Jeff Thompson pulling off his best Dan Treadway-cover imitation somewhere on Whistler.
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 107
You can sitski a chute, but once the rig is in the line, speed adjustments aren’t really an option.
skier
107
12-09-04 2:58 PM
Wanna drag?
Big-mountain lines and backcountry booters are the new face of adaptive skiing text Vince Shuley // photos Paul Morrison for most skiers, the thought of not being able to ski again is terrifying. Ankles and knees, the articulating
joints that allow you to slide down the mountain, are too often taken for granted—until the reality check of a bone break or ligament tear. Missing a season to injury over a career is in the cards for many a core skier, an unfortunate yet necessary respite that allows both body and ego to recover. But not much changes; you move on, wiser, sometimes fitter, a bit more careful, but basically skiing as you had. When you suffer a paralysing spinal injury while skiing, however, nothing is ever the same. Your day-to-day landscape is forever changed, the horizon tilted, everything a chore. Yet, for some, finding their way back to skiing is the motivation to overcome all the associated challenges. And they are again skiing‌ albeit differently. A few quite differently. In what is still very much a niche community, adaptive sitski programs have slowly built a generation of athletes who are skiing faster, jumping higher and shredding more pow than ever before. No longer simply a token means for disabled sliders to get back on the mountain, sitskiing is a bona fide genre, its athletes at a turning point.
106
skier
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 106
12-09-04 2:58 PM
Jeff Thompson pulling off his best Dan Treadway-cover imitation somewhere on Whistler.
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 107
You can sitski a chute, but once the rig is in the line, speed adjustments aren’t really an option.
skier
107
12-09-04 2:58 PM
on Blackcomb mountain with an airbag for landing. “I hope this is a catalyst that opens the door to a Today it would be in powder. variety of different venues for skiers to be skiers,” We exit the cat to find Douglas, Rory Bushsays sitski Paralympian and vert-chasing celebrity field and Canadian halfpipe team coach Trennon Josh “Dewey” Dueck. “The way I see it right now, Paynter already at the jump. Myles was here two it’s similar to what skiing looked like in the late ’90s nights ago to get the kicker primed, but it snowed when the New Canadian Air Force was gaining a good 50 centimetres since. Bailey Mitchell, popularity and twin-tips were coming out. Our comPowder Mountain Cat ops manager and revered munity of sitskiers is much smaller, so I don’t expect road builder, gets to work ploughing the in-run the explosion will be quite as big. But I have a feeling as Trennon and Douglas begin fine-tuning the it will take a similar trajectory.” Josh Dueck. jump. They’re looking to replicate the lip to within a There’s an air of quiet excitement in the snowcat degree of the dimensions they had on the airbag where I sit next to 31-year-old Dueck, who’s enjoying jump at Blackcomb a few weeks ago. Dewey chills the friendly banter-slinging across the cabin as we in his chair next to Rory, who’s perched on his sled rumble up Powder Mountain towards Vinnie’s Bowl. soaking up the surrounding alpine beauty. The Photographer Paul Morrison sits quietly in the corconversation is light, with jokes and laughter lifting ner, smiling out the window at the blue sky he gets any pressure from today’s task. to work with today. Myles Ricketts, an Oakley field After a couple of speed checks and a huge laidrep who coached freestyle with Dewey for years, out backflip from Trennon to test the shape, the jibes his old pal about his questionable ability to jump is ready. Rory tows Dewey up the hill. After a get out of bed in the morning. Blair Richmond from brief moment of composure, he drops in with camSwitchback Entertainment has his feet propped eras rolling. There’s too much throw on the takeoff, on several backpacks full of filming equipment. If, Double chair. Spector photo so Dewey over-rotates and lands on his back, buryas planned, Dewey pulls off the world’s first sitski ing himself in the deep powder landing. But he’s backflip on this February day, the cat’s occupants OK and towed back up right away. On the second will be among the lucky few to see it first-hand. attempt, his arms windmill wildly during the rotation, Dewey recalls the first of his many intimidating but he lands on his ski, bounces out of the powder sitski jump experiences, exactly one year to the day and skis away: the first sitski backflip in history. after breaking his back when he overshot a landing Like any good freestyler, however, Dewey isn’t in the terrain park at Vernon, B.C.’s Silverstar Resort. satisfied with his ragged air style and decides to With his wife, Lacy, and friends, Mark Abma, Myles keep trying. After two more attempts and a shiner Ricketts, and Kristi Richards, he’d returned to the under his right eye, he lays one out completely, the jump that had crippled him. outriggers attached to his arms stretched from his “We literally go over there [to the air site] just to sides like a crucifix. He stomps the biggest, cleanhave a moment of peace, just to kind of reflect on the Ben Thompson. est, backflip of the day. With the Switchback crew year that has passed and what’s changed,” he rehaving banked all the footage it needs for a kick-ass lates. “Then I’m like: ‘Fuck it, boys. Pull the bamboo!’” episode of Salomon Freeski TV Dewey calls it. Smiles, high fives and With some disbelief, his friends obliged, and Dewey launched himfist pumps abound; mission accomplished. self off the very jump that changed his life. With a stuck outrigger, he cased the first attempt and tomahawked down the landing, but quickly got a push back up the in-run and landed the following two attempts. a month later finds me on whistler mountain with brothers Ben and “Given how close we were as a group of friends, they knew I was doJeff Thompson, sitskiers who rose through the Whistler Adaptive ing it for no other reason than I was ready to jump.” Sports Program to provincial-level racing in just two years. After a That was seven years ago. Since then, Dewey has stormed the busy month of touring with the B.C. para-alpine team, they have the world of Para-alpine racing, earning gold at the 2009 Downhill World chance to unwind with a 20-centimetre day on fat-board-mounted Championships, gold at the Mono-Skiercross at 2011 X Games, and a sitskis. Having lucked out with yet another bluebird day, Morrison is silver medal at the 2010 Paralympic Games in Whistler. excited to be shooting sitskiers on big-mountain terrain. “I’m better at skiing powder than I am at racing—at least, I enjoy it The brothers waste no time dropping into Whistler Bowl, their sibling more,” says the always humble Dewey. “But there are not many ways rivalry apparent as they carve GS-sized turns at a speed worthy of any you can get the thrill of going 130 kilometres an hour in a bucket.” able-bodied skier. Jeff nails his first shot on Left Hook, diving up to his Speed is incredibly addictive, but so is powder. Dewey still races for eyebrows in powder, much to Morrison’s delight. The boys hit a couple the Canadian Para-alpine team, with a string of formidable results, but of cliffs on their way back down to Peak Chair, the hoots and hollers has begun to focus more on freeriding when not on the race circuit. from the lineup offering resounding approval that sitskiers belong up The footage that Dewey and Switchback Entertainment put together here with everyone else. at Chatter Creek Snowcats in 2011 for their multi-award-winning film, As we head up Peak for another lap, we spot a black-clad bucket The Freedom Chair, got the freeski community pumped on what sitskisending it off the same set of cliffs on Left Hook. Alex Cairns, the ers were capable of. It was during the three days spent sending it at 20 year-old skate-shoe-donning sitski prodigy from Squamish, is in Chatter that Switchback executive director Mike Douglas got behind the house. A quick phone call and he joins us for a mission over to the idea of Dewey going upside down on snow again. Harmony Bowl. While the tools Dewey is using for his backflip attempt are different The cat track leading to the top of Harmony Chair presents the from regular skiers, the fundamentals of aerials are exactly the same: crew with an unwelcome uphill section, but with gritty determinaa good takeoff translates into a solid landing. With his paralysis being tion, they dig outriggers into the groomed slope and push their way from just above the waist down, the ability to clench his abs and tuck upward. Ben decides he’d rather take it easy, undoes his retention in the air is severely limited, making the shape of the jump all the more straps and walks the remainder of the way. “Cheater!” yells Jeff, important to assist in the rotation. With several seasons of foam pit happy to tough it out in his chair. practise and some great advice from former Canadian aerials team The disability affecting the Thompson brothers is an inherited nervecoach Nic Bass on how to shape a snow jump, Dewey had first done so ending disorder known as Chaco-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease. CMT
108
skier
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 108
12-09-04 2:59 PM
“I’m better at skiing powder than racing,” says Dueck, “But there are not many ways to get the thrill of going 130 kilometres an hour in a bucket.”
Jeff Thompson can't decide which he likes better: laying down smooth-as-silk powder smears…
… or blasting jet turns. Actually, neither can we.
Alex Cairns loves faceshots. Spector photo
skier
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 109
109
12-09-04 2:59 PM
Dueck’s arms windmill wildly, but he lands it and bounces out of the powder: the first sitski backflip in history.
Putting the "free" in The Freedom Chair. Dueck soars into the record books.
leads to damage to the myelin sheath, the covering around the nerve fibres that allows impulses to transmit quickly along nerve cells and fire the muscle. A lack of impulses causes certain muscles to atrophy, with extremities like feet and hands being most affected. “We both learned to walk early on as kids, but we never had the endurance or the fine balance to go with it,” says Ben as he hikes his rig towards Harmony. The Thompson brothers can both snowmobile with little difficulty, though the lack of grip strength in their hands occasionally lets them down. “Our shoulders are strong enough to do it, but if we pull too hard we’ll just yank our hands off the bars,” says Ben. But sitskiing levels the playing field for them, with the majority of steering strength coming from the core, and balance extending from the shoulders. Of all the sports the Thompsons have tried, sitskiing has been by far the most rewarding. We head to Harmony Ridge to scope some cornice drops when all of sudden Alex disappears up to his armpits, haven fallen through the snowpack by a cluster of small trees. The combined weight of a rig and rider, concentrated on a single ski, can punch through a fragile
110
snowpack with little warning. It’s a three-man job extracting Alex, after which we traverse to Gun Barrels for a few more photo ops. The lines these guys select are somewhat conservative compared to those of an expert able-bodied skier, but given the equipment they’re working with, ballsy enough. “You can’t see anything… it’s like being a kid all over again,” says Jeff, of skiing deep powder while seated in his rig. Terrain selection is key, as obstacles can reveal themselves rather quickly with little time to react. Tight trees give little chance to slow down and increase the chances of a snagged outrigger. “A lot of the time in powder you don’t want to be a wuss and get stuck, so you just go for it and see what happens. But when you do get stuck, people love helping out—they usually think you’re stranded or dying.” It’s also possible to ski chutes on sitskis, though, once the rig is in the line, fine speed adjustments aren’t really an option. “There’s no pizza [snowplowing to control speed]. Once you go, you’re in for the ride,” says Jeff, who this season followed Alex through the infamous Coffin, a walled straight line with an exposed entrance in full view of the Peak Chair audience.
skier
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 110
12-09-04 2:59 PM
"OK, last guy to the bottom has to tow the other two to their cars.
the line was conquered, and the boys have plans to probe Blackcomb’s slackcountry next season, perhaps even sitskiing the tight, intimidating, 300-vertical-metre pencil chute, DoA. You can bet the cameras will be rolling for that one. A revolution in sitskiing has begun, triggered by the sensation of Dueck’s backflip, supported by the guts of young guns like Alex Cairns and the determination of rising stars like the thompsons. there are many more Canadian athletes pushing the envelope on the racing scene, and it’s time they all received the recognition they deserve—not as sitskiers, but as skiers period. Dueck had summed it up on the morning he changed the face of sitskiing. “I’d like to see the day when we can integrate into able-bodied races and freestyle events and just do our thing. No bias, no separation between the two.” that day might come sooner than he thinks. y
DNA joshdueck.com raiseyourhand.com/blog/josh-dueck salomonfreeski.com/us/freeski-tv/season-05-episode-05.html (The Freedom Chair) salomonfreeski.com/us/freeski-tv/season-05-episode-13.html (Backflip) whistlerblackcomb.com powdermountaincatskiing.com
skier
SKIER12.1_Bucket List.indd 111
111
12-09-04 2:59 PM