Terrain traps, one point. Then more points the more caution you need to exercise as you travel.

On this small, unassuming roll we wrack up four points which pushes us into the area of Extra Caution. Again and again throughout the day we tally our points and never once are we in that green band of simple Caution. With each analysis my understanding of what is a safe travel zone shrinks. And with each undulating hill we climb my body begins to wither with fatigue. If yesterday I was the smart and vivacious Hermione Granger, then today I am the blundering Neville Longbottom. The outdoor portion of AST-1 has taken me right to the edge of my comfort zone. Right to the point where my toes can skim the bottom of the pool while out in front of me stretches the vastly terrifying and enticing deep end.

The Thing Is

Out here on the edge of comfort I can just start to see an entire world opening up in front of me. And right now that world, the opportunity to explore it, is too big for me. It’s like getting the keys to a Porsche when you’re 16, barely know how to drive, and don’t have anywhere to park it. I would be better served by a riding lawnmower. My skiing skills have atrophied after two years of pushing the sport aside as I saved and prepped for the PCT. Meanwhile my knowledge of snow travel is in its nascent stages.

Standing knee deep in snow, arms trembling from the effort of digging I am like a young child being taken into the wild for the first time. I am all searching eyes and tentative smiles. Eager to explore but confident only in the knowledge that I don’t know anything. However, I would argue that understanding what you don’t know is far more valuable than boasting about what you do know.  It’s too easy to find excitement in exploration and forget to appreciate the joy of learning. So for the time being I will be content to learn all the land has to teach me about its myriad secrets. About what I must understand before I can pass safely across it.

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How to Afford Nature

Learning from the Pros

It’s Friday morning and there is a pile of gear strewn around the living room. Which honestly, is how most weekends start; gathering of all the required equipment from the garage and depositing it haphazardly into the apartment until it can be packed into bags and cars.

This afternoon we will load all of this gear into Starman’s comically small Mini Cooper and, with skis on the roof, drive north to Vancouver, BC, Canada where we’re taking our level one avalanche safety course from Avalanche Canada–the national non-profit dedicated to educating the public about avalanche safety. This weekend represents the start of a journey into ski touring. Something that I have been eager to dive into for a very long time. The ability to replace snowshoes with skis on winter backpacking, mountain climbing, and day trips will give us greater access to the astonishing number of natural spaces near Seattle. Plus, it’s more fun.

Of course, it is not necessary for us to drive to Canada to take this kind of class. America has avalanches too and the resultant courses for learning to navigating them safely. The American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) is the primary educational resource in the states and offers avalanche safety courses multiple times each winter in the mountains around Seattle.

Which begs the question: why are we driving four hours to Canada to take a nearly identical class to the one that is offered in our home city? It’s actually quite simple, really: because it’s substantially cheaper for the same education. Even after we throw in the cost of gas, and an AirBnB for the two of us, it’s cheaper. And sometimes the only way to afford your passions in the outdoors is to look for a bargain.

Accessing the Outdoors

There is a common refrain in the outdoors community that nature is for everyone. That trails, mountains, and rivers don’t care about your gender, sexuality, race, or religion. And while that sentiment may be objectively true, it ignores the very real barriers that keep many folks from accessing the wild places that belong to us all. A huge one  of these barriers is cost.

My parents taught me to ski around the time I was entering kindergarten. At that age I never wondered at the monumental effort and cost that is required to get a small child to the ski hill. Now that I have grown to the age of undeniable adulthood I am astonished that my parents ever took me and my sister skiing.

Of course, I learned to ski more than 25 years ago. Before skiing started to transform into something that only the wealthy can afford.

During the death of the Mom & Pop ski area as mega resorts grew to prominence I was sliding around on plastic skis in red nylon pants. This was before Vail Resort in Colorado began charging $200 for a single day lift ticket at the window. Before a lesson, rental, and day pass at Breckenridge Ski Area ( a Vail Resports property where I personally taught for five years) could run you $450 for a single child. To me, these are literally unconscionable amounts for a ski area to charge. And it is one of the primary reasons Starman and I have begun aggressively pursuing backcountry ski touring.

Yes, two white, middle class professionals have decided that we cannot afford to ski in-bounds anything but infrequently. By all rights we are a marketers wet dream, we should be the ideal people they are selling vacation packages to. And yet, we’re opting to leave the area behind in favor of affording things outside of skiing. As ski areas continue to increase prices they are dividing their consumer base into two groups while driving out anyone who might have a passing interest in the sport.

A Numbers Game

Visit any ski area this winter and you will notice two distinct groups. The first are the tourist–often called gapers for their tendency to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and gape open-mouthed at the mountains. Aside from the open mouths, the tourists are easy to spot because by and large they are the ones queued at the day pass window, eating in the fancy restaurants at the base area, and staying in the mega-rise condos that crowd the bottom of so many ski areas. They are the people that ski areas are looking to retain as customers.

It is not uncommon for families, who typically take one or two ski vacations annually, often drop $15,000 for a family of four to vacation for a week.This money generates thousands of jobs, and the management of every company knows it. When I worked as a snowboard instructor at Breck I was repeatedly told by managers that a ski vacation should be seen as akin to a trip to Disneyland, and bearing an equally high price tag. Ski areas understand that skiing and snowboarding are expensive sports and have decided to cater their offerings to clientele who can afford the high prices and demand a premium experience in return. And the marketing of ski area as premium vacation is working. Last year saw a 6% increase in skiers and snowboarders from households earning more than 100,000 annually.

If your local ski hill has a large luxury hotel, a spa, and has recently started offering kale salads in the lodge on addition to the standard burger. Well friend, your area is looking to attract the affluent.

However, it’s unlikely that locals are using these amenities. These are people who live within a two hour drive of the ski areas and have managed to afford their skiing through the economy of scale. You see, skiing only becomes affordable when done in bulk. Buying a $700 season pass is an absurd amount to spend unless you’re going to be skiing 20 or more days a year. Of course, the cost doesn’t stop there.

If you’re skiing 20 times a year you’ll have to mortgage your kidney in order to afford rental fees. So now instead of renting, you buy your gear. Programs like season rentals, end-of-season discount sales, and used stores have all risen to the needs of your weekend warrior. But it’s unlikely you’ll get a slope-worthy kit for less than $500. Still, people are willing to pay the cost for access to something they love and they’ll carpool and pack their lunch to be able to afford that annual pass.

How I Make it Work

In 2018 as I prepared to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail I applied and was accepted to be part of the PCTA’s P3 Hiker Program. A group of aspiring thru hikers who would serve as volunteer journalists and photographers documenting their time on the PCT through the lens of preservation, promotion, and protection of the trail. Through this program I was put in contact with the employees at Salomon who manage athlete and ambassador relations. After the trail I very nicely asked for a pro deal and they gave me one. These deals are often what you see when you look on someone’s Instagram account (like mine) and they say they are a brand ambassador. In exchange for rights to images, tags in social media posts, and a body bedecked in logos I am given a steep discount on Salomon gear.

To me, this is a totally fair exchange. I would be taking and posting these images anyway, so throwing on an @SalomonFreeski tag isn’t a huge ask, and I genuinely like their gear. And if I’m going to be truly candid, I would not be skiing this year were it not for this partnership. Why? Because ski gear is outrageously expensive. My current touring set up would run upwards of $4,000 retail. I don’t have that much money. Especially after my thru hike as I desperately attempt to rebuild my savings account.

The rest of the equation in affording my outdoor habit comes from a near disregard for everything else. Sexy, no? I drive a used car and do as much maintenance as I can myself, I take public transit, I don’t eat out much or go to happy hours, and I’m pretty sure Starman and I are still mooching off his parents Netflix account (hi, Carol!). In some ways it’s simple, I prioritize going outside over almost everything else. In other ways it’s a much more complicated daily calculation where I am constantly assessing what I value. It takes a lot of savings and effort to get outside as much as I want to.

While my financial priorities work for me, I think this points to a larger issue within the outdoors community as a consumerist society. Can we really say that the outdoors is for everyone where there is such a high price tag on getting in the front door.

Who is Welcome

I can hear the inner workings of an argument prone mind saying “But Kara, skiing and snowboarding are outliers, they don’t represent the cost of the outdoors at large!” And I hear your point irate reader, I do. Certainly skiing and snowboarding are substantially less expensive than motorized outdoor sports such riding snowmobiles or ATVs, paragliding, SCUBA diving, any sort of sailing, and trad climbing. And skiing is certainly far less expensive than day hiking—unless you don’t have access to a car in which case you can’t get to the trailhead, but that’s a post for another day.

However, unlike all of the activities listed above, skiing and snowboarding require the average user to pay for access to the means for skiing in the form of lift passes. This distinction is what ski areas are now exploiting with exorbitant lift ticket prices. And what I, and an increasingly large numbers of skiers and riders, are attempting to avoid by pushing into the backcountry.

Needed Change

So what? So ski areas want to charge $200 for a lift ticket. So some people won’t pay that and the ski areas are contented with the affluent few who will. This is how capitalism works, the suppliers can raise prices in response to demand and people will adapt. Is this really a problem?

Yes, yes it is; if you want there to be a future of skiing.

From a purely economic standpoint, ski areas literally cannot afford to follow their current business model. In the last decade the average age of people on the slopes has increased from 34 to 38. Meaning that the skiing population is aging and not being replaced by new, young people. Furthermore, as Baby Boomers reach geriatric age skiing may experience a massive drop in participation. The model of catering to the wealthy is certainly not new, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sound, or even moral, long term strategy. If ski areas want to survive they will need to adapt, embrace new people, and lower the bar for entry.

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The Invisibility of Nature

My skis glide uphill across the icy, granular snow. Each sliding footfall accompanied by a sound almost like a toy laser gun. Slowly, my mind is schussed into silence as I descend the hill into darkness. Lights blare in the distance, floating orbs in the night sky that belie the presence of grinding, mechanical ski lifts. Bundled forms slide past spouting fragments of conversation, laughter. Meanwhile, warm breath sibilates between my teeth to form a cloud before it’s gobbled up by the greedy cold.

For an indeterminable minute, hush.

A slackening of the thoughts that ricochet around the echoing gymnasium that is my mind and I am lost in the effortful movement of my body.

This is why I do it. Walk, or ski, or run alone in the wild places that are the very furthest away from civilization that my body can carry me.

For the unconscious moments of mental stillness that I am afforded when my entire being is consumed in a driving blitz of burning movement. Moments that I can only recognize once something has pulled me from deep below the water and I am deposited, spluttering against the shores of cognizant thought. Sometimes, I can find these moments in efforts of muscles screaming so loud that it drowns out my entire interior world. Others, like tonight, when the repetition of movement sneaks into my mind and lulls it to quiet. Like falling asleep on a rolling tide.

There is a distinct kind of pleasure I’ve found in these moments of complete abandon. One which is so compelling that I am coming to build an entire life around it. I push my body deep into the wilderness for the stillness it bestows on my recalcitrant mind, yes. Undeniably. But also, for the time spent unwatched by a single one of my fellows on this billions-populated speck of careening space rock. The opportunity to shed the wet blanket of gaze that I carry with me daily. Though some of the days are easier than others. I have found that no matter how comfortable that wet blanket becomes it’s presence it’s still noticeable. I am still wearing the wet blanket.

But not out here among the darkness and the trees. Here I am joyously invisible, able to take whichever form I choose.