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volume 2.1 | Embrace the Challenge
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WHEN FACED WITH A CHALLENGE, LOOK FOR A WAY, NOT A WAY OUT. -David Weatherford
WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE?
Tero Repo | Somewhere in Antarctica.
P: AMY JIMMERS ON
A: CAITE Z ELIFF
INTRO
Thank you for the tragedy, I need it for my art. -KURT COBAIN THE NOISE OF DISTRACTION, the stimuli, the scare tactics
on our screens, so many people spewing negativity and fear, it’s enough to make us all go crazy...Wait. Turn it off. I dare you to thumb the button. Unplug and go retro. Take a deep breath, it’s challenging, I know. Breathing intentionally is hard. Just one deep breath; hold it at the top and let it all go. Now do this a few more times and think of one thing you are grateful for. Just one.
If the current issue you hold in your hands can break the daily scroll of monotony and gloom, and conjure up a memory or feeling worth smiling about –– away from your devices –– well then, our publishing efforts are working. Embrace the challenge of being appreciative. The struggle for gratitude. Enjoy your damn self. It feels good, I promise. Oh, and if you are confused about some of our content reminiscing of days on the water, on bike, or on a boat, I’d like to remind you all that Bomb Snow examines issues impacting our culture and our community at-large, not just
Travis Andersen | Uncle Marcus Fuller feeling grateful. Inset: T.O. with son Enzo.
snow ponies and ice-cream. From the rivers and valleys, to the skin tracks, trails, mountain peaks and ocean beyond, we are on the hunt for stories that matter. Flip-through some pages, they smell good. And within them you’ll find open and honest conversations. Sometimes we search deep and find sadness; even vulnerability. I hope you’ll find beauty in it all, especially the discomfort. Given our current global state, creating another themed issue seemed appropriate. I can only hope it hits a solid chord. Bomb Snow is back to talk about reality, not just snow, or the lack there-of. And, for any less inclined to take a full-dive into the text, there are still plenty of photos and art about sliding down snow. We still love those long winter nights and sunny pow laps, it’s why we live here. We still love a solid after-ski (haven’t given it up, just slowing it down) and the occasional mishap or two in the mountains. Our concern is to inspire, period. If we can do so while also having fun, well, damn son! The challenge has been accepted and we are making progress. Onward. Todd Heath / Chief Motivator
Eons ago… In the world’s northernmost reaches, where day and night become one, a thousand-mile land bridge once spanned the arctic subcontinent. As human beings ventured across, no territories were claimed, no maps scribed; only the timeless continuum of existence prevailed. Division was unknown in this vanished land joining east and west, marked only by the migratory movements of close-knit communities, crafting the future.
Before Hokkaido, Kamchatka or Kanatami, Valdez or Vashon, before America, there was
Beringia
BERINGIA.world @beringiaworld Photo: Tero Repo
Distinctive Distinctive design, design, global global mountain mountain expertise expertise and highest-test and highest-test ® ® garment. garment. quality quality are the aremarks the marks of every of every BERINGIA BERINGIA
Contents
Issue 25 | Volume 2.1 | Embrace the Challenge 1.
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The photos above represent some of the stories you will discover within this issue. There are no page numbers on purpose. Please enjoy responsibly.
12.
Issue 25 | Volume 2.1 Chief Motivator
Todd Heath Loyal Henchman
ALEX BueCKING Editor at Living Large
ETHAN A. STEWART Sales Directors
Amy Balbier M. DAVID JOHNSON Cont. Designers
GEOFFREY SCHLEY RYAN WILSON Senior Photographers
Travis Andersen Dan Armstrong Cont. Photographers
CONRAD ANKER LONNIE BALL MARY BALL JONATHON FINCH NILES GRAY GRANT GUNDERSON DAVE HEATH AXEL PETERSON TERO REPO TAL ROBERTS COLTON STIFFLER AARON THEISEN Cont. Writers
Travis AndersEn AARON BLAINE LIZ CLARK KRISTOPHER DRUMMOND P.M. FADDEN MIKE HARRELSON TIM HAWKE SALLY HOPE MICHAEL KEW AARON LEBOWITZ MAX LOWE GABE SCHROEDER KIRA STOOPS AARON THEISEN Cont. Artists
MATTY CLARK JESSA GILBERT CYRUS WALKER Cover Artist
DAVID j. RICE Special Thanks
TO ALL OF OUR SPONSORS Spirit Animal
RICHARD ASPEN
Tero Repo | Victor De Le Rue freestyle cave walking somewhere in France.
Contributors
Issue 25 | Volume 2.1 | Embrace the Challenge 1.
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Blotto
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Aaron Theisen | Taken from a bike trip he’d rather forget about, somewhere in this magazine.
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1. TIM HAWKE is a Montana native who
2. LONNIE & MARY BALL are the quintes-
really doesn’t care if you’re not. He was born and raised in Billings but has lived all over the state. An obsessed explorer, he has climbed most of Montana’s highest peaks and biked virtually every trail from the Beartooths to the Bitteroot. By all rights, he shouldn’t be alive to tell the story. But he is and he will.
sential ski-bum couple. Lonnie, who famously was the first human to ever ski down/fall down Corbet’s Couloir, is beloved around the world for his many decades of ski photography and mountain adventure. Mary, who is the “real” ski bum of the family, has always been Lonnie’s #1 ski model, and partner. Together, they have taken more skiing legends into our backyard to “scout” lines than anyone else around.
4. AARON THEISEN is an outdoors writer and photographer whose work has appeared in Freehub, Mountain Flyer, Powder, Backpacker, and elsewhere. His passions are the big peaks and small towns of the Northern Rockies. When he’s not searching for obscure trails or sampling the region’s dive bars, Aaron can be found mountain biking and skiing around his hometown of Spokane, Washington.
7. Known for his ability to capture stories in the most remote corners of the world, MAX LOWE has honed his skill as a director and photographer in his search for adventure and narratives unheard. From his home in the mountains of Montana to now countless countries, landscapes, and cultures across the globe, Max has been witness to stories spanning the breadth of human experience.
10. JESSA GILBERT is currently based out of Squamish, British Columbia, where she works as an artist and backcountry guide. Here, the union of art and the outdoors is part of her everyday life. Jessa’s work has been exhibited internationally, notably in New York, California, Montreal, Vermont, Vancouver, Squamish, and Whistler.
5. There are few surf writers more prolific over the last three decades than MICHAEL KEW. His bylines have been appearing in wave riding publications the world over since he was a teenager. A regular foot who loves good beer and occasionally dabbles in the fine art of being a lumberjack, Kew is the author of two books, Crossings and Rainbowesia, both dedicated to surf adventure in the wildest parts of the South Pacific and oceans beyond. Kew calls the coastal mountains of southern Oregon home.
8. Since the ol’ fleshbag crapped out, former ski patroller and outdoorswoman KIRA STOOPS has settled for seated pursuits: brand strategizing local do-good outfits, two-ladying oneman kayaks (and not helping paddle), giggling at Gallatin Speedway, and snobbing out over single origin dark chocolate. (Pretty rich for a lady who snags her clothes from the free pile of her 103-year-old apartment building.)
11. AARON LEBOWITZ is the Shaper/Founder of Elevated SurfCraft on a mission to surf every day in some way, shape, or form and spread the stoke. He currently resides in Mammoth Lakes, CA, in the winter and can be spotted along the California Coast chasing swell in the summer in his van with trusty co-pilot, Dude Dog.
3. SALLY HOPE is a writer, life coach, business consultant, and advice columnist. Her life experience includes being in a rock ‘n’ roll band and being a motorcycleriding, RV-traveling, Costa-Rica-living life coach, a meditation teacher, a chronic illness warrior, a breast cancer survivor, and one quarter of a co-parenting team to two teenagers. Likes: true crime, wit, and salsa dancing. Dislikes: toxic positivity, small talk, and chocolate. You can reach her at sally@sallyhope.com.
6. AARON BLAINE is a former U.S. Army Green Beret and the Director of Operations at a non-profit called The Station Foundation. The organization provides programs for Special Operations veterans and their families to decompress, process, and heal from the residue of combat. He is a fierce father and husband and a lover of Montana and its magical beauty.
9. Author, activist, and all around badass, LIZ CLARK has been on her sailboat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean for the better part of the last two decades. An ambassador for Patagonia and a former collegiate surfing champion, Clark has become an internationally renowned advocate for Mother Earth and an eloquent defender of all of the living things that call it home.
12. A devoted husband and father and an avid skier and friend, P.M. FADDEN publishes works of fiction and nonfiction with magazines and newspapers around the world. He appreciates fresh perspectives, timeless literature, and strong drink. Seek @vida.vagabondic to learn more.
These humans are responsible for making Bomb Snow awesome. If you see ‘em around, make sure to say thank you.
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STAYING HUMBLE THE
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Always Take High Road.
“Refrain from reckless and thoughtless actions. Be as calm and judicious as a mountain.” -Choi Hong Hi I CAN STILL see the whole thing in my head.
It’s a memory that has engraved itself into my grey matter. It seemed like the fall lasted for several minutes, but the reality is probably more like 20-seconds. He tried to dig his hands into the hard snow while sliding backward down the top of the couloir, but he rapidly picked up speed. Then he tumbled backward and bounced off one of the cliff walls. After that, his body went limp as he barrel-rolled like a log further down the steep chute. There was a very large boulder poking through the snow, right down the middle of the fall-line, and he hit it squarely, sending him flying into the air. I’m pretty sure that’s when his broken ribs punctured his spleen and one of his lungs. The last 200 yards was a light dusting of snow over sharp limestone scree, which gave him a multitude of lacerations and a shattered elbow.
the 30-second flight down to Fairy Lake. He spun like a top the whole way down. Adding more insult to injury, he then endured a long and bumpy ambulance ride down Fairy Lake road to Bridger canyon, then on to the hospital in Bozeman.
One would suspect that we had learned our lesson. One would be wrong. We three survivors rapidly purchased crampons and a sturdy ice ax, so we could feel a false sense of safety as we turned up our alpine frenzy to 11. How no one ever died is beyond me.
He was in surgery for 8 hours. They opened him up from his crotch to his sternum to untangle his organs and remove his spleen. He survived, but he will never be the same.
“The mountains are beautiful but they are not worth dying for.” -Greg Child
Watching the horror and brutality of our friend tumbling down the Great Northern Couloir (The Great One), left us frozen in complete shock. We were sure that he was dead. No one could have survived that plunge. Then we heard his weak and desperate pleas for help and this was well before cell phones, so one of us ran for assistance while my other friend and I tried to make our way down to our mangled brother to try and stabilize him.
Looking back, the day started out just fine. A crisp and sunny October day. We had Sacajawea peak to ourselves, but here’s what went wrong: we were young and barely experienced in mountaineering, we were convinced that we were invincible, and even blazed up a huge spliff of Mexico’s finest brick weed on the summit, seeds and all.
It took four hours to get a helicopter up there. They strapped him to a bodyboard and dangled him 20 feet below the bird for
“What are men to rocks and mountains?” -Jane Austen
Like many young men, we lacked humility and situational awareness. But we were very gung-ho and determined to go straight up and down every mountain in Montana. We had a lot more to learn.
WORDS Tim Hawke ART Matty Clarke Niles Gray | The “Great One.”
It took me years to realize how fortunate I was to grow up in Montana and even longer to understand just how balls-out reckless my friends and I were. Our first descents in the Beartooth mountains were on plastic sleds. We would take off a bootlace and lash the sled to our clothing, so it wouldn’t end up in the valley bottom as we inevitably somersaulted down a headwall. I’ve come to realize that Montana boys (and girls) are pretty crazy. If that’s true, it’s partially due to the playground in our backyard. But it’s also a gym that has produced some amazing athletes: Alex Lowe, Scot Schmidt, Tom Jungst, Joe Josephson, Parkin Costain, Pat Hinz, Tanner Hall, and Heather McPhee. These are all world-class
“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” – Ed Viesturs The three basic types of conflict in literature usually boil down to Man vs. Man, Man vs. Himself, and Man vs. Nature. I tend to take issue with the latter, though. When playing in the mountains, I’m not in a struggle with the landscape. Some of the critters might be after me, but the dirt and rocks could care less of my exploits. Pushing my mountain bike up a steep loose trail doesn’t amount to a battle with the route. The conflict is simply with my physical abilities and willpower. I’ve scrambled up many of Montana’s highest mountains, but I haven’t conquered a single one. They will still be standing right there for millions of years after I have become worm food.
Kyle Christensen | Somewhere near Juneau, AK.
mountain roaming legends. And I’m sure that they would all tell you that if Montana’s mountains taught them anything, it was humility.
“Put aside your pride, Set down your arrogance, And remember your grave.” – Ali ibn Abi Talib I’m sure a lot of you have a similar tale, and hopefully, it didn’t end with the loss of a friend’s life. I’ve come way too close to a permanent dirt nap on dozens of occasions. And when it comes down to it, I would very much prefer continuing my adventurous life than to die doing what I loved. There’s still too much to see, other mountains to climb, new trails to ride, and roads I’ve never driven.
There’s been a lot of untimely endings for some incredible humans in my valley as of late. Good people, with plenty of epic adventures still in front of them. It’s pretty brutal to watch what happens to the grieving friends who were present to witness a life taken too soon. It’s a jagged scar on your heart that lingers until its final beat. I’m not about to say that those people were being reckless or overly confident, though. Many of them were very experienced skiers, climbers, or at least understood the risks of their last alpine undertaking. The mountains have no ill will, but they are also far beyond offering a safe passage. We don’t go there for an easy stroll. We enter the inflexible montane because it is difficult.
And just when I’m feeling proud of myself for scrambling up to a spot where surely no human has ever been, I see some obsidian flakes in the dirt. A solemn reminder of a hunter who scaled these mountains in moccasins and enjoyed the same view while making tools for an ancient hunt possibly thousands of years ago. It’s very humbling. Montana’s high country (and deserts) have taught me so many valuable lessons. How strong I can be. How weak and fragile I am. How to not sweat the small stuff. How to pay attention to details. And most importantly, they have made me unpretentious. I guess my point would be to enter the wilds with some respect and humility. Know your limits and those of your travel buddies. Situational awareness and an extra layer will get you a lot further in the long run than an over inflated sense of self.
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Life goes fast. Let’s slow down and enjoy it. We make gear for long days in the mountains.
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Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
TO BE UNCOMMON
TO POPULAR BELIEF
There Is No One Right Way SLIDING ON SNOW HAS TAKEN ON many forms over the last 70 years, and each technique is often touted by its participants as the “best” way. While this ideology brings a sense of empowerment, it can also enable a dangerous way of thinking: an “I’m right and you’re wrong” mentality, where pride goes hand in hand with belittling the alternatives. We humans live and grow up in “time-bubble eras,” from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and other revered decades, to the timeframes that define our “X, Y, and Z” generations. During these periods, trends move cyclically through innovation, acceptance, standardization, and normalization. Depending on where in that cycle we land, we can find ourselves doing something fresh and new, or the same thing as everyone else, just because it’s the norm. We want to be a part of and excel in the tried and true.
is anyone to decide what that should look like for everyone? You define your cool. That’s what the monoskiers always say, and all the power to them. To all of us. There is merit in the uncommon. If it suits you, go for it. If it doesn’t exist, create it. Try something new or dig up a far-flung idea from the past. Maybe you’ll find an outskirt powder stash that no one imagined was viable. Isn’t that the moment we’re all searching for?
But just because something has been tried for a while and is generally accepted, does that make it true? We must remember that everyone is unique: our diets, careers, who we love, and how we express ourselves. The path is not “one size fits all,” and this includes our niche world of snow sliding. For some, the joy comes straight down the mountain, as fast as humanly possible, some find it in the peace of a cross-country glide, and for others, it’s riding a sled on the golf course hill. The mountain slope is an open pallet for creativity. It is an opportunity to express freedom. Who
Be bold enough to take your own path or cultivate a community on your wavelength. You might be surprised how many others resonate with alternative directions.
WORDS Aaron Sababba Lebowitz ART Jessa Gilbert
UNKNOWN OBSTACLES
Grand Gunderson | Pep Fujas in a cloudless Andes wonderland.
THIS IS BREATHING
On Suffrage and Growth in the Andes.
WORDS P.M. Fadden
I LEARNED TO SKI BECAUSE I NEEDED THE MONEY. A weird tour through the warped brothels of Italian immigration had just stripped me of my life’s savings, direction, and most worldly possessions. So, when I answered a call promising employment high atop the Chilean Andes, I asked no questions. I simply said, “Si.” Raise the stakes; raise the allure, and so it goes until somebody goes broke. In my case, “broke” meant a fate worse than drowning by dirty toilet bowl. And I was tip-toeing the porcelain edge. Lumped atop a kitchen table was a cluster of rumpled notes, random coins, a wrinkled bank slip, and pocket lint, enough –– to the Peso –– for one last roll of the dice. What followed was a 60-hour odyssey aboard two turbulent airplanes and two asthmatic buses, ending in regurgitation at the wheel wells of a rusty flatbed driven by one, Señor Nelson Rubilar Flores, “Nelson” for short. My broad-faced Chilean patron smiled widely beneath dancing eyes. He spoke not a lick of English save a single, intensely stressed declaration, “Eetz-Eem-Por-Tant.” Ah Nelson, how right you are.
He gripped me in brotherhood and chucked my pack over the tailgate. I climbed up behind him and raised a thumb. Acknowledging the signal, Nelson punched it for Maipo. San Jose de Maipo in Provincia de Cordillera is Cabernet country, where the “roads” twist like vines and “driving” is aerobic. For 66 invigorating kilometers, Nelson charged on with reckless abandon. On the 67th, he crushed the brake like a beer can, and I laid eyes on my fate, the grand-daddy of Chilean ski culture; Lagunillas. Lagunillas Epistas de Esqui is the country’s pioneer ski area. Its low altitude and roots attitude paradoxically pin it down and prop it up. Big June snow meant an early start to the season and a dire need for staff. In me,
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Nelson saw cheap labor plus nothing to lose, and he was right. Promise of income accompanied by accommodation had already edged out my concern for creature comforts or inalienable human rights. But where, I wondered was that accommodation? Save for a series of 60-year-old wooden platter lifts and sagging shacks, the base appeared to be featureless. I would have asked, but Nelson had the answer in the form of a shovel planted at my feet. “La Francesca,” he said, directing a reverent gaze uphill. A building nested a few 100 meters higher on the southern face. I
hadn’t noticed because only its roof peeked above the snow. Nelson was carving a trail toward it and indicating, irritably, that I lend a hand.
Cold but sweating, we excavated around clapboard walls, Plexiglas windows, and doors too small for their frame. Inside, abandoned armies of crumpled wrappers, unwashed dishes, and rotting food covered every surface. A mousedropping carpet sullied an otherwise bare concrete floor. Heat was by wood fire, water needed boiling, and electricity ran only with the lift. La Francesca, my fortress of solitude. Back at the car park, I learned there was a ski school and rental among the nearby sagging shacks. It was there that I would earn my luxurious accommodation. Approaching the shop required awkward hops through high, white dunes, and once there, Nelson forced its door with his shoulder. Inside, and strewn everywhere, laid skis in disarray. In mismatched pairs old or new, large or small, the floor was a felled forest of yellowed planks. This plus the house had to be rock bottom, surely, but the boot room proved otherwise. A mule, happily chewing hay, reined over a bale that someone — maybe Nelson — had thoughtfully placed in a corner. (The room was a heated shelter after all, and much snow had fallen.) The contented beast cast me an eye that implied I was the actual ass. And I sighed to sense the legitimacy of the point. Meanwhile, Nelson scooped a pair of 168 Volkl Supersports from the melee (I am six-three), hoisting the skis, he purred “Classes, Plata,” and “Eetz-Eem-Por-Tant.” “Plata” signifies money, like “bucks” denotes cash, and my employer knew full-well my need. Beaming, Nelson dodged the mule to retrieve a pair of shit-kicker Langes. And that roundedout my kit. The assignment: resuscitate the shop, then work as its instructor with no ski experience whatsoever. The following months are etched in my bones as much as memory. Boil water, chop wood, train with Nelson, shovel, feed the mule, sort gear, and ski with the citizens of Santiago. Nelson’s bread and butter were those city folk. A foreigner-led class was the incentive to buy. The fact that I was a learner myself seemed beside the point. The incessant pace meant it took a while to recognize the seed which was growing. A surprise impulse to ski propelled me past the shock of
Inside, and strewn everywhere, laid skis in disarray. In mismatched pairs old or new, large or small, the floor was a felled forest of yellowed planks.
being made to. A dormant thing awoke, and it defied all physical laws, save gravity. Whether blistering sun or bitter cold, I skied. I hiked the last lines while the sun set. The money no longer mattered. Then a big daddy storm came to call. Vicious wind coupled with low visibility closed Lagunillas for three days, sending Nelson (and the mule) scurrying. I was forgotten, lightless and isolated within La Francesca. But rather than shiver, I made a date with the blizzard. Battening all hatches, and touching wood for an absent beacon, I set a boot pack into the void. It was a scenario I’d never imagined yet somehow felt inevitable, navigating by inner compass, seeking a line carving toward home. Years have passed, yet skiing remains the source all the same. For it, I’ve risked frostbite, suffered crooks, lied to bosses, bailed on girlfriends, crashed in bathtubs, and accepted without reservation that this, to me, is breathing because Eetz-Eem-Por-Tant. Sometimes that’s all there is to say. Travis Andersen | Soul turns down South, Argentina.
OVERCOMING YOURSELF
G IN THE DESERT. IN K C A EP IK B & FEAR, LOATHING
Aa ro n Th eis en W OR DS & IM AG ES
IN TALES of struggle and survival, the wind is often the unnamed accomplice, whispering XYZ and goading the weary traveler to insanity. Ernest Shackleton’s doomed crew in the Antarctic spoke of it, and the westward pioneers even had a term for it: prairie madness.
I’m descending into full-on desert madness as my riding buddies Derrick and Justin and I cross the forlorn border between southern Oregon and northern Nevada at the halfway point in our eight-day bikepacking trip.
suggest that the other two ride ahead so that at least someone gets a foot in the front door before it closes.
We’ve covered perhaps thirty miles on the day, our sights set on Denio Junction, a gas station / bar / motel just south of the Nevada border — the only one on the 360-mile route, and key to our refueling plans for the next four days. But it’s taken longer than planned,
“To be put out of my misery,” I reply.
“Is there anything you want?” asks Derrick.
I watch Derrick and Justin pedal into an obscuring sandstorm as I saw my front wheel through skiffs of winddrifted sand that sting bare skin and scour my drivetrain. “Fuck this wind and fuck this place!” I yell. The wind throws my words back in my face before anyone can hear them.
and we haven’t considered the timezone change. It’s 2:45. We call the store to check its hours. It’s stopped serving food, and the store closes at 4:00. It’s six miles away. The wind pins us in place while the sun sucker punches us. We’re pedaling no more than five miles an hour on a flat road. The diner-food daydreaming that has grown increasingly mythical as the days have ticked by has just been crushed. With camera gear on my back and chest I’m essentially a giant sail, so I
There aren’t a lot of folks out here to hear my complaints anyway. Over the span of 350 miles, the route dubbed the “Big Country loop” crosses three mountain ranges and millions of acres of uninhabited land on dirt tracks and imperceptible paths through sagebrush and salt pan. Only a handful of hot springs and a single town with services provide respite. The window for riding the Big Country route is small; riders must wait until enough snow melts in the high country — snow drifts block the summit road on Steens Mountain well into June — but complete the ride before unbearable heat sets in. And spring rainstorms can turn the tracks to impassable, tire- and
soul-sucking soup. Because of its remoteness and rugged character, the potential for trip-derailing technical issues and trail conditions is high. I hadn’t thought of the psychological hazards. We’d begun four days prior in tiny Frenchglen, a small community of roughly a dozen residents in southcentral Oregon. Lying on the edge of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge with hundreds of thousands of acres of high desert peppered with ponds, the area is well known to birders. It’s also known as the gateway to Steens Mountain; the largest fault block mountain in the northern Great Basin, it looms some 5,000 vertical feet over the Alvord Desert to the east and is the hub around which our route revolved. We’d pass the occasionally slow-rolling sedan of birders, who gawked at our loaded bikes.
“Where’d you start?” “Frenchglen.” “Where are you headed?” “Frenchglen.” Creeping along as if the sun wouldn’t see us if we avoided sudden movements, we climbed the stone-flecked shoulder of Steens. Songbirds chirped in the juniper; cattle lolled in the heat. Out here, you can damn near see the curvature of the earth. For long stretches of the route, there’s nowhere to take shelter from the sun, the wind, your own thoughts. The next day we streaked down Stone-
“
TURNS OUT, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE IS ON THE WAY TO EVERYTHING.
house Road, our brake pads burning on the steep, loose descent out of the mountains. Nominally a jeep track, Stonehouse was, like most on the route, a road in name only.
rise. Three hours later, we sat soaking in Alvord Hot Springs under the minimal shade of the tin-walled structure drinking beers and putting off the inevitable: Alvord Lake and the Alvord Desert.
I pull into Denio Junction at 3:55 — somehow, miraculously, only minutes after my friends. They greet me with cold drinks and good news: “we got a motel room — the last one available.”
Setting up camp by the last tree for 90 miles, we passed around the boxed wine and prepped for our next day: some 50 miles, including a crossing of the dry playa of Alvord Lake, where high desert turns to actual desert.
Justin having stuffed his face with ice cream bars out of the hot springs store’s cooler to stall for time, the three of us finally set off across the desert. We crawled across the playa like a fly across a bare light bulb, the white crystalline cracks of the playa matching my salt-starched shirt collar. Two hours later we stood at the crest of aptly named Big Sand Gap, up which we’d heaved our heavily laden bikes through miles of deep sand. On paper it seemed patently insane; in reality, the sheer unreality of the landscape had us giddy.
Denio Junction is merely an intersection of two stretches of Nevada blacktop, south of Denio proper (population: 47). But it becomes the crux of our trip. It’s the only place on the trip where no one asks the three of us — sitting in front of the store, punch-drunk (and getting actual drunk), eating grassfed steaks off a platter made from the box they came in — where we are headed. Perhaps it’s because we’re merely another group of travelers in a land of transients headed to the Carolinas, the Florida coast, the Midwest. Everyone we meet is either taking a shortcut or the long way to their destination. Turns out, the middle of nowhere is on the way to everything.
It was a big itinerary, but our campsite promised a restful night of sleep —until about 1:00am, when gale-force winds began howling out of Stonehouse canyon with the same speed at which we’d descended it. I crowded myself into the corner of the tent to pin it in place as the wind curled its fabric over my face, the gusts threatening to snap my tent poles or my sanity. After a sleepless night, I was convinced the rising sun would tamp down the winds. It didn’t. With the wind having awakened everyone early, we set off shortly after sun-
The next day, we climbed into the little-traveled Trout Creek Mountains along forgotten double-tracks. After reaching the 8,200-foot high point of our route among a tundra-like swell of sagebrush, we dropped into our camp for the night along Trout Creek just as the setting sun lit up the aspen-clad hills above. The aspen grove felt like a totem of good fortune. Those were the last trees we’d see for four days.
We’ve raced to beat the locking of the store’s front door, but it turns out the store never really closes. (It doesn’t help that three cyclists out front keep telling curious travelers “Technically it’s closed, but if you go in they’ll still serve you.”) While we lounge in the shade, a refrig-
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IS THERE INHERENT VALUE IN CHALLENGE, OR MUST THERE BE SOME PAYOFF?
erated truck pulls into the parking lot, “Grass-Fed Steaks” printed on the side. Like kids chasing down the ice cream man, we pepper the driver with questions about the contents of his truck as he steps outside. “I’m not supposed to separate boxes, but…” Two minutes later we are pan-searing steaks on a camp stove in front of the store, thanking the steak salesman profusely for the stroke of good luck he’s delivered in a cardboard box. “Everything happens for a reason,” says the driver as he climbs back into his rig. The following morning, we take our time rolling out of Denio Junction, letting our sink-laundered chamois air dry on the motel balcony as we load up on diner bacon. The man outside the store stretches and strikes up a conversation while we secure our belongings to our bikes.
“You want some acid?” We exchange glances. “Yeah. Yeah we do.” Now a day behind schedule, we pedal 35 miles, a mix of highway and hike-abike, to our next camp in Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge. The flat, treeless, shadeless dirt campground lacks charm, but its proximity to world-renowned opal mines means it’s packed. In the bathwater-warm soaking pool of our campground, we strike up a conversation with an old-timer, an opal miner who’s been visiting this spot for 49 years. We tell him the gas-station steak saga and he nods sagely. “Everything happens for a reason,” he says. I’m not one for signs and wonders,
but his words, which echo those of the driver, strike me. In retrospect, this is probably the natural counterbalance to prairie madness: in a featureless and forbidding landscape, it’s a necessity and a desire to plant mental guy-lines to avoid being swept away. That evening, with the wind shaking down camps and stirring up squalls of sand, we unfold the foil-wrapped package from our friend in Denio Junction, and near the pile of rubble and rebar we’ve dubbed an “art installation” (actually, a crude grave for a long-dead animal), watch a slowly unfolding sunset pulse from orange to pink to purple. Staring into the sun, tears streaming down my face, I realize: the struggle is all in my mind; my reaction to my surroundings is whatever I choose it to be. The middle of nowhere truly is on the way to everything. Waking up robbed of sleep but gifted with the secrets of the universe, I resolve to meet the wind head on. Which is perfect, because the wind has the same thing in mind for me. My resolve to place mind over matter eventually flags, although the wind never does. We end up spending the next couple days tucking into sustained headwinds in the sprawling sagebrush expanse of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge of northern Nevada, a landscape I vow never to set eyes on
again. We finally tack north, antsy for the breeze to be at our backs. But the wind changes tactics. Shortly after we descend out of the high-elevation aspen and pine groves, shoals of storm clouds chase me out of the campground hot springs to set up my tent as an early summer storm begins to drop rain, turning to snow throughout the night. By the time we get back to Frenchglen, saddle-sore and sun-crazed, out of food and water, we are already scheming ways to tweak the route to minimize tedium and maximize payoff. It leads to even bigger questions about the nature of challenges such as this one. Why do we choose to go on adventures? Is there inherent value in challenge, or must there be some payoff? There’s struggle that seems to have some intrinsic value for the novelty, the scenic rewards, the story factor. And there’s struggle that seems utterly pointless when divorced from its surroundings. Why was Big Sand Gap, the uphill struggle against a sand dune, a memorable achievement, when the subsequent 100 miles of gravel grinding through saltbush scrub was not? I suppose Sisyphus was stoked the first time he got to the top of the hill too. Maybe everything does happen for a reason, after all.
Except the wind. Fuck the wind.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
HOALE WANT BEEF ?
How About a Nice Hawaiian Punch?
WORDS Mike Harrelson
PEERING INTO life’s rearview mirror, I reflect on the first time I got my ass properly kicked. Just a wee, 55-pound, freckle-faced lad of eight, our family had recently relocated from Swampwater, Virginia (queue the banjo music) to Kailua on the windward side of O’ahu (queue Don Ho’s period hit, Tiny Bubbles). Island style paradise, coconut palms swaying gently on the hula breeze –– or so I imagined –– yet living in primal fear of the next keiki o ka ‘aina beat down. Fearful to step one barefoot out of our flowering, plumeria-scented yard, lest I get throttled, again. The Vietnam War was going gangbusters in 1966, and Dad had recently been drafted into the U.S. Army. Despite being a 30-year old neurologist, fresh out of residency, his orders directed him –– and hence our hayseed clan –– to the aloha nui nui shores of Hawai’i. Here he could help tend & mend young soldiers returning from Nam whose nervous systems had been scrambled by Agent Orange or other brain-altering disorders. 5000 miles from our hillbilly home, we bumped down on the tarmac in Honolulu. Rubbernecking out our fuselage porthole at the cerulean combers rolling in on the nearby sands of Waikiki. Hawaii became the 50th State in 1959, one year after I was born. It never occurred to me –– as a shiny-faced white boy from the mainland –– there might be some residual animosity relating to our country’s imperialist acquisition. Having forced Queen Lili’uokalani off her rightful throne way back in the late 1800s, as a result of all those subsequent decades
of geo-strategic-war-machine wrangling, pineapple plantation politics, and you-too-will-eat-SPAM® assimilation, we’d stirred yet another bee’s nest of cultural consternation and racial angst. These ingredients catalyzed during the ‘60s and played out like predictable clockwork during recess at Kainalu Elementary School. “Gonna broke yo’ face, haole.” Ah, but like so many survival skills, I soon learned to duck a punch and get in an occasional jab. I learned to wrestle bigger guys to the ground where I could more effectively fight dirty. I learned to talk shit and sometimes avert a skirmish with mere words. Slowly, I got initiated into the neighborhood fight club, one bloody nose and/or puffy lip at a time. Toughening up by the day, they started to accept me. As my pale skin transitioned from “shark bait” white to a more caramelized, local-boy hue, I began to understand and adopt a few key pidgin phrases (like, beef ain’t cow meat, it’s a taunting invitation to fistfight). Before long I’d significantly
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
expanded my vocabulary of cuss words, smoked my first 25-cent joint, and hooked up with my first pre-pubescent girlfriend, Carolyn. All I needed to do then was acquire my first surfboard (thanks Mom, Dad, and Granddaddy Clyde), and I was soon one of da boyz. Carrying that 27 lb, red & white log atop my now fully bleached towhead made me appear more akin to the denizen delinquents who’d become my best friends. But, then came the last day of the Hawaiian Public School year. Dubbed “Kill Haole Day,” this was an unofficially sanctioned, special holiday in the land of aloha. It served as a spirited kick-off to summer. Seemingly accepted, if not embraced by parents, teachers, and school administrators alike, this was long before anti-bullying
campaigns came into vogue some thirty years later. This was a day for all of us Caucasian kids to be on extra high alert. Watch your backside. Know a back-alley shortcut home. Be ready to run. Carry a knife? Ever since navigating those formative “Kill Haole Days,” I’ve had much greater empathy for those in the minority, those who are preyed upon, those who live with a steady drip of fear. Sadly, those realities weren’t just relegated to my blip of experience in
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
the ‘60s and have rekindled with wildfire vengeance in recent years. We must all carry a bucket of water to douse it. Despite the character-building indoctrination, my love affair with Hawai’i –– and all things Hawai’ian –– lives on to this day. Having weathered that childhood school of hard knocks so many moons ago, it’s the Islands’ yellow ginger perfume, slide guitar rhythms, Polynesian melting pot, and tribal nuance of aloha that will keep me forever smitten, brah.
611 EAST MAIN • BOZEMAN, MONTANA
M O N TA N A A L E W O R K S . C O M
LIFE IS LIKE BEER,
for best results, Chill.
Renee, somewhere in the Montana high country. May 2021. Photo by Isaac.
Radical Vulnerability and the Power of Being Broken The story behind the Story of Torn. WORDS Max Lowe
BEING VULNERABLE
Max Lowe | Conrad Anker standing in front of Shishapangma.
AS I SLEPT SOUNDLY in my bed on the morning of October 5th 1999, a massive avalanche roared down the face of Shishapangma, an 8000 meter peak in the Tibetan Himalaya. It was there, six days before my 11th birthday and a world away from our home in Bozeman, Montana, that my father, Alex Lowe, made the final decision of his life. His partner, Conrad Anker, ran one way and Alex ran the other. Conrad survived and Alex was buried alive, lost to us all forever. Like any young boy, my dad was my hero, my role model, and my protector. Later that morning, as the news of his death reached the U.S., a family friend picked me up from school and told me my father wouldn’t be coming home. My world closed in around me. In an instant, everything changed. More than anything else, this moment has come to define my life. Conflict and resolution are at the heart of any good story. Throughout history, the stories we tell always seem to involve a protagonist going up against a monster of some kind, an undefined darkness, an insurmountable challenge, or a foe beyond reckoning. This, at its core, is a most human trait; to identify and then overcome great odds in order to arrive at a place of enlightenment and/ or happiness. But what lies in the aftermath of this familiar story arc? What happens when the monster is slain and the happy ending attained? The story still lives on, of course, defining the protagonist and his/her every thought, feeling, and action for the rest of their days. After Alex’s death, Conrad returned home to Montana. Brought together by the shared loss of a friend and partner, he eventually went on to marry my mom and, in time, adopt me and my two younger brothers, Sam and Isaac. From the outside, this reimagined and reassembled version of family was the conclusion of our story arc. It was our “happy ending”. Or was it? As a documentary filmmaker, the process of my craft has taught me that vulnerability is the key to truthfully capturing human stories. When you turn your lens on someone and ask them to lend their deepest self to you, to discuss past trauma or insecurities, wrongdoings or shameful experiences, you have to fully be in that experience with them. You have to give yourself 100% to that relationship so that your subject can trust you and feel supported enough to let go and share. Learning this has helped my storytelling progress more than anything else. No longer
vulnerability is the key to TRUTHFULLY capturing human stories do I let my ego drive, looking for things that I think are important or interesting. Instead, I have learned to lean into my empathy for the people, wild places, animals, and experiences that are central to my films and let that lead my lens. The results have been transformative. It is through this perspective shift in my story telling that I have come to understand that our approach to struggle, whether personal or collective, often comes down to the balance between the ego and vulnerability. Certainly, our sense of self can help us achieve great things. Often, our ego gives us permission to believe in ourselves and achieve the impossible. But it can also trap us within our own story, obscuring our ability to see our weaknesses and stunting our ability to own our faults. While a deep commitment to empathy and vulnerability allows us to better see our impacts on the world and the people we share it with, and, perhaps most importantly, it gives us a more complete and real sense of ourselves. It’s like those cutouts we used to make of ourselves in grade school, our ego being the little figure we cut out of the paper to represent ourself and our empathy being the rest of the paper we are cut from. Both are fundamental to defining who we are as an individual. However, any attempt
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Conrad Anker and Alex Lowe
at balancing the two can feel like an impossible reconciliation –– like you are losing ourself in the process. In late April of 2016, just before sunrise on an otherwise unremarkable early spring day, my life once again went through an irreversible change thanks to news from Shishapangma. My mother called home from the other side of the world where she was traveling with my step dad, Conrad. They were in Nepal, and in a voice laden with emotion, she told me that climbers had just discovered two bodies melted from the glacier below the peak on Shishapangma. They believed that one of them was my father. My mind raced as I tried to process what this meant, and emotions that had long sat dormant in me surged up from the depths. A story from my past, one that had shaped me more than any other, suddenly came rushing back to the forefront of my life. The story was still unfolding. The outcome was still up in the air. My family and I decided that there was only one way to face our past: together. We would travel to Tibet together and bring Alex home some 17 years after he left. It was a beautiful idea but also fraught with both physical and emotional challenges. My whole family, each of us in our own way, was reeling from the news that Alex had returned from the void and come back into our lives in this very real way. It was not going to be an easy trip. I sat with a mentor before we left and talked a little about my hopes and fears about the journey. He suggested that I consider using
I sat unable to go any further towards Alex’s last resting place. Instead, I turned the camera on myself and spoke my feelings: my truth, my fear, and my pain. my storytelling skills and tools as a filmmaker to explore my own story. He suggested that I should document my family’s trip to Tibet just in case I ever wanted to tell that story of grief, trauma and love. He suggested vulnerability. And, after some discourse with my family, that is exactly what I decided to do. It’s hard for me to remember most of the trip –– my mind was often too busy grappling with the unsettling normalcy of traveling along the same path that Alex, Conrad, and their team took leading up to Alex’s death nearly two decades before. It was a brutal back and forth in my head; observing the stress and grief of my family members as we got closer to the mountain, coping with my own version of those same feelings, and then having my imagination run wild with the thought of seeing him again. Alex, my long lost hero, once again in the flesh, or at least what remained. As we approached the base of Shishapangma, a peak that had been in my nightmares as a child, I filmed the story –– my story –– unfolding all around me. This mountain was the monster that had destroyed life as I knew it as an 11 year old and had thrown me down an unplanned path. I was powerless in its presence. As Conrad went ahead with the rest of our recovery team, I sat unable to go any further towards Alex’s last resting place. Instead, I turned the camera on myself and spoke my feelings: my truth, my fear, and my pain. What followed was one of the hardest and most important 24 hour periods I will ever experience, the sum total of it far beyond the description of words. Facing Alex’s remains, finally putting
Young Max in the Mountains
LEFT: A recent shot of Max. RIGHT: Conrad and Alex. BELOW: Alex with Baby Max. Alex Lowe holding a photo of his boys.
I decided right then and there to look inward and make a movie about my story. It became the only path possible for me to process all the big and impossible things. him to rest on a funeral pyre, and then, surrounded by family, sending him skyward. Returning him back into the mountains that brought him so much joy in life –– the same mountains that provided both the backbone and the end to his story –– it was a day that I never saw coming.
lem solving. Up until then, I hadn’t thought much about the broader implications of my family’s trip to Tibet. I hadn’t considered what that story had meant for MY story. Right up until I stepped on stage in front of 100 strangers, I had no idea what power existed in letting myself be vulnerable. I told my story that night without fear, unAt first, I processed this monumental leashing my insecurities, my trauma, experience the only way I knew; by liv- and my weakness. I broke into tears, ing it and then turning the page. The unable to control what I had stumbled goal was to be strong, support my fam- into. Walking off that stage, though, I ily, and to simply get on with life. Sure, knew something incredibly important I was ignoring the lessons about em- had happened. I knew I was different pathy that I had so dearly learned by as a result of it. It was a potent and being a storyteller, but I was doing my strange sense of enlightenment: I had best to be anything but vulnerable. I spoken my truest truth, and as a result, was denying myself my own truth. It I had found a sense of peace I had preseemed like the right thing to do. viously never known. By being honest about my weakness, I had found a new The following year, in September of strength. I decided right then and there 2017, a friend asked me to speak about to look inward and make a movie about the experience at the HATCH Summit, my story. It became the only path posan annual gathering in Montana dedi- sible for me to process all the big and cated to ideas, innovation, and prob- impossible things.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
It has now been more than five years since I set off down the path of making TORN. While finishing this film, I have pushed into parts of my being that I never knew existed. I have experienced emotional release I never would have been able to attain under any other circumstances. It was, of course, a difficult process, filled with self-doubt and grief. Why was I purposely bringing this pain back out into the light for me and those I love most? Why was I doing this? Why was I telling this story? My answer to myself kept going back to that fateful night on stage at HATCH and my utter vulnerability. I had witnessed not only the power of my vulnerability to supercharge my narrative and make it more relatable and inspiring to the audience, but I had also seen what it could do for me. It gave me access to parts of myself that I had never been privy to before. It gave me permission to tell myself the truth. Under it all is an idea, an idea that we must clean our wounds and treat them no matter how gory or awful they seem. Otherwise, we can never truly heal. In many ways, choosing to make TORN was me choosing to clean my wounds. I stepped outside of myself, set my ego aside, and tried looking at my story as just that; my story. Director Max had to partially remove his ego so he could look back on character Max and see his flaws, see his fears, and see his misgivings. I had to learn to have empathy for myself. Max the director gave Max the character the space to speak his truth. And, in the process, I finally gave myself the chance to heal.
FOLLOW MAX: @MAX.LOWE OR: @TORNFILM2021 MORE SCREENINGS COMING SOON AS PART OF A NATIONWIDE THEATRICAL RELEASE IN NOV/DECEMBER ‘21 films.nationalgeographic.com/torn
Max Lowe | Left: Site where Alex’s body was found below Shishapangma.
hipstersofbozeman
Question and Answer
hipstersofbozeman “I’m a purist, like if you’re doing the crossword on an phone or tablet it’s just not the same. Pen and paper or NOTHING! Man thanks again, I really appreciate you blading all the way out here with your camp stove. This’ll be my first home-cooked meal in months, I’ve been living off of expired Kind bars and room temp kombucha since the pandemic hit back in March.”
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Q + A with @hipstersofbozeman
INTERVIEW Kristopher Drummond
OF ALL THE STALWARTS OF BOZEMAN’S cultural landscape, I feel like I am speaking for many of us when I say @hipstersofbozeman is one of the dearest, offering a glimpse into the world of Bozeman hipsterism that allures and perplexes, offering catharsis and humor as we contend with our city’s (it’s a microcity, okay?) ongoing identity crisis. I’m a millennial, which I thought meant hip, but through following @hipstersofbozeman, I have begun to accept that my window for understanding or embodying hipness may be closed, and that actually, I never got there. Bitter pill that may be, I have enjoyed living vicariously through @hipstersofbozeman, peering voyeur-like into the many expressions of this elusive subculture. As a writer, I particularly enjoy the cleverness of the captions, and I wanted to pick the brain –– or brains –– of the still-mysterious account owner(s). What I learned through their responses is that I’m not even hip enough to ask relevant questions, and I don’t know what Blundstones are. That said, I’m writing this over a clove cigarette, and I hope that still counts for something.
How did Hipsters of Bozeman begin? Were you originally the one taking all the pictures? It started out in the basement of a coffee shop; just a couple kids drinking cheap beer and spitballing ideas for an open mic stand-up night. Legend has it the OG admin got kicked out of the photo program because of this page, but yeah, they totally took their own pictures. We’re fully crowdsourced for content now, and I even have a couple of interns writing captions and running PR. Without giving away any identifying details, please give us an honest appraisal of your hipster, or hipster-adjacent qualities. I have a septum piercing and I’m picky about my coffee but I carabiner my keys to my belt loops just like everyone else. I don’t even think I’m that hipster –– I’m just a Scorpio with a penchant for trends and people watching. You’ve been at this for almost four years. What changes have you noticed in Bozeman’s Hipsters? I think we’ve grown with the changes so it’s hard to notice from the inside, but the community really took a hit when my BSF moved to Boise for barber college. That, and the obvious plague on a lot of mountain towns right now, which is rich people cosplaying as dirtbags and wrecking our housing market. I’m not mad about it, just disappointed!
Fill in the blank: in the month of November, I refrain from _____________. If you’re participating in no nut or no shave November, you’re an incel. No doubt in my mind. Maybe you and I should collab on starting a “nothing-but-nut November” where people ditch dairy for nut-based milks. Honestly though, we should all be drinking hemp milk, it’s considerably better for the environment and you’ll be able to start lying to people about how you “can’t even taste the difference.” In your professional opinion, what is more hipster: longboard with no shoes or roller blades? Why? Hipsterism’s fluid, like it probably depends on what the person’s wearing or doing. To me, neither of those are objectively that hipster on their own; it’s when you start contrasting and juxtaposing that it gets interesting. Like, okay, let’s get a longboard bro and put him in a Canadian tux with a cowboy hat and give him knuckle tats. Maybe he’s carrying a bottle of gin and he’s wearing his partner’s resin fruit earrings? IDK; the weirder you get, the better.
“ Not that I’m endorsing smoking to look cool or whatever, but you meet a lotta interesting people out there. Corporate sellouts, sushi rollers, film bros, bands… we’re all family in the alley.” What kind of cigarettes do you (or would you) smoke? Or are you more of a vaper? I’m a social smoker. Usually, I just bum cigarettes in the alley behind the Crystal so I’m not too picky. Honestly, I don’t even care about cigarettes that much, I just like the smoking area vibe. Not that I’m endorsing smoking to look cool or whatever, but you meet a lotta interesting people out there. Corporate sellouts, sushi rollers, film bros, bands… we’re all family in the alley. Why do you stay anonymous? Best of both worlds, baby. Plus it’s fun eavesdropping on people talking about the page — how funny or unfunny they think it is, who they think runs it, etc. One time I was talking to this guy at the Legion and he tried to convince my friend that he ran Hipsters of Bozeman so she’d go home with him.
Describe the tightest pair of pants you own. My mom knit me a pair of pants in the third grade and I’ve been rocking ‘em since. They’ve definitely got more of a bicycle short vibe now but they’re probably my most complimented piece. Wait, wait, does this feel like an appropriate question to you? Like, what if a woman ran this page? Tell me about the tightest pants you own, Kris. How often do you feature yourself or your friends? Often enough. Here’s an Easter egg for you — every time Blundstones are mentioned in a caption, we’re featuring a picture of me or a friend. Then any time we mention herbal smokes or a certain beach-side local brewery, the picture’s someone we hate. Not hate, that’s a strong word, but it’ll be someone from a rival cult and those guys are always trying to commandeer the clearing we use for full-moon scenes. What’s the rough percentage of submissions you actually publish? If I had to get scientific with you, I’d say around 6.9%. We get a lot of bad submissions, plus I’m always getting pictures of the same ten people who’ve asked not to be on the page. And way too many videos of yo-yo vape guy; lately he’s been all about doing shirtless calisthenics downtown. In what ways have you been influenced by, or become more or less hipster, through your scientific studies of the hipster demographic? Dan put me on Solovairs and my taste in music has gotten significantly better but that’s about it. This feels like a question someone would ask on a Tinder date in a Hallmark movie, right? I mean, I’ve also accumulated a bitchin’ collection of vintage glassware, but, TBH, that’s more just something I wanna brag about than it is a product of my “Studies.” Be honest. Do you drink kombucha? No, I’m a kefir man. I used to really vibe with kombucha, but once people started opening kombucha bars and brewing “hard booch” it lost its charm. Like, how millennial is that? Let’s take an ancient Chinese health drink, pump it full of sugar and serve it to guys in Red Wings. Not even Red Wings for work wear, just ‘cause they complement their mustaches well or whatever. Blitzen Trapper or Alt J? Why? I feel like you’ve been sitting on these questions for a while: neither. Honestly, to get a solid foundation in modern indie music, you need to start listening to Aussie artists. They’ve got that garage sound that you can’t really get anymore with American artists, like everything’s too processed here. Our food, our music, our cosmetics… I don’t even drink American beers unless they’re on someone else’s tab. What would you like to say to the Bozeman hipster community? Never stop trying so hard. Also, thanks for driving up the price of Blundstones — you guys suck.
FINDING THE FUN
What’s more hip than hipster? How ‘bout snowboarder Forrest Shearer charging into the 3rd decade of the 21st century atop an all-electric motorcycle, while wearing a monochromatic one-piece, with his Jones Splitboard strapped to his back. Shit’s Clean! Dan Krauss / dankhaus.productions
Meet the Balls
A Lesson in Accidental Mentorship INTRO Travis Andersen
Meet the Balls. My friends, Lonnie and Mary. Their romance began at Alta, UT in 1966 but they have been living the dream together here in Montana ever since. When I met them, in the early 1990s, they were living at the base of Bridger Bowl, skiing every day, and running a business called Montana Powder Guides. I was a young ski bum going to school at Montana State University and trying to figure out how to make a life I loved. Early on, I met Lonnie and Mary and was instantly inspired. They were ridge hippies that seemed to have it all figured out. Besides being great skiers, Lonnie was a photographer, always willing to hook up and shoot with whatever new, hot shot skiers might be cycling through their time in Bozeman. Mary was his trusty ski-partner, #1 ski model, and all-around badass mother of two.
I was one of those kids cycling through town; skiing more than schooling and hungry to learn all the ins and outs of shredding the Ridge at Bridger. The Balls became my ski heroes and, in time, my mentors of sorts. Basically, I wanted to be just like them; living to ski and skiing to live. Lonnie always had his camera strapped to his chest and that really inspired me to shoot more pictures, and always have my camera ready. By the late 1990s, we would occasionally stop by the Ball’s house to check out Lonnie’s shots on the light table. Sometimes I’d bring a few of my own to show. We were still shooting slide film at that time, so it took several days to find out what was captured during the last storm cycle. It was always fun to compare shots, tell stories, give a critique or two, and share a few laughs.
Whether they knew it or not at the time, the Ball’s were helping me become a better photographer. The more I got to know Lonnie, the more I began to appreciate his dedication to a life spent skiing. It was a balancing act between photography, guiding, family, and still being a committed skier. I was envisioning a similar path for myself. Around 1996, a girl I’d been dating for a couple years was nearing the end of her time at Montana State and wanted to move south. I think she was talking about Phoenix, AZ. Naturally, that didn’t sit well with me. We were having a heated discussion about it one day and she dropped a bomb, “I don’t want to end up being Mary Ball.” Wow. That really hit home. I thought it over briefly and came back confidently, “Well, I guess we’ll have to break up.” That conversation solidified things in my head. I kept going back to how inspired I was by how Lonnie had turned his ski passion into his job. He sold photos for editorial and advertising, and he ran the powder guide service. The guide service was definitely a business, but it was also helpful in making ski industry connections and, most importantly, in ensuring that Lonnie was always skiing. Those were formative times for me to have accidental mentors like Lonnie and Mary. It helped shape my future into being the ski photographer, entrepreneur and family-man I am today. (Thanks Lonnie and Mary!)
It’s been about 30 years now that I’ve known the Balls. They still live in the same house at the base of Bridger and have full grown grandkids. They maintain a passion for skiing and shooting that is just as inspiring to me today as it was when I first met them. Though they ski more at Big Sky these days, they still get out as much as they can. Lonnie loves telling stories about all the adventures they’ve shared over the years with a whole host of ski bums. The stories range from local legends like Turk, Pat Hinz, Stoneman and Dave Stergar to A-list shredders like Doug Coombs, Scot Schmidt, Craig Kelly, and many others. We were recently lucky enough to sit down with Lonnie and Mary and reminisce about the old days. We had a beer (or four) and sifted through an amazing collection of slides and photo clippings from over the years. What follows is just a fraction of the treasure we found, as well as portions from our 3-hour conversation with the Balls.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Enjoy.
STAYING STOKED
“ I was only 18 at the time but I had been working on these missile jobs out of high school, so I had this luxury car, a ‘59 Chrysler Imperial. It held the whole ski patrol and Mary – everybody.”
The Early Years
BOMB SNOW: WHERE’D YOU TWO MEET?
MARY: We met at Alta. Lonnie was on the ski patrol and I was working in the lodges.
BS: WHAT YEAR WAS THAT?
LONNIE: She was there in 64/65 and I came in 65. MARY: It was my second year at Alta when we met.
BS: COOL.
LONNIE: Yeah. It was. Beyond any doubt. Alta was one of the best years of our life. MARY: Yes. LONNIE: So when people quiz me about what my favorite ski area is or what mountain I like best, my fondest memories are at Alta. I was 18 years old and I skied every day. I never took a day off.
BS: AND WHERE WERE YOU BEFORE ALTA, LONNIE?
LONNIE: Great Falls. I was on the ski patrol at Showdown, which was King’s Hill back then. I got started as a junior patroller around 13 years old. I got really interested on the first day and never looked back....Once I made it to Alta, the big thing was that I had a car. Nobody else did. I
was only 18 at the time but I had been working on these missile jobs out of high school, so I had this luxury car, a ‘59 Chrysler Imperial. It held the whole ski patrol and Mary –– everybody. We made a lot of trips to Park City, and to downtown Salt Lake for ice cream. MARY: Ironically, I was the only one that had a camera at the time. It was a little brownie. LONNIE: She took a picture of me (pictured above) with that camera –– a stunning photograph really. It was Winter 1966/67. I am going off a jump that I have always felt is far bigger than the entry into Corbet’s. This was actually the year before [I skied] Corbet’s and she documented it. I had to marry her just to get the picture! (Laughs).
BS: ARE THOSE EARLY YEARS YOUR MOST FOND SKI MEMORIES AS WELL, MARY?
MARY: Well, that was when I learned to ski. And I also learned to ski powder.
BS: WHERE DID YOU MOVE FROM?
MARY: From Portland, Oregon.
BS: SO WHY ALTA? HOW DID THAT COME UP?
MARY: Well, my best friend was a ski racer and, for
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some reason, both of us wanted to learn how to ski powder. We heard from another friend that, if you really want to learn to ski and you really want to learn how to ski powder, you need to go to a ski area and work there. He recommended Alta so that is where we went. And Alta wanted the people that were working there in the lodges to learn how to ski. They encouraged us to be with the guests and talk to them.
BS: YEAH, KIND OF SHOW THEM AROUND A LITTLE BIT?
MARY: Even ski with them. So they gave us free ski lessons from the best instructors on the mountain. LONNIE: And so the second year Mary was there, the 18-year-old ski patrolman (me) would wait for her and take her all over the mountain. MARY: Yes. That’s true. LONNIE: Yeah. I was young. I wasn’t supposed to be there at all. Alta had never hired an 18-yearold patrolman before. When I got to Jackson Hole, it was the same way. They always wanted people to be 21 or something. But they hired patrolmen from Alta. There were three of us that switched over from Alta to Jackson Hole in 1968, the first year Jackson opened...I’ll never
forget my first trip over there. The road in, holy shit, it was an awakening... Alta was such a beautiful place. It always snowed at night and blue sky during the day. It’s a marvelous mountain and no wonder why people rate it so high. Then, we get to Jackson, and, I am not kidding you, the first 45 days in-a-row and we never saw the sun.
BS: SO YOU GUYS MOVED TO JACKSON TOGETHER?
MARY: Yup. We got married that summer after Lonnie’s first winter in Alta. LONNIE: It’s funny, there are three runs at Jackson affiliated with me but we only really lived there for a year. There is Corbet’s, obviously, and then there is Lonnie’s Chute. And then there is this thing called Flip Point, which I was doing flips off of in 1967. It’s at the end of this roadway with a chairlift there now but it’s called Flip Point.
BS: JACKSON ONLY ONE YEAR AND STRAIGHT TO BRIDGER? MARY: Yes. LONNIE: Well, it wasn’t straight to Bridger. I came to Bridger the year after but we lived in Bozeman. That was around 1969. We bought the property here [at Bridger] about 10 years later and built our house.
Stepping back further, A Defining Moment
LONNIE: When I was about 14 years-old, I had started skiing with the patrol and different things at Showdown. There were two older fellas. Or, in my mind, they were older because I was only a teenager. But, anyhow, these two guys had run into me at Showdown. I was an obnoxious kid, running around in my ski patrol jacket, but they showed me how to ski off the edges of the trail and how to ski these different places around the mountain in the powder. The following year, I went out for the high school ski team. They always had us doing all this physical stuff before we got to actually go skiing. And so one day, it was a good powder day and they had us
out there packing down the snow. I was grumbling about it when here came these two guys mystically moving through the woods. They stopped and observed me packing snow. They called me over and asked me, “Are you going to pack it or ski it for the rest of your life?” Well, I made the decision that day, I was going to ski it. I was off the ski team. From then on, I went powder skiing with those guys every time I saw them. That was like 60 some years ago. BS: SO THAT DAY YOU SAID, SEE YOU LATER SKI TEAM? LONNIE: Yup. The junior ski patrol became my new home and all the edges off to the left of it I skied heavily.
From Left: Jim Conway, Doug Coombs, Dave Wachs, Tom Jungst and Scot Schmidt
Montana Powder Guides
LONNIE: Montana Powder Guides started in about 1983 but it didn’t really get going until about 1993, when the whole “extreme skiing” thing was blossoming and snowboarding was just coming on. I don’t know how it happened but we got connected with Burton Snowboards. Pretty quickly, they became our largest account. Nearly everything they did for about 3 years as far as advertising stuff, came through Montana Powder Guides... But, basically, I never could afford insurance. We had to exclusively work for people who already had their own insurance. That was how we were able to get the OK from the U.S. Forest Service. As long as the clients were fully insured and their plan covered me, we were in business. It was a really strange little loophole but I caught onto it right away.
afford the insurance. It was crazy back then, the insurance was just sky-rocketing for everybody. Ski areas wouldn’t even let you go off jumps.
BS: THAT WAS THE WAY TO DO IT, WITHOUT HAVING LIABILITY ON YOU?
BS: SO AS LONG AS YOU WERE “SHOOTING?”
LONNIE: Right. In other words, I was just another employee of Burton or whoever the client was. I was the guide, safety officer, and avalanche forecaster. MARY: And I made sure they had all their stuff for lunches and drinks and all those kinds of things. LONNIE: But from when we started in ‘83 up to the early 1990’s, , it was pretty tough. It was a hard time economically in our country. Actually, at that time, the Force Service’s biggest concern about us was where I was going to get people to pay that type of money just to go skiing. They were more worried about how I was going to finance the business. And, of course, I could never
BS: RIGHT.
LONNIE: It was really difficult to justify buying our own insurance for the amount of time we were going out. It just wasn’t that many days a year. I came up with this saying, if we want to work we are going to have to find out how to get insured. And when I discovered that the Forest Service wouldn’t give a helicopter permit but they would give a “filming” permit that you need a helicopter permit for, well, we did that a lot, too.
BS: FILM PERMIT?
MARY: Yes, a film permit. MARY: Yep. And a lot of that was for scouting out runs to ski. LONNIE: Yeah, we were just looking. MARY: Well, we were looking. And then we had to test them.
BS: OF COURSE YOU HAD TO. WAS IT THE SAME SORT OF THING WITH THE FOREST SERVICE IN THE CRAZIES WHEN YOU DID TRIPS OUT THERE? LONNIE: Well, now, don’t turn all newspaper reporter here.
BS: HA! WE CAN PUT THIS OFF-THE-RECORD BUT, PLEASE, TELL... _______________________
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Craig Kelly & the Origins of “Launchey”Ball
LONNIE: Craig Kelly and I started riding together and became really good friends. He was so impulsive that he would show up here in Montana and say, “Okay, we need a helicopter tomorrow.” Of course, you can’t just get a helicopter tomorrow. This was the 1980s and 90s in Bozeman. Somehow, though, I managed. Twice I got Minuteman over in Missoula to fly over and take us to ski in the Crazies... About the closest I ever came to losing anybody was with Craig and Matt Goodwill. They had rented two snowmobiles, we had two of mine, and we did a snowmobile adventure into the deepest part of the Crazies. The best photos I got on that one are actually of Matt. They were heavily published at the time. A huge jump shot. MARY: Is that the one where he came back to the house and I said, “Oh God, what happened?” LONNIE: He had a good black and blue eye. We were ten miles in the backcountry with snowmobiles and, if you got hurt, what are we going to do? It was at least two hours by sled just to get back to the cars but they were both pretty crazy. Craig liked to show up and get the helicopter wherever we could get it. Eventually, Jake [Burton] and Craig appointed me as a member of Burton’s snowboard team, although I’ve never snowboarded a day in my life. MARY: And then you became Launchey.
“Craig was the only real hardcore snowboarder in the bunch. All the rest of them were kind of jibbers as far as I was concerned.”
BS: LAUNCHEY?
MARY: Yes. Launchey. LONNIE: It all came about during one of the Burton trips. Craig was right there with the whole team, but he was the only real hardcore snowboarder in the bunch. All the rest of them were kind of jibbers as far as I was concerned. So we are up checking out a jump and Craig is looking over the thing and I tell him, “You know, this is a pretty good looking jump. You could do it.” Then Dennis Jensen, the team manager, says, “Now don’t you be pimping Craig.” I said I wasn’t pimping him and then Dennis asked, “Would you jump that?” I told him yes and my son-in-law, Packy, was right there when I did. Anyways, Craig goes off and actually does it twice. Then Packy looks at me and I go, “Yeah, okay. I have to go jump this thing too.” Well, both places where Craig landed, I jumped 10 yards further than he did. It was a miraculous event. I went way down in the snow on the landing and came up and just stopped. Pulled right up in front of the whole team and that was it. From then on I was “Launchey”.
BS: DID CRAIG COIN THAT NAME FOR YOU?
LONNIE: That was the name they picked. I did not pick it, but I did use it for quite a few years as my email address even. ____________________
Reminisce
BS: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT SKIING?
MARY: My favorite thing about skiing is you can do whatever you want. You can ski whatever run you want. You can turn where you want. It is so freeing.
BS: WHAT ABOUT YOU LONNIE?
LONNIE: There is a book that Hannes Schneider wrote called Flight Without Wings, and all through my life I have felt that skiing is flight without wings. Even now, it’s the same. I have walking difficulties nowadays and other stuff. It can feel like I am a bird in a cage. When I go out and put my skis down on the snow, I still feel like a bird in the cage. But when I step into my bindings and I hear that click-click, it is like somebody just opened the door to my cage. I can fly again and be free. I don’t have the physical freedoms I once had but skiing helps bring it back. I can fly and float...And I do. I ski very well and I’m proud of it. I know I shouldn’t be able to ski like this when I walk like I do these days, all bent over and everything. I joke that, “I even look fast in the lift line.” I mean, I have this little tuck going all the time now. But when I am back on skis, I truly feel the flight. It’s freedom for me.
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BSL: WHAT ABOUT TAKING PHOTOS? DO YOU HAVE A REASON WHY YOU LOVE THAT SO MUCH?
LONNIE: Well, I’ve been skiing for 60 years and I’ve been a photographer for over 50. I’ve always considered my work with the camera to be that of a chronologist. Kind of like a newspaper photographer, I always wanted to document the sport in a way that told a story and got people interested. Warren Miller’s filmmaking style was always about the other person and that is how I’ve always felt as well. It’s not about me, it’s about whoever I am riding with or taking pictures of or filming with. I have always wanted to capture the excitement of it all. I was very fortunate to be able to ski with so many talented riders and to be among such a crowd. Trying to share some of that excitement is what I’ve always been attracted to. I think Greg Stump put it best years ago when he was talking abut being in the mountains with so many talented skiers and snowboarders, “This is like shooting fish in a barrel isn’t it?” And it was. It was like shooting fish in a barrel and I’ve recorded my life as such. Want to read more? The entire interview and a larger gallery of photos is up at: bombsnow.com.
TALKING ADVENTURE, FEAR, AND THE POWER OF DREAMS WITH CAPTAIN LIZ CLARK INTERVIEW Ethan A. Stewart
CHASING YOUR DREAMS
We Are, Perhaps, Never Closer To Our Ancestors
than when we are alone in the wilderness. The swirl of uncertainty, vulnerability, and uncompromising nature is a heady brew that quickly reduces us to our human core. Be it land or sea, life priorities get reordered in the wilderness. It is a tonic for too much ego and a building block for healthy self-esteem. It nourishes and frustrates. Invites and denies. Softens your heart and hardens your muscles. And, for those who adventure in this way enough, it often delivers a hard won type of personal wisdom; one that is equal parts contentment and conviction. Indeed, the wilderness teaches us about who we are. CAPTAIN LIZ CLARK has been in pursuit of these timeless lessons
since 2005. A former NCAA surfing champion with a degree in Environmental Studies, Clark was making drinks at a popular watering hole in the Santa Barbara harbor along the coast of central California when fate intervened and brought a Cal-40 sailboat into her life just before her 25th birthday. A lifelong sailor, Clark had rose-hued daydreams about one day circumnavigating the globe by sail and scoring world-class waves along the way. The boat, which she promptly named Swell, suddenly made those dreams markedly more attainable. Months of elbow grease and countless hours of help from friends got Swell prepared for the adventure of a lifetime. Ready or not, Clark shoved off from the tranquil waters of Santa
Barbara in October of 2005 and headed out into the wilds of the Pacific Ocean all by her lonesome. In the nearly two decades since, Captain Clark hasn’t stopped navigating the stormy seas that ensue when you decide to pursue a dream with every inch of your being. It has been a masterclass in both brutality and beauty for the ripping regular-footer; much of it movingly depicted in her critically acclaimed memoir, Swell; A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening. But the good captain isn’t done yet. Far from it, actually. Currently anchored in Tahiti, Clark continues to pursue her dream and follow a path all her own. Bomb Snow connected with Liz recently to find out more about her ongoing adventures and talk a bit about what it takes to live life to the fullest.
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ETHAN STEWART: Been a while. How the heck are you, sister? Where are you these days? LIZ CLARK: Ethan!! So good to catch up! I’m doing alright, thank you. I’m in Tahiti. ES: You have been there for a while now, right? Is Tahiti home now? Or is Swell home? Or is California still home? How do you think about home these days? LC: I am currently living on land in Tahiti, with Swell moored out in front of my house. I spend the night on her often and do some local sailing, but it’s been a really nice change having a place on land after more than 10 years living full-time aboard Swell. I feel very at home in the South Pacific now, but California will always be home too. Home is wherever I feel good. ES: IT’S BEEN 16 years since you first shoved off
from Santa Barbara Harbor. Crazy! I know this is a big question, but how has your thinking about your journey changed over the years? I know it started as a hopeful circumnavigation of the world with some surfing along the way. Obviously, that has shifted over the years as you have grown and your horizon line has expanded. CAN YOU Talk a little bit about that evolution?
LC: About a year or so after sailing south from California, it became really clear that to succeed at voyaging like I was — often alone and vulnerable in so many ways — I had to open up to the spiritual side of the adventure I was on, look within, and work on becoming a better human. Of course, finding good uncrowded surf was always the principle mission, but I realized that my inner evolution was much more important than how far I sailed. Plus, the Pacific offered so much of what I was looking for in terms of surf and lifestyle, and the more time I spent in the Pacific islands, the more important it became to devote myself to environmental advocacy and raising awareness about climate change. But hey, it’s not too late to keep sailing if and when the spirit moves me! ES: Certainly, your adventure has not been without major anxiety. I mean, just reading your book can give someone a few panic attacks along the way. How do you deal with things like self-doubt and fear? LC: I was lucky to have parents that instilled in me a sense of confidence that I will always be able to affront what comes my way. I also had the blind courage that a dreamer
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often has to pursue their dream at whatever cost, I think that helped me look at the positive aspects, versus all the things that could go wrong. But, when the fear was real, my strategy was always to just focus on the immediate thing that I needed to do. Move mindfully but take action, and not let the fear paralyze me. After those scary moments would pass, I often couldn’t believe that I’d made it through, but, when there is no other choice, we always manage to find more strength and courage than we think we have.
ES: Where do you think that capability comes from? Is it something you can develop along the way or are you born with it? LC: I think my voyaging capabilities blossomed from my great desire to live out my sailing dream… If I hadn’t wanted the dream so badly, I doubt I would have been willing to face the fear and uncertainty that are a constant part of a life at sea.
I think everyone is capable of much more than they realize. And I definitely think courage is something we can develop with practice. When you love something enough, you find the courage and eventually push past your perceived limits. That’s what’s so beautiful about passions and dreams, they challenge us to expand — mentally, physically, and emotionally. ES: Be it sailing related or otherwise, what are the challenges in life that you are most proud of overcoming? What do you hope to do better next time around? LC: I’m most proud of learning to love and accept myself for who I am, my faults and shortcomings included. I’m also proud of my sailing accomplishments and that I chose to steer my voyage from the heart, instead of choosing to sail farther and faster because that’s what my sponsors or social media followers wanted. Next time around… I might do better at collaborating with local advocacy groups along the way. I feel like I spent so much time fixing the boat! ES: You are an eloquent and outspoken champion of the natural world. It is clear you are passionate about our collective need to work with the environment instead of against it. Tell me a little about your environmental philosophies. How have your adventures changed or sharpened these views? LC: I resonate deeply with Indigenous philosophies that view humans as a vital part of the natural world, and that it is our greatest responsibility to take care of the Earth that keeps us breathing, nourished, clothed, sheltered, and everything else. In today’s world, it isn’t always easy to see clearly how to uphold that responsibility, but I am dedicated to learning and doing my best to give back and find reciprocity with the planet, and show respect for all life. I think these ideas always resonated with me, but my years of living close to nature aboard Swell definitely gave me a chance to develop my own relationship with Mama Earth, intensifying my love for her and dedication to helping humanity rediscover our role as stewards and caretakers of the planet. ES: Is there a price to pay for pursuing your dreams? LC: It depends on how you look at it. I don’t have a 401k or the same kinds of security that others might have at my age having taken a more conventional path, but I have security of heart, from the relationship I’ve developed with the Universe while pursuing this dream. I have peace of mind knowing that I have no regrets. I believe that our dreams have a purpose, and that pursuing them will always lead us somewhere we are supposed to be.
ES: You are clearly an inspiration for so many.
But who or what inspires you?
LC: “What” inspires me is nature, in all its glorious forms! A few of my biggest “whos” are Jane Goodall, St. Theresa, Harriet Tubman, Greta Thunberg, Patrisse Cullors, Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Ascended Masters! But I’m also inspired by the courage and kindness of the everyday people I encounter along the way. ES: I know you have a soft spot in your heart for the mountains. What do you see as the biggest similarities between mountain time and ocean time? What are the biggest differences? LC: I think the mountains and the ocean, and any wilderness
area really, are most similar in the way they make us feel — the awe, humility, peace, grandeur, spaciousness. As for differences, the sea is ever-changing, while the mountains are full of sacred stillness. They are perfectly yin and yang. I have had a whole lot of the ocean’s perpetual motion in my years, so during my precious time in the mountains I always feel grateful for that magical silence and sense of stability to help balance and ground me.
ES: The theme for this issue of BombSnow is “Embrace the challenge”. Tell me, Captain Clark, how do you keep finding a way to meet the challenges of your day? And what is your advice for all of us as we encounter major headwinds in our own life, be it individual things like achieving goals or big picture things like trying to thrive on a rapidly changing planet? LC: Hmmm… I’ve been going through some really hard stuff lately,
and some days I don’t feel like I’m meeting the challenges at all. But I realize that I just need to be okay with that right now, and see it as part of a bigger process. When it’s possible to take some time alone in nature, it always helps me find more perspective, recenter, and find gratitude again. There are always going to be new challenges that force us to dig deeper and persevere even when we think we’re tapped out. I find the will to keep going because of the love I have for others and for the Earth. It forces us to experience our humanity and find a way to laugh with the Universe even when it feels like the cosmic joke is on us. We can either use the challenges to stay flexible, humble, open, and connected to others through our vulnerability… Or we can let our challenges make us bitter, closed, angry, hopeless, and more isolated. It’s much easier to choose the latter, but, in my experience, when we can find acceptance and push through whatever storm we are riding out, something wonderful is usually waiting on the other side.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
POWDER AND PURCHASE OF
Travis Andersen / Skier: Marcus Fuller
BUYING LESS
thoUghts ON c o n s u m i n g consciously this ski season
WORDS Ethan A. Stewart
HOT TAKE #17 FROM AN EXTRA SMOKY SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAIN WEST: activists won’t save us but consumers will! Our fucked up future won’t be fixed by protests, activism, or –– gasp! –– democracy. Though noble and well intentioned, these things just don’t have the same fire power as the all mighty dollar. Altruism doesn’t shape a century quite like a collective addiction to commodifying the world and consuming every last inch of it. Indeed, if the future is to be saved, it will be done by the way we spend our money. And save it we must. Or, to be more accurate, if we hope to preserve the fragile balance of things on this planet that enable Homo sapiens to thrive, we have to make some big ass changes. 2021 has been a masterclass in how imbalanced and unpredictable our natural world has become. On all 7 continents, long holding climate patterns have increasingly given way to chaos. Record-breaking surges of hot and cold, dry and wet. Flooding, fire, feast, and famine. Powerful undulations of the unknown are the new normal no matter where you look. Even here, in our little corner of southwest Montana, the evidence has been hard to miss. But this isn’t another doom and gloom, “Holy shit, we’re F’d!”, type of environmental rant trying to shame you into being a better vegan recycler. Far from it, actually. This is a future-minded call to capitalistic arms. It’s an invocation to all of you snow horny, mountain degenerates who worship at the alter of stoke. Now is the time we start putting our money where our passion is. A dollar spent is
an opportunity to support a company or brand, business or community group that prioritizes planet over profit. We are all endlessly bummed when those weird –– yet increasing –– mid-winter thaw cycles hit and the snowpack melts out for 48 hours. It is time to align those feelings with our spending habits. Our consumption can and must reflect our environmental values. If we want our kids and grandkids to grow up knowing the deep joy of a deep winter day, we can no longer choose cognitive dissonance when opening our wallets. We must prioritize regenerative materials, sustainable products, and non-extractive business practices. Every dollar spent represents a vote for a better tomorrow. So, as the hype machine begins to crank for the 2021/22 ski season, Bomb Snow presents to you our best tips for consuming a little more consciously this year. None of these are perfect solutions but they all represent big, important steps in the right direction. We hope you agree.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
the things we ride AT THIS POINT, it seems nearly every ski
or snowboard manufacturer is trying to clean up their environmental act in some capacity. And rightfully so, as making metal-edged, polyurethane planks to slide on the snow is a woefully dirty business. But the industry is also actively being flooded by a tsunami of greenwashing. Lots of big claims and heady advertising angles but not much actual innovation. Luckily, this isn’t the case with everyone. Take, for example, WNDR Alpine. For our money, there isn’t anyone doing it better in the ski space right now. It was only a few years ago that independent ski brand pioneer Matt Sterbenz walked away from 4FRNT in search of something more. When he landed at Bay Area-based bio-tech start up, Checkerspot, it seemed odd. But Checkerspot is a 21st Century materials company doing pioneering work with algae and other natural substances. Sterbenz,
it turns out, was in search of a new, more eco-groovy way to make high performing skis. And, since WNDR first launched in 2019, that is exactly what is happening. As crazy as it sounds, the WNDR crew is using GMO microalgae to make skis that rip! It is legitimate sci-fi sorcery and it’s only getting started. “Our goal is to democratize environmentally responsible equipment for all.” sums up Xan Marshland, WNDR’s head of brand development, “We aren’t stopping with just skis.” Based in Salt Lake City and already operating as a B-Corp, WNDR is focused on the intersection of human-powered backcountry travel and source materials derived from nature. Their first ski, the Intention 110, was 28% bio-based when it was released three years ago. Their newest ski for this season, the Reason 120, is 48% bio-based. Next on their list of material innovations
is a mounting plate made from ski building plastic scraps and getting more recycled and bio-based materials in the tailblock. And, for you sideways standing knuckle draggers, they recently brought Alex “Froth Puppy” Andrews on board to help them develop a proper split setup for the WNDR line. Perhaps best of all, though, is the fact that WNDR wants to spread the innovative love to others. They aren’t looking to keep their technology exclusive, they hope to share it with competitors. Sort of like how all serious outerwear makers uses GoreTex in their line, WNDR is hoping that some of their bio-based materials can become industry standards for other ski and snowboard manufacturers. “Look, one small boutique ski brand isn’t going to move the needle.” explains Xan, “But if we can convince the industry at large to use less petroleum, then we are really starting to get somewhere.”
Above: WNDR Alpine’s crew is constantly experimenting with bio-resins. Right: Simple and stylish, matte black topsheets from Season Eqpt. Far Right: Mervin’s plastic scraps and sawdust piles.
side of things, there isn’t anyone better from an earthfirst perspective than Lib Tech. Their “Mervin Made” approach to board building (they also make surfboards, skis and drive plates for their bindings) was setting the standard for environmental stewardship in the industry long before it was cool to make such claims. Their factory in Sequim, WA is a zero hazardous waste facility that is powered by a mix of hydroelectric and wind energy. They use bio-based top sheets, water-based inks, low VOC resins, US sourced sidewalls, and no toxic solvents are used anywhere in their manufacturing processes. They even have a program that saves saw dust from their in-house wood mill to be used in local, soil building operations. It is as thorough and constantly evolving of a process as you will find in the outdoor industry today. ON THE SNOWBOARD
Another brand to note that is doing things in a progressive, big picture
way is Season Eqpt. Created by Austin Smith and Eric Pollard, Season is rooted in the belief that buying less stuff and extending the life of what we do buy is our best way to treat Mother Earth mo’bettah. Their unique line of ski and snowboard shapes reflect this philosophy with timeless outlines, simple matte black top sheets, and rugged construction. The idea is to keep the top sheets the same every year, so there is no need for the newest graphic every season. But the real magic comes with what they call their “Season Pass”. This means that any ski or snowboard they sell comes with an unlimited and free machine wax service for the life of the skis/snowboard, a complimentary tune every season, a free first binding mount, and 30% off all other repair services that may be needed over the years. These services are available at special Season affiliated shops in Denver, Portland, Seattle, Whistler, (and soon) in Salt Lake City, Hood River, and Snoqualmie Pass.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
WNDR Alpine S a lt l a k e c i t y , u t wndr-alpine.com mervin / lib tech / gnu sequim, wa www.mervin.com Season Eqpt. OREGON + SWITZERLAND seasoneqpt.com
if we can convince the industry at large to use less petroleum, then we a r e r e a l l y s ta r t i n g to get somewhere.
-xan Marshland B R A N D D E V. AT W N D R A L P I N E
W H AT W E W E A R from Patagonia and North Face to Mammut and Arc’teryx, are making jackets and shells and bibs and base-layers from a dizzying array of sustainable or, at least, less environmentally taxing materials. The options are out there and generally easy to find. Some even have giant tags inside proclaiming how many plastic bottles went into making your jacket and how many gallons of water were saved in the process. It’s all good stuff and the more we buy these sorts of products the more brands will invest in using recycled and regenerative textiles. There is no doubt that the world is improving in this regard every year and our collective purchase power is paving the way. ALL THE BIG DOGS,
However,we are all exceedingly drowning in the astronomical amount of waste and toxicity generated by the outdoor clothing industry. Certainly, choosing to buy the more “sustainable” option from Patagonia or the like is never a bad idea. Similarly, it is equally helpful using your purchase power to endorse more boutique but also higher quality, climate conscious makers like Minnesota’s Askov Finlayson, the world’s first “climate positive” outerwear company, or Beringia,
a Montana/Japan based company that is creating some of the most innovative and sustainable merino baselayers on the market today. Making choices like this with our hard earned dollars matters when living in a world dominated by profit-at-all-costs corporations. Slowly but surely, it helps course correct the whole industry towards a more sustainable future. But the real change comes when we shift our view of what we actually need to be skiers or snowboarders. We should all be taking a cue from the ski bums of yore; more shopping at yard sales, swap meets, and second-hand stores. More duct tape, more thrift, and less new sh#t. It is our obsession with new gear that is perhaps the most flagrant of our earth-damning habits. Programs like Patagonia’s WornWear are a solid model for the future and an antidote to this nasty need for “new”. Not only does WornWear help close the loop on manufacturing by keeping our old jackets and such out of the landfill but it also empowers us to mend our gear and fix our favorite belongings, rather than replacing them. This is a mindset we all could use a little more of in our lives.
Askov Finlayson M i n n e a p o l i s , M i n n e s o ta u s a askovfinlayson.com Beringia M o n ta n a - T o k y o beringia.world P a ta g o n i a W o r n W e a r Ventura, CAlifornia usa w o r n w e a r . p a ta g o n i a . c o m
Making choices like this with our hard earned dollars matters when living in a world dominated by p r o f i t- a t- a l l- c o s t s corporations.
Above: Beringia’s regenerative wool is hand selected from reclaimed garments and put into production of all-new textiles. No chemical dyes or chlorinated bullshit either.
HOW WE GET THERE making turns in your backyard, chances are high that you need to travel before you get your wiggle on. How we choose to get to and from the action matters. Carpooling is great and helps keep some carbon out of the atmosphere, it also saves parking spots at the hill. And, if you can’t join forces with friends, a commuter ski bus is something that many ski hills offer nowadays to help connect the mountain to community centers. It takes the stress –– and pollution –– out of going to a resort. Of course, COVID complicates this decision for the time being but it shouldn’t deter you from working to be a bit more responsible with your Point A to Point B decision making. UNLESS YOU ARE
There are also EV options galore. From Tesla to Volkswagon to Ford, almost everybody is making an electric vehicle and/or hybrid these days that can handle the snow. The new, all electric F-150 Ford Lightning is coming early in 2022 complete with full time 4wd, 775 lb/ft of torque, and a range of 300 miles. It has a 2000 lb payload and can tow up to 10,000 pounds. With the F-150 being the current #1 sell-
ing truck in America, the arrival of the Lightning is a great litmus test for just how hungry the marketplace is for a more rugged EV. There is also the Tesla Cybertruck, slated for production in 2022 and reported to be capable of a 14,000 lb towing capacity, a 500 mile range, and a zero to 60 that takes only 2.9 seconds. Then, of course, there is the Rivian R1T. Roughly the size of a Honda Ridgeline, the futuristic-looking R1T has garnered some real hype in recent months as the company has moved from prototypes to production. The thing looks like it was purpose built for outdoor adventures with lots of creative storage options and aftermarket accessories. And then there are the specs; 800 plus horsepower, a 400 mile range, and roughly 11,000 lbs of towing power. And, if none of these seem like realistic solutions, no worries. Just pull another page from the ski bum handbook and get yourself a good, old, used Subaru or something similar. From a lifecycle perspective, a used, fuel-efficient car is still a better option than a brand new EV.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
And, if none of these seem like realistic solutions, no worries. Just pull another pa g e fr o m t h e s k i bum handbook and get yourself a good, old, used Subaru or something similar. From a lifecycle perspective, a used, f u e l- e f f i c i e n t c a r i s still a better option t h a n a b r a n d n e w E V.
WHERE WE RIDE no one that ski areas big and small have been busting their rear ends in recent years, attempting to be better environmental citizens. The folks who sell us lift tickets realized long ago that they won’t have much of a product to sell if there is no snow to slide on. And so they’ve been revisiting their operation plans, figuring out where they can clean up their act. From carbon offsets and solar panels to food composting and low flow toilets, ski areas all over the world are trying to tread a little lighter. In fact, right here in Bomb Snow’s backyard, we have some truly impressive efforts underway. Leading the pack is Bridger Bowl. With it’s “Save the Coldsmoke” campaign, Bridger is doing it’s part to help fix the future. Since the early 2000s, thanks in no small part to people like Bob Allen and Otto Stein, Bridger has been able to maximize their annual water supply like few others courIT SHOULD SURPRISE
tesy of their unique, high elevation vertical flow wetland system. The system was cutting edge when they first rolled it out nearly 20 years ago and it remains just as impressive today. In fact, the city of Bozeman is in the early days of adopting the technology themselves as part of their evolving water infrastructure. Bridger also has the largest solar array possible under current Montana code and is actively trying to expand it. They use data tracking software to help reduce fuel needs for their grooming machines, and they recycle and compost within all of their facilities. They’ve banned fluorinated ski wax from mountain shops and rentals. LED lights have become the norm in all of the facilities while singleuse plastics have been replaced by compostable products and bulk bins for mustard and ketchup. They have a commuter program with 7 buses (thanks First Student!) run-
ning at 15-minute intervals during weekends and holidays. The result was some 24,000 rides during the 2019/2020 ski season. And the efforts don’t stop there: our local hill is actively lobbying the Montana Legislature on things like carbon pricing, net metering, and energy grid diversification. “We are doing our best but we still have lots to do.” says Bonnie Hickey, Bridger’s Sustainability Director, “As a small mountain, we need to be extra wise with our money. What we have found is that sustainability and saving money actually go hand in hand.” For their part, Big Sky is also in pursuit of cleaner operations. Under their “Forever Project”, they are committed to having net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. In fact, as of January 2021, Boyne is reporting that the resort has managed to make 100% of their energy use
Jon Finch | Above: Going big at Big Sky...who claims to be off-setting all of their Carbon. Middle: Bridger Bowl is setting an example by setting up the largest solar array under Montana code.
“carbon-free” thanks to the purchase of offsetting renewable energy credits (It should be noted, however, that the actual real world benefit of “offsets” is increasingly being called into question by climate watchdogs). The Shoshone Lodge and Summit Hotel have both converted their thermostat systems to a smart technology that synchs with room keys so that heaters only have to work when they need to. They have solar-powered beacon checkers in the high alpine, low-flow toilets in the lodges, and a no-idle policy for all their pick up/drop off locations as well as hotel check-in areas. Like Bridger and many others, they use GPS technology and software to optimize their grooming efforts and reduce fuel use. Lastly, even the Yellowstone Club, a place known the world over for being a beacon of affluence and excess, has been making big moves to clean up their act. Just this past summer, Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality
gave “Da Club” permission to start using reclaimed wastewater to make snow. The first ski area in the state to get a permit for such a thing, they can now direct more than 25 million gallons of treated wastewater toward snowmaking. The idea is to use this technology to help them build up their base on Eglise Mountain before natural snow does the rest. This recycling of wastewater greatly decreases the need to use freshwater sources for snow making, something which bodes well for the nearby and drought-stricken Gallatin River. Also, as an added bonus, this practice should help improve water quality in the Gallatin, as it will likely reduce the amount of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other troublesome pollutants that make their way into rivers and creeks every spring during runoff. The YC is only the 13th ski area in the nation to pursue the dirty water snow-making solution. As our own Travis Andersen put it upon hearing the news, “It’s a private ‘poo-ter’ party!”
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
We are doing our best but we still have lots to do. As a small mounta i n , w e n e e d t o be extra wise with our money. What we have found is that s u s ta i n a b i l i t y and saving money actually go h a n d i n h a n d. ” -Bonnie Hickey, S u s ta i n a b i l i t y Director, B BOWL
Travis Andersen | Kyle Taylor getting pitted at BBowl.
SLOWING DOWN
THE TIME WE CARRY In summer you walk often. You walk out to walk in. You carry things. I carry a white single-fin. From my shoulders hangs a black 28-liter wet/dry bag. Of zippers and recycled polyester, it is a sound tool for bipedal surf-search. Fitted with tick-blocking pants and day-hikers, 7’0” underarm, I step through a shady fen of maple, alder, blackberry, salal, thistle, ferns, and wind-sheared Sitka spruce down to this gap in the Oregon coast. Rocky, reefy. Google Earth porn. You don’t surf here. Except today. Elements agree for the first time in perhaps two years. Perhaps two decades. Perhaps never; perhaps never again.
WORDS & PHOTO Michael H. Kew
quiver for arrows, freeing our hands to hunt and gather. About 45,000 years into the migration, Alaska was reached and the East Asian pilgrims scattered, launching today’s diaspora of Native Americans from Barrow to Ushuaia. They carried things. Wet/dry bag things: steel water bottle, energy bar, hooded five-mil, booties, towel, keys. This modern zippered style of backpack can glean roots of 130 years, but in 1991, two German hikers found Ötzi the Iceman in an Italian Alps gully. Veins split by a foe’s flint-tipped arrow, he died 5,300 years prior, deer-hide quiver and wood frame beside him. Bits of hide and hair suggest a hide sack was stuck to the frame. Stone Age backpacking, you might say.
I could be elsewhere. Since Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens left the Horn of Africa, we’ve walked. We’ve carried things. Our first portable sheath was a pelt
Slow journalism. Salopek inspires. Leaning into year eight of the walk, amid COVID chaos, he’s angling through a volatile Myanmar before he will face the Central Asian steppes to overwinter in China, then Siberia, last stop before the New World. Today’s world. From his 59-year-old shoulders hangs a communications kit (laptop, camera, notebook, cell/sat phone) so he can “fling open digital infinitudes our nomadic forebears could scarcely imagine…We’ve been wired by natural selection to absorb meaning from our days at the loose-limbed gait of three miles an hour.”
Calm, warm Sunday. Inland forest-fire haze numbs the afternoon Sun, soft-focus pastels blurring cirrus into the psychedelic sea, orange mirror of summer. Dreamtime. Look: gulls and seals and a spouting whale. Bobbing bull kelp laze in the drift, swaying with the surge, laced with white ribbons of foam — sea plasma. The water hue, depths of coldly fragrant-fresh jade, matches hillside groves. The sky smells of salt and soot. Offshore sulk seastacks and tortured rocks, relics of a coast a billion years old. It takes my feet and 60,000 years of human pollination to reach this beach. It remains raw, a primordial panorama: beige strip of heavily driftwooded sand, coarse like cracked pepper, concealed by woods and seacliffs. By you I am unseen. Publicly private. Ephemeral refuge. Naturalist’s zen. Church of the open sky.
del Fuego, man’s — and Salopek’s — omega. “(Out of Eden) is a recreation of a journey all of us have made if you just go far back enough in our family trees,” he said. “It’s going to press the boundaries of communicating in a world where there’s too much information and not enough meaning. I’m going to swim upstream against the flow of information and try to slow people down, to have them absorb stories at a human pace.”
While surfing I ponder Paul Salopek, a stranger whose dream I trace. Today he too is backpacking. Carrying things. Things to capture and share his global trek. “Walking is falling forward,” he told National Geographic in 2013, when the writer first faced hot wind and dust at Herto Bouri. There he launched his 10-year, 21,000-mile Out of Eden Walk —“a journey that belongs to all of us”— leaving Ethiopia, threading the Middle East and ancient Silk Road; eventually he will ford the Bering Sea and descend the Americas to Tierra
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Four-p.m. Sun balms my face. Slouched forward, spent from waveriding, I watch the creep of tide, the diurnal teaser, the surf session-killer. Instantly the sandbar is dead. Fleeting, like us. Estimates claim 93 percent of all humanity to ever live — more than 100 billion — is gone. Soul vapor. Bone dust. Atomic reincarnation? Five ospreys squeak and twirl overhead — fish too will die. The ancient circle. Wheel of life. I stand and shoulder the bag. Grip the singlefin. Slowly, from this beach, I hike from the past to the present, up through the foyer of coastal rainforest, an old friend, discovering it again. Supplanting memory. Carrying things, one age to the next.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
LETTING GO
PLANTS OVER PILLS
A Soldier’s Journey to Heal the Trauma of War
I LOOKED INTO THE CUP of a dark brown tarlike liquid they call ayahuasca. I felt the lump in my throat and the fear in my chest as I made eye contact with the Shaman. Had I come too far to back out? The small Peruvian man smiled and surprisingly, I noticed a glowing love from him. I remembered his translation from earlier that day when we declared our intentions for the ceremony, “you will be on the operating table, and the plants will be your doctors.” I took a deep breath, said a prayer, and then carefully drank the medicine. I gave it my full trust and faith. The feeling was strikingly like being on a Ch47 Chinook helicopter loaded with Afghan Commandos on the way to hit a target. I felt the terrifying unknown below and the sharp awareness that I was fully committed. This was my chance to let the fear in after making a career of learning how to push past it. Sitting on my padded mat in the maloca, I took notice of my immediate surroundings. Twelve strangers coming together in the jungle to accomplish an individual mission: to heal trauma, find peace and let go of the weight we’d been carrying for years. It was a mix of veterans and UFC fighters brought together by an organization called “Heroic Hearts,’’ founded by a former Army Ranger who found healing in the jungle with psychedelic medicine. I sat cross-legged, my chest out, and my back straight. I felt the earthy sludge of the medicine coursing through my veins with heat. There was an uncomfortable and tingly sensation slowly moving through my body from my chest, down into my belly, and extremities. The room was dark, except for the absence of one wall that was exposed to the jungle where the moonlight shone onto some ancient ruins, overgrown with exotic plants and inhabited by a spectrum of wildlife. We were gathered in a circle around the edges of the structure with the shamans in the middle. We were all silent, waiting. Approximately 30 minutes
WORDS Aaron Blaine
later, the shamans began singing “icaros,” Shipibo tribal songs sung during the ceremony. And that’s when it started to hit me. I believed I knew what to do. The facilitators gave us a few simple instructions: “Enjoy your breath, let go, and get into your body.” I closed my eyes and focused on my breath. I allowed myself to feel the intensity of the plant medicine taking control. Letting go is easy to say, but much more difficult to apply. I would compare it to driving 85mph on the interstate with my eyes closed and letting go of the steering wheel, trusting that it will all work out. With each breath, I slowly surrendered to the experience, and the icaros’ music began to pull me into my psyche. After just a few minutes of shaking and sweating, I had completely let go and began to experience absolute peace and tranquility, and I smiled, realizing this was nothing to be afraid of. There were subtle visions that were forming with my eyes closed and even when they were open. Vibrant colors and geometric shapes appeared around me, resembling colorful mandalas of birds, bugs, and other animals. The pace of these visions was clearly guided by the sounds of the icaros. New colors I had never seen before were communicating ideas and concepts in a storyline that wasn’t in English or any other familiar language, but I somehow understood the message. I was in a state of total receptivity. I suddenly felt connected to myself from the inside out. Unconditional self-love poured over my entire body, and I physically felt the weight of my shame, anxiety, depression, and self-doubt fall off me like clumps of mud onto the ground. I received a crystal clear message that it was all an illusion, and realized that my frame of mind was holding me back from living an extraordinary life. It’s tough to articulate the depth of this experience as time stood still and the chance to explore anything and everything seemed to be at my fingertips. My confidence and self-pride began to swell as I was somehow validated by my intentions for being there. I was able to grieve the loss of my father when I was eleven and the loss of my old identity as a soldier. I was shown that I can access my inner child by connecting and playing with my son, and that I could be an
ILLUSTRATION Cyrus Walker
amazing husband if I opened up my heart and tore down the walls that prevented me from giving and receiving love. I was shattered into a million pieces, then put back together. The experience was like a hard restart, a long-overdue system upgrade. My future felt limitless. Now that I felt restored, I knew that it was time to take full responsibility for my creative self, to allow myself to feel loved and fulfilled in all aspects of my life. I was overwhelmed with joy. I began to cry when I realized how long I’d been carrying around this enormous weight that now seemed so easy to let go. The experience lasted somewhere between six to eight hours. As I felt myself grounding into the material reality, I laid on my
mat in complete awe. It felt like 25 years of therapy. I came with questions and recieved direct answers. I got up and walked through the moloca into the jungle. I felt connected to the sounds and the smells of the natural world. A euphoric force suddenly filled my body as I came back into the threshold of the moloca and gazed at the moon. The energy in my body, along with the continued sounds of the icaros made me want to move, so I danced under the moonlight for
the remainder of the ceremony, feeling the medicine work itself through me. At the end of the ritual, the facilitators brought in several baskets of fresh fruit. I sunk my teeth into the most delicious, refreshing mango and reflected on the night with the other participants. This was the absolute, real thing. I am still baffled at what these amazing medicinal plants can accomplish in such a short time. I felt reborn. Throughout the remaining week, I took part in four ceremonies, each one, taking me deeper into self-discovery and healing. The plants helped show me what I needed to do and how to do it, but not without effort. This is just one of the many experiences I have leaned into for self-discovery after a lifetime of traumatizing experiences as a soldier. And after these medicinal journeys, I am confident that real healing is possible, not just for me, but for the thousands of veterans who struggle to return to civilian life after their service. Our nation does an incredible job at going to war, but has failed miserably in helping veterans succeed in returning home. I am now at home, integrating what I learned to its fullest capacity and experiencing abundance as I focus on loving and showing up for the people I love the most. I’m putting my energy into practices that are healthy and focusing on experiences and vocations that light me up and cultivate fulfillment. Ultimately, if a Special Forces veteran like myself, can learn the art of letting go, I believe that anyone can, with or without the help of psychedelics. And by letting go, we allow the beauty of life itself to help us heal.
Author Aaron Blaine on duty.
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#4
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AND EVERYTHING WE LOVE OUR JOB IT. BECAUSE AT THAT COMES WITH Y, MAKING MOVIES THE END OF THE DA S IS TRULY THE BEST WITH YOUR FRIEND ! JOB IN THE WORLD
BECOMING ADULT
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
THE PURSUIT
WORDS Kristopher Drummond
I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY FLIES I watched die. At least 30. Lying in my tent, heavy with exhaustion as August rain spat down, I stared up at the mesh ceiling and watched one fly after the next get stalked, stung, and devoured by yellow jackets. Over the course of three days in the Colorado backcountry, as I intentionally deprived myself of food for the purpose of finding my purpose, my tent’s ceiling became a mausoleum of wings. They glimmered in rare moments of sunshine, painting my “death” ritual with an appropriate hue. I was there to enact a wilderness vigil (also known as a vision fast); a pancultural rite of passage popularized in recent decades that offers potential initiates a way of “dying” to outgrown stories and connecting to their own unique meaning and purpose for being alive. It sounded glamorous on the website; honing my intention, enacting ceremonies, uncovering my deepest self. However, beginning with the welcome email, which warned of the intensity, challenge, and potential impacts that participating might (and likely would) have, glamor was soon replaced with reality. I had done my best to prepare in the months leading up to the fast, but as I lay visionless on day three in the dripping rain with my feet stuffed into plastic bags, I wondered what the fuck I was doing. For over four decades, The Animas Valley Institute (the school facilitating the vigil) has guided people through “the nature based map of the psyche,” a model developed by the school’s founder, Bill Plotkin. The map proposes that human maturation is ecologically intended to take a more wild, reciprocal, and life-enhancing course than it currently does. According to this model, most people in industrialized cultures become psychologically stunted and never psycho-emotionally progress beyond the developmental stage of adolescence. This is partially because, through the long march of colonialism, western culture abandoned the ritual and ecological rites of passage the human psyche requires for ongoing maturation. I discovered Animas Valley in my mid-20’s after Bill’s seminal work, Soulcraft, kept nudging me from the corner of my girlfriend’s bookshelf. Within a few pages, after reading phrases like “discovering your mythopoetic identity,” and “crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche,” I was hooked. After years of attempting to use spirituality to es-
cape myself, I realized I was looking for belonging and something like meaning. Rather than the emphasis of emptiness and No-self common to the Buddhist teachings I followed, Soulcraft pointed to the possibility of a radical, embodied, meaningful life, one where my deep self was an essential, authentic, and humble piece of Earth’s wholeness. From the moment I encountered this concept of soul purpose, I was obsessed with figuring out how to find mine. And so as I lay among the rotting pine corpses populating my fasting spot with nothing resembling a vision, I was on the edge of desperation. I didn’t realize until I was out there just how depressed I’d been and now, with the truth of my numbed life squeezing in on me from the silent forest, I couldn’t imagine going home without some glimmer of my meaning. The guides told us that throughout our fast we should enact rituals and listen for “what wants to happen next.” I had a sense of what this meant but I wasn’t prepared for the resistance my psyche would mount to releasing control. I kept getting stuck in self-criticism and doubt. On their suggestion, I told ten years of my life story to the trees each day, offered relationships and habits and identities as sacrifices to the altar, got naked and ran around screaming in an attempt to let myself be “wild.” I wept for the life I was leaving behind and cackled at the hilarity of how hard I try. There were moments of breakthrough where I found the flow, where life seemed to be moving me from the inside out, where rituals just emerged and I knew what to do. But they always dried up, leaving me back in the struggle, in the small self I’d been trying to meditate away. On that third day, I wanted to give up. But there was one ritual left to enact. The Death Ritual.
The guides told us we’d know when it was time to die. They didn’t tell us what this meant, simply that at some point on the fast, we’d be called to die and we’d just do it. With all the other rituals completed, I felt an inner tug that implied this was the moment. Pushing myself up on an elbow, I looked around my tent for the ritual supplies I brought for the occasion. Gathering up marble stones from an island in Scotland, a figurine of a fox my mentor gave me, and a decorative garment from my time in Bali, I walked to my ritual area beneath some aspen trees. Placing the items in a circle, I lay down, pulling my hat over my eyes and covering as much skin as possible to thwart the mosquitos. I deepened my breath. Whatever “dying” meant, I sensed I couldn’t do it myself. All I could do was show up and see “what wanted to happen.” Gulping big breaths into my stomach, my legs quivered. “Surrender,” I whispered with each exhale.
“Surrender.” “Surrender.” My psyche settled as my muscles relaxed. Gravity chimed in, pulling me into the dirt. From deep in my pelvis, an orgasmic energy gurgled; an overwhelming, tingly, almost ecstatic excitement that wanted to release up my spine, reminding me of early psychedelic experiences. Something was happening. Something was happening. This was it, I realized, the great surrender, the dying I’d been searching for throughout my adulthood. And as the excitement grew so did the terror as my sense of psychological control started to release. “Oh fuck. I’m dying.” The words shot down from my head and landed as dread in my chest. I clutched at the dirt and my body tightened, fighting against the release. Suddenly, a crash erupted from the edge of camp.
My breathing froze as more crashes followed, accompanied by grunts. Sitting up, I saw something big moving behind willow trees about twenty feet away. I stood up and grabbed a log, adrenaline pounding, any sense of ritual excitement replaced by survival fear. The shape moved, snorted again, and then stood up on hind legs to reveal exactly what I was most worried about: A brown bear. Instinctively, I yelled what I always yell whenever I’m too close to a bear. “Hey bear!” I clapped the log on the ground as Bear sniffed the air, taking me in. “Heyyyy bear!” Bear studied me from their hind legs for an eternal few seconds more before dropping to all fours, swinging their head back toward the bushes, and disappearing. Stunned, I dropped the log, falling into forest stillness. From the space opened in my psyche, I heard a voice.
“I can tell you that a death did begin that day, but it’s an ongoing decomposition rather than the piercing final release I expected. I can also tell you that the words “Wandering Bear” have become more meaningful to me than my given name.”
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
“Wandering Bear.” My ears rang. I stared up at the trees, baffled. Presence emanated from the aspens, almost like they were seeing me. My feet were rooted. The voice kept speaking. “Wandering Bear.” “Wandering Bear.” I could feel something mysterious in the moment, but it was so subtle, the voice was so soft, the bear so natural, that after a couple minutes my habitual mind kicked back in and shrugged it off. “That was odd,” I thought. “I should go back to dying.” I returned to my circle and lay down, pulled my hat back over my eyes and forcefully deepened my breathing, attempting to resurrect the process. After thirty minutes of nothing, I gave up. I spent the rest of my fast, really just an afternoon, slumped against a tree, waiting for something to happen or give me a clue to my meaning. Finally, as I watched the sun drop behind a distant mountain from a gap between two pines, I let my confused and unresolved self fall into sleep.
It’s been almost two years since the fast and there’s so much I could say. Based on how much I’ve learned and am still learning, I’ll be harvesting lessons from those three days for many years. Probably the rest of my life. One of the tasks of soul work is learning how to be with the unknown, and today, I’m still baffled by the mystery and profundity of the encounter. Like dreams, the vision fast is a form of conversation with what Carl Jung called the unconscious and what some of our ancestors considered the soul of the earth. In this conversation, image and symbol are the vernacular and the work of initiation asks us to grow more fluent in that mythic tongue. I can tell you that a death did begin that day, but it’s an ongoing decomposition rather than the piercing final release I expected. I can also tell you that the words “Wandering Bear” have become more meaningful to me than my given name. Through getting closer to the inner images and outer symbols (like the bear) this work introduced me to, I’ve discovered a resonance that’s larger than my egoic sense of myself that’s deeper, more central, and more real than the chattering voice in my head I usually call “me.” Being in that resonance feels like that moment after a really honest conversation with someone I love; it’s simple, grounded, clear, and unwavering. By calling on the image of Bear, by walking like Bear and seeing through Bear’s eyes, I invite that energy to take up more occupancy. Dying to who I thought I was is challenging, but the struggle of learning to embody my meaning is worth it. By giving myself to lostness, I’m finding my way. In the two years since the fast, I’ve had countless clarifications of Bear through dreams, animal encounters, creative practices, and synchronicities that continue illuminating what happened on that mountain in Colorado. In tracking with Plotkin’s nature-based map of the psyche, some of my adolescent behaviors have fallen away. I don’t wonder about meaning anymore, and for the first time in my adult life, I’m not trying to make myself disappear. As I continue to walk this path, I’m realizing that the imagination is not, as we’re taught to believe, simply “make believe.” Rather, it is an essential dimension of reality that we require to be whole human beings and where our most essential sense of self resides. The world speaks through the images, intuitions, and feelings in our bodies and by learning to listen and allowing ourselves to be shaped by those essences, we are invited into a remembrance of our true belonging to this still-wild world. –K.D.
I ski in my head all the time.
WORDS + PHOTOS Kira Stoops
When I’m doing the dishes, seeing snowflakes instead of bubbles. When I’m cornering my unsexy station wagon, knees angling toward clean corduroy in my mind. When I’m in an MRI machine, conjuring the spacious view of a long cruiser to counteract the claustrophobia of a coffin-sized human microwave. I was never a brawny skier, when I skied in real life — more of a lifelong wimpy kid. In my Dad’s hand-me-down too-big boots and my Mom’s 1960s Olin Mark IVs, I finagled a precise technique on scrawny legs where strength and spendy equipment would never flourish. I earned my senior ski patrol certification at 120 pounds, gingerly guiding a toboggan over the cornice at Snow King with the biggest brute on patrol strapped in the sled. That delicate dance made me the youngest female senior ski patroller in the Intermountain Division in the late 90s. Now, these atrophied, never-burly muscles hum along to the exacting motions and adjustments of a mental drop into the North Bowl. They twitch against every little rise and shallow of Kelly Canyon — my hometown hill, a pack of easy runs I can ski in 4k detail from memory. In my head, there are always runs and chairs and chowder (my favorite). There was no big crash on February 4th, 2016. It’s just the last day I could fight the ever-worsening, never explained neckache that I’d reckoned with for two decades. I skinned up Bear Canyon with my friend Dave, marveling at his late-40s ability to kick my early-30s ass. Wimpy kid problems. My stomach churned on four or five ibuprofen. Two explosively headachy days later, I sneezed, and my neck — always a shaky proposition at best — froze in exquisite, indescribable pain. For a year. Every motion
of my body was excruciatingly painful; even breathing. But I threw myself into fighting it. I’d get back. I’d hiked and skied with unexplained pain my whole life; I could deal with this. I dialed it back — instead of hiking 30 miles a week, I minced down trails, collapsing in agony and exhaustion 10 minutes of tiny steps in. I meditated and therapied and murdered off all negative thoughts. Chiropractors and massage therapists and physical therapists and naturopaths and muscle activation specialists and craniosacral therapy practitioners had already frowned over my case for years before The Sneeze. Now I added pain intervention specialists and neurosurgeons. In time, my neck misalignment would break my back teeth—there’d be dental surgeries with too many antibiotics, my gut would throw in the towel, and I’d research endlessly for an explanation for the resulting brain fog, full-body pain, food intolerances, and inexplicable exhaustion that left me flattened and fuzzy. But the fuzz made it easier to ski in my head. While dentists pulled my broken teeth, I flew down endless trails at Discovery. When I was diagnosed with ME/CFS (an incurable, under-researched condition), I dropped into Laramie Bowl. When my gastroenterologist told me I was just “ob-
Above and Middle | Kira as a young Patroller, and years later in front of the MRI room.
sessed” with the six hours I was trapped in the bathroom every day, I crisscrossed that tricky double fall line at Pebble Creek. And when my blue disabled parking permit arrived, it melted into all those Washington lakes I could see while carving up 49 Degrees North. I sometimes fantasize about making a run or three at Bridger. It would take… a lot. My neck is so unstable it can’t handle vibrations or bumps in the road. I wouldn’t be able to walk from the car to the lift, because that would sap all my energy for the day. It takes until 2pm every day to get through the rigors of prepping and digesting the few foods I can eat. I’d probably need to plan two or three recovery days afterwards, and they wouldn’t be pretty. But I think about it all the time, anyway. I picture my people, who have rallied so well around me these past five years, dropping me off as close as we can get. Piggybacking me up to the lift. Carrying my stuff. (thank you, peeps). I feel the satisfying toe-heelclunk into my now-outdated bindings, the first click-in since 2016. Giggling on the lift with my favorites, the bright blue skies flying above us, the awaiting snow whizzing by underneath. I feel every muscle buzz, stoked and stretching eagerly towards what’s been rehearsed, over and over and over again, for years now — technique over strength, the surest way for a wimpy kid to maximize her time on the hill. I picture screaming for silly joy just to feel the glide of white under ski wax, for real, after so long.
STAYING STRONG
Dave Heath | Skier: Sam Kuch
COVER ARTIST David J. Rice (@d_j_rice) was born in Aspen, Colorado and spent most of his
childhood skiing or hiking around in the mountains. Being immersed in nature inspired him at a young age, and his family was always supportive of him exploring his natural ability to draw. David’s older brother Andrew was (and still is) a huge inspiration, so when he started pursuing art, David followed right along. They began drawing comic book characters, but as they matured, so did their art. David went on to study fine art at the University of Colorado, and after graduation he went directly into pursuing his talents commercially through illustration. David is currently a full-time art fiend, living his dream out of Portland, Oregon. Bomb Snow recently caught up with the mastermind behind our latest cover art, and here’s what he said:
You are a full-time fine artist right? WHAT ELSE OCCUPIES YOUR TIME? Yes, I am a full-time artist. My time is split into about 50% studio/gallery work, 25% mural work, and 25% commercial design work. It’s nice to bounce between total creative control in my studio work, and also to have some constraints and boundaries in my commercial work.
start piecing together to create my vision. I take a ton of pictures so I’m usually drawing from a photo I have taken, or a friend of mine has taken. Once I have the bones of my composition, I figure out the extra details/lighting/colors/etc. to make the piece unique. After I have a solid mockup, I start painting. The piece usually evolves in this stage from the original mockup, and I typically will paint some elements of the painting 2-3 times over until it all fits together.
How often are you painting?
Is this the dream you imagined being in? Growing up, I knew I wanted to be involved in art, but I honestly didn’t know if being a full-time artist was an achievable goal. I am happy I made it to where I am, but it’s a lot more work than I would have predicted. I work at least 6 days a week and when there is a tight deadline, my work days are extremely long. It’s a lot of pressure to keep making new and interesting work. Painting is something I would be doing whether or not it was my primary job, so it is a huge bonus that I get to do it and be paid for it, but it’s not easy.
How do you fight the blank page? Tell us about your process. I rely heavily on reference images in my work. If someone put down a blank piece of paper and a pencil in front of me, and asked me to draw them something, I would probably have an anxiety attack. I usually start with an idea, and then find reference images that I can
I typically paint 5-6 days a week and spend 1-2 days a week on designing new pieces and answering emails. On my painting days I usually spend 8 hours at the studio, but if a deadline is approaching that can increase to 10-12 hours a day
If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? If I had all the money in the world I would still paint, just not as many paintings. I would spend more time on each piece, maybe making only 10-12 pieces a year. I would also take more time to get outside.
How’s Portland? What is your favorite thing to do/see in the city? Portland is a great city for art. There are so many creatives working and living here, it infects every aspect of life. From the painters, to the coffee shops and bars, everyone is trying to go above and
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BELIEVING IN YOU
Left: Recent Mural, Bright Walls Above: Crossing at Daikanyama
beyond what is typical for their practice and add a little extra flair. We have a lot of great food in Portland, so my wife and I love finding unique restaurants and cocktails. Portland is also right between the Oregon Coast and Mt. Hood so there is a lot of outdoor recreation we take part in.
Best Dive-Bar? Not just in Portland, anywhere. That’s a tough question. In Aspen we had a bar called Little Annies and it was a staple amongst the locals. I think the deal was $15 for a pitcher of beer and 5 shots. It closed a few years ago which is a shame. Portland has too many to count.
Coolest place you’ve been to. I traveled to Japan a few years ago and had a
blast. I did the typical Osaka-Kyoto-Tokyo trifecta and loved everything about it. There was something so unique yet familiar about it, it was very enchanting.
WHAT’S YOU Best snowboard memory? I have a lot of great snowboard memories and have had the chance to ride in a ton of different places. My favorite memories are probably just doing laps with my buddies on Highlands Bowl in Aspen.
Where does your inspiration come from? Lately, I’ve been drawing inspiration from my everyday life. Like most people, over the past year and a half I have stayed pretty close to home and have found a new appreciation for my neighborhood and the subjects existing in my day-to-day life. Rather
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
I constantly struggle with a bit of Imposter Syndrome and don’t think I have what it takes to be successful.
than trying to create new worlds, I am currently focusing on exploring small moments in my everyday life, and building a new narrative for them. Whether it is the old oak tree that lives down the street, or the weird motel I have driven by a thousand times, I am trying to come up with new stories for everyday things.
Do you fight procrastination? All the time. There are so many distractions, especially when you’re selfemployed. It definitely helps to have a separate studio space and a designated workplace away from the comforts of my home.
Left: Roost Middle: Evening Roost Right: Change in the Weather
Are you a print fan? I am a big print fan. I have a huge collection of art books. It is so much better to view art in print rather than on a screen (if you can’t see it in person). I don’t read nearly enough, but podcasts and audiobooks help get me through those long days of painting. I have listened to every episode of the Dateline podcast, which I think has a couple hundred episodes, so that’s pretty impressive.
Any trips or fun things planned? I just finished up a fun mural in Santa Cruz, CA and will be painting in Salt Lake City in November, and Reno,
NV in early 2022. My wife and I got married last December, just the two of us at the courthouse, and we are trying to figure out a fun honeymoon type trip to take in 2022. We are torn between Iceland, Croatia, and Argentina right now.
What is the biggest “challenge” you’ve faced in life? Probably my own self doubt. I constantly struggle with a bit of Imposter Syndrome and don’t think I have what it takes to be successful. I am trying not to question myself so much and trust I put in the hard work to get to where I am.
The other person that has had the most impact on my life and career is the artist Blaine Fontana. Who is your mentor? My older brother Andrew has been a huge mentor for me in my life. The other person that has had the most impact on my life and career is the artist Blaine Fontana. I met Blaine shortly after I moved to Portland, in 2012. I was working mostly in a digital format at the time and wanted to get back into painting, instead of having all my work live on a screen. I reached out to Blaine to see if he needed any assistance in his studio. Turns out he had a huge project
with Vans shoe company and needed some help. He threw me into the project head first and it was a trial by fire. We finished that project and he brought me on board for the next year and a half. He showed me everything from making gallery work, to murals, to sculpture, public installations, and more. It was really a crash course into the art world. After my “apprenticeship” finished up, I moved into a corner of his studio to start making my own work, and I have been there ever since.
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
Blaine and David’s studio.
From Scratch Karl Fostvedt Takes the Leap with Brapski Vol 1.
When Warren Miller showcased his annual ski films in the 1950’s, a concept was born, and ever since, ski fans have flocked to theaters each fall to see the latest in ski action entertainment. At the turn of the century, production companies like TGR and MSP took the lead and created classic shred flicks that not only captivated the public, but also up-andcoming pro skiers that wanted to be on the big screen. Make no mistake, landing a spot on the athlete roster of these traditional film companies is the golden ticket to world travel, sponsorship deals, and ski town fame, but is the allure for aspiring pros worth all of the hype? Is the ski industry ready for athletes to go at it solo and survive with full control of their own creative vision? For Idaho based skier Karl Fostvedt, who has filmed with TGR, MSP, and PBP over the years, his pro skier dreams did come true, and it was these movie segments that helped put him on the map, securing and improving sponsorship deals with K2 skis, Dakine, and Anon. While Karl, and his sponsors, enjoyed the exposure he got from the global audiences these movie houses provided, Karl decided to bet on himself last winter, and created his own production company called Native Earth Productions, so he could have full control over the entire project. As Karl soon found out, making and starring in a ski movie is a lot more than just brappin’ to the zone and stacking shots. Acquiring funding, hiring filmers, finding a like-minded crew of fellow shredders, and months of tedious editing and post-production on the backend may have left some longing for simpler times, but for a hardworking and established pro like Karl, the effort is paying off.
GOING ALONE
Tal Roberts | Karl Fostvedt
BS: TELL US WHY YOU DECIDED TO CREATE NATIVE EARTH PRODUCTIONS?
BS: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT NAME (NEP)?
KF: I’ve always been super involved on the production side of things with the segments I’ve created over the years. From working as an intern for Poor Boyz Productions 8 years ago, to packing my own camera into the field and getting 2nd angles with 4bi9, I’ve always enjoyed the production side of making segments. Last year, I decided I wanted 100% creative control, so I branched out and started my own brand.
KF: Our world is so polarized these days. A lot of people spend time focusing on what differentiates us. I wanted a brand name that would do the opposite and be all-inclusive. Every person, plant, and animal is native to the earth. It’s one thing we all have in common. I also want to branch into other genres when I’m done skiing at a high level, and felt like the name Native Earth would allow me to integrate into other styles of production, like wildlife documentaries.
Tal Roberts | Colin Collins
BS: WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF CREATING A SKI FILM FROM SCRATCH? KF: Finding time to ski. Everyone warned me about the amount of work it takes to put a project like this together, and they weren’t lying. I’m ready to get out of the editing chair and start getting ready for winter. BS: WAS THERE A POINT THIS SEASON WHERE YOU QUESTIONED IF YOU WERE ABLE TO PULL THIS TOGETHER AND CREATE SOMETHING PEOPLE WOULD BE STOKED ON? KF: It was crazy last year when I went to Jackson Hole for the Corbet’s contest, we barely had a shot in the bag, and I was starting to question if we’d be able to make it happen before
the snow melted. Then, I ran into Dan Gibeau and hired him to be our FPV guy, and a week later we had filmed one of the coolest segments of my career. Then my buddy Jasper Newton showed up to film, and we had a month-long stack fest. BS: CAN A PROJECT WITH THIS DISTRIBUTION MODEL GET MORE VIEWS VS. THE ESTABLISHED PAY-TO-VIEW MODEL EMPLOYED BY MOST MOVIE COMPANIES? KF: This question is kinda out of my league. I want the project to get seen, but I’m not putting too much attention towards view counts or likes. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to pursue a vision, and I feel like by focusing on my vision and bringing that to life, everything else will fall into place.
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Tal Roberts | Karl Fostvedt
“ I ALSO WANT TO
Tal Roberts
KF: I hope to help open the door for others to bring their visions to life through the Native Earth network. If we get good feedback from Brap Ski Volume 1, there’s a good chance we’ll make a Volume 2 this winter. I’d like to get some more big name athletes involved. I’m talking to guys like Thayne Rich, Lucas Wachs, and Daron Rahlves about getting involved with Brap Ski Volume 2.
“
BRANCH INTO OTHER GENRES WHEN I'M DONE SKIING AT A HIGH LEVEL, AND FELT LIKE THE NAME NATIVE EARTH WOULD ALLOW ME TO INTEGRATE INTO OTHER STYLES OF PRODUCTION, LIKE WILDLIFE DOCUMENTARIES.
BS: WHAT IS NEXT FOR NEP?
BS: ANYTHING ELSE? KF: FKNSNDR.
Axel Peterson | Rob Raymond
REMEMBERING THE GOOD
RECORD BREAKING At least we had February. 2/21. After a dry and warm first half of the season –– a suffering all the worse by COVID –– Ullr finally delivered in February with the snowiest storm month on record at Bridger Bowl. It may have been a 4-week winter, but dang it was good.
RECORD BREAKING
Jonathon Finch | Ben Goertzen
Travis Andersen | Left: Erod Right: Marcus Fuller
RECORD BREAKING
Travis Andersen | Skiers: Kyle Taylor and Alex Buecking somewhere in Mexico
INSPIRATION
BOUND
RECOMMENDED Books & Podcasts When an author takes on a subject that is already woven into the fabric of their soul, the results are often wonderful and refreshingly authentic. Powder Days is just such a thing. Written by Bomb Snow contributor and former Ski Magazine staffer Heather Hansman, Powder Days is a transcendent bit of deep-thinking and entertaining ski journalism. It is a vibrant blend of culture, characters, social commentary, and history, with Hansman’s personal reflections on her life in the mountains interwoven throughout. From beginning to end, the book sings a song that is both enlightening and entertaining. POWDER DAYS
Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow Author: Heather Hansman
To make Powder Days happen, Hansman spent a recent winter reclaiming her inner ski bum from the clutches of adulthood and chased snow throughout the mountains west. She was vision questing in search of skiing’s soul, trying
to answer some big life questions for herself by looking through the lens of a life spent dedicated to sliding on the snow. Ski bums are her primary point of entry. She does Ridge laps at Bridger with Marcus, Bubba, and Shane Cottom, cuts the gondola line at Jackson Hole with Benny Wilson, gets gone into the backcountry with Exum Guide Sheldon Kerr, and pillages fresh powder in Aspen with Pat Vandenbroek to name but a few of the adventures in the book. But the real magic happens when Hansman uses these real-world vantage points to dive into bigpicture topics like personal growth, privilege, racial barriers, ski town economics, and what our unfolding climate apocalypse might mean for the future of skiing. There is little doubt that Powder Days is the most honest and interesting exploration of American ski culture to come along in quite some time. –E.S.
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Chris Whitaker / Spencer Harkins, Alta
Years ago, award-winning journalist Patrick Radden-Keefe heard a rumor so wild he couldn’t forget it: that the early 1990s By Patrick Radden Keefe hit song “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions was actually part of a covert CIA campaign to win the Cold War. In this eight-part podcast (with two bonus episodes meant to be enjoyed after the crazy conclusion of the series), Radden-Keefe goes deep down the rabbit hole in an effort to either prove or disprove the CIA rumor. It is a full-blown, rock and roll themed international spy mystery as he navigates from Kiev to Moscow to Miami to a G.I. Joe collectors’ convention in Ohio in an attempt to make sense of one of the strangest, most captivating stories you will ever hear. Old rockers and old informants, scared operatives, pop music filled with propaganda, tense interviews, and the distinct air of danger—it’s all here! This is why podcasts exist!
WIND OF CHANGE
For the uninitiated, Dirtbag Diaries is basically the best campfire stories you have ever heard By Fitz Cahall & the Duct Tape Then Beer Crew about the great outdoors. Started by outdoor journalist Fitz Cahall back in 2007, the podcast, now with more than 250 episodes under its belt, has quietly become one of the best—and most refreshing—in the game. It is story telling at its finest; brilliantly curated, expertly produced, and always worth the listen. Recent examples of this episodic epicness include a show with a Ben Jordan, who spent five months retracing monarch butterfly migrations with a paraglider, a conversation with Len Necefer about being a Native American ski-mountaineer, and Fernanda Rodriguez’s coming-of-age story about growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, finding some boulders in the forest, and eventually becoming one of the best climbers in the country. Insider tip: don’t miss out on Cahall’s and company annual ode to Halloween with their “Tales of Terror” episodes.
THE DIRTBAG DIARIES
airport-invaded habitat with Tom Campbell’s detailed and intimate tracing of the bison’s physical and historical migrations. It follows the silent tracks of lynx through the snow and waxes eloquently on the impossibility of technicolor geyser bacteria. It’s a testament to the glory we all sense emanating from this land and a lens through which we may yet remember the sanctity of the stretch of wilderness entrusted to us.
Filled with words from some of the most gifted nature writers of our time, The Artists Field Guide to Yellowstone is a poetic cartography of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, weaving Terry Tempest Williams and Joanne Dornan’s lyrical observations of the sage grouse’s tenacity to persist in their native,
As I read, I sense a longing in my belly to know the whitebark pine the way Geneen Marie Haugen does: “While studying the spreading gnarl of above-ground roots, I am suddenly flooded with images—images of lightning, fire, and tremendous drifts of snow, images of grizzly and wolverine, avalanche…I accept that the other-than-human world sometimes speaks
to us in image or sudden impression, if we are attuned enough to notice.” And I feel the grief in my heart as Doug Peacock considers the fate of the wolverine on a warming planet: “I pulled binoculars out of my windbreaker and watched a pair of adult wolverines sort of undulating up the slope, pulling their hind legs up to their front paws, then stretching out again, like giant, fast-moving inchworms. My bestiary is heavy with grizzly, with wolverine.” Along with satisfying my intellectual curiosity to know the beings who populate this land, The Artists Field Guide to Yellowstone is a mirror; a reflection of Yellowstone by people loyally devoted to meeting the wild on its terms. Reading it gives me hope that more of us may learn to do the same. –Kristopher Drummond
INSPIRATION
BOUND
Making an outdoor recreation guide book is risky business. On one hand, you run the risk of pissing people off who aren’t interested in sharing their beloved adventure spots. These folks aren’t keen on the increased traffic that a gushing guidebook might help create. On the other side, a guide book can give false confidence and permission to newcomers and has the real potential to help coax some of them into dangerous—and potentially fatal— situations. It is a legit rock and a hard place type of situation for those looking to provide BETA in an organized and deliberate way. Chris Kussmaul was well aware of these pitfalls when he first started working on Peaks & Couloirs nearly half a decade ago. A passionate climber and skier, Kussmaul headed up Montana State University’s Backcountry Skiing Club while getting his geology degree a few years back. As part of that role, he informally started putting together a guide for club members to help orient them with some of the more popular spots in Hyalite Canyon. The effort showed him first hand just how strong of an appetite there was locally for a thoughtful, ski-centric guide to our assorted backcountry zones. “It was clear
that lots of people were interested in this sort of information,” explains Chris. “I’ve been living in houses with ski and climbing bums for years. The coffee table always has a pile of guidebooks on it. [Guidebooks] really help inspire adventure whether you are a beginner or an expert or somewhere in-between… But I wasn’t sure at first if I was the right person to do it.” However, as the years went by and his experience in southwest Montana deepened, he decided to fully commit. The result is the outwardly impressive Peaks & Couloirs. For the most part, Kussmaul expertly threads the needle between giving away too much and sharing just enough information to spark some free-heeled exploration. And while the book is filled with great maps (made by Chris) and photographs (also mostly made by Chris), it is more about inspiration and foundational breadcrumbs for pathfinding than giving away keys to the kingdom of snowy stoke. He went to lengths to make sure all routes are on public lands, and when his personal knowledge wasn’t as deep as he needed it to be on a particular region or route, he turned to people like Scott Davidson and Kris Erikson to help fill in the gaps. There are also a handful of short essays throughout the book by Chris and others that drop some hard-earned knowledge about regional history, land use policies, and even some earth science. All told, much in the vein of other locally produced mountain guides like Stepping Up (Sam Cox and Tavis Campbell), Winter Dance (Joe Josephson), and Peaks of the Greater Yellowstone (Tom Turiano), Peaks & Couloirs is more than deserving of being added to your collection. Your upcoming winter will be all the better for it. –E.S.
SWELL A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening Author: Captain Liz Clark From a certain view, Swell is a classic autobiography, one that details and celebrates the highs and lows of the anything-butordinary young life of Captain Liz Clark. However, when taken in its full measure, Swell quickly transcends the genre and becomes something markedly more, and entirely original. It is a book about self-discovery and challenge, about the natural world and the profound personal lessons to be uncovered when we look for a better version of ourselves out beyond the edges of a predictable life. It is real, raw, and endlessly inspiring. The language and storytelling are a page-turning blend of high-seas adventure, onshore drama, hard-earned insights, and poetic observations of
nature. The photographs are like a mini tropical surf adventure unto themselves, perhaps surpassed only by the whimsical illustrations (by Daniella Manini) that brilliantly pepper the book and serve as tonal touchstones for every chapter. And then there is Amelia, the tabby cat that Liz adopts from the jungle somewhere along the way. Affectionately known as Tropicat, the kitty becomes a most unexpected yet remarkably competent first mate for Captain Clark. However, the true star of the book is the captain herself and the way that we can feel her growing with each passing chapter. Her consciousness, her feminism, her humanity, and her activism are all evolving as the story unfolds. We recognize ourselves in her moments of honest vulnerability and feel ourselves rise along with her as she overcomes demons both inside and out. It is this element of the book that I, as the father of two little girls, am most jazzed about. Indeed, the book, like the woman who wrote it, is empowering, hopeful, and just plain impressive. –E.S.
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2 4 0 5 W. M A I N 4 0 6 . 5 8 7. 5 2 2 7
REACHING OUT
Stronger than you Know WORDS Sally Hope
In 2011, I quit my job, sold my belongings, and got in an RV for an adventure with an unknown timeframe and destination. It was a couple months after I broke up with the man I thought I’d marry and four months after graduating from life coaching school. For the first time ever, I felt truly on my own. With no boss to tell me when to show up, no relationship to make me feel secure and loved, and a new career that I’d have to create out of thin air. I remember how challenging this felt, to face myself, my desires, my fears of losing security, and the unknown of choosing a unique path. Despite never having been in a 34-foot RV, much less driving one, I knew the journey I was truly facing was Me vs. Myself, to see if I had the guts to continue toward my dreams, or if I would crumble underneath my fears and return to my comfort zone. I look back on those moments, wishing I still had those problems, not realizing that the biggest challenges I’d ever face were still ahead of me. Not realizing I’d have to draw from an even deeper well that I didn’t know existed to not give up on myself. Last year, on my 41st birthday, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Within two weeks, I got the first of 16 doses of the strongest chemo possible. Two weeks later, I lost all my hair. Five months after that I lost both of my breasts. And in a few months from now, my ovaries will be removed. I wish I could say this was the first time my health failed me, but it wasn’t. This diagnosis came three years after a chronic illness worsened, to the point of devastating debilitation, where the things that used to give me joy, happiness, and fulfillment were no longer possible. I couldn’t dance, run my business, hang out with friends, go on walks, travel, exercise, or participate in life the way I wanted. It had
already been three years of grief, losing my abilities, losing friends and support, losing work, losing the things I thought made me “ME,” and THEN I got cancer. Before my diagnosis, I couldn’t imagine a harder situation, but like a cheesy QVC ad, the Universe gave me a “But wait! THERE’S MORE!!” addition to my life. Cancer. Being debilitated by a chronic illness with no treatments is hard enough but being debilitated by a chronic illness with no treatments while going through cancer, chemo, surgery, and facing death daily was an absolute nightmare. And when I was in my lowest low, experiencing my deepest fears, having my scariest moments, where darkness abounded and threatened to swallow me up, I was faced with the biggest challenge of all... how do I keep going in the face of unrelenting suffering? It was still Me vs. Myself, but on a whole other level. I used to think the answer was in a selfhelp book, or a yoga class, or in a meme reminding me to find positivity even in the hardest situations. But the more I learned about life, and the closer I got to death, the more I realized those bits of advice weren’t for these kinds of challenges. While lying in a dog bed on the bathroom floor vomiting from chemo, sobbing while my partner brushed my teeth, or realizing that even if I survived cancer, I’d still have a debilitating illness, I knew there was more to it than finding the silver lining in those moments. And no trite Instagram
quote was going to help me. I needed to find my way through the tunnel, which required upheaving everything I thought I knew and replacing it with simple and timeless tools. We ultimately can’t control what happens to us, no matter how much we think we do. And while your story won’t be the same as mine, I imagine that you have faced or will face your own bathroom floor moments. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some things that have helped me push forward, instead of staying buried beneath my circumstances. I’ve learned that the good, quality, loving people in my life are everything. When I’m scared, sad, or feel like I can’t go on, I reach out to the people I trust and feel safe with and let them hold me up when I can’t stand. I tell myself it’s ok to fall apart and be sad because what I’m going through IS sad. When I give myself this grace, it moves through quicker. I’m discovering more and more who I truly want to be and
Bomb Snow 2.0 | Issue 25 | Embrace the Challenge
am becoming that person. I connect with people who understand what I’m going through. I’m changing my life in ways that feel good, something I should have done a long time ago, by mending relationships, letting others go, and standing up for myself. I take every opportunity I can to express love and gratitude to the people in my life. I’ve softened my heart. I’m sharing my experiences honestly. “Shared pain is lessened. Shared joy is increased” Spider Robinson. I’m letting my suffering be an opportunity to not go back to my old ways. I’m asking for what I want and need. I’m seeking laughter and levity. And I’m always looking for ways to be grateful, joyful, and appreciative of the small and big stuff. The human spirit is a lot stronger than I ever realized. It’s ok to be in pain. It’s ok to not know how to handle it. It’s ok to fall apart and curse the heavens and sob until your silk pillowcase is soaked. It’s ok to get up off the bathroom floor and face another day, despite it all.
Ashley Barker
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I SHARE THE BELIEF OF MANY OF MY CONTEMPORARIES THAT THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS PERVADING ALL SPHERES OF WESTERN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY CAN BE REMEDIED ONLY BY A CHANGE IN OUR WORLD VIEW. WE SHALL HAVE TO SHIFT FROM THE MATERIALISTIC, DUALISTIC BELIEF THAT PEOPLE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT ARE SEPARATE, TOWARD A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING REALITY, WHICH EMBRACES THE EXPERIENCING EGO, A REALITY IN WHICH PEOPLE FEEL THEIR ONENESS WITH ANIMATE NATURE AND ALL OF CREATION. – Albert Hofmann
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For more information and to purchase prints, visit:
www.johnfellows.bigcartel.com / instagram.com/jfellows56 CRESTED BUTTE, COLORADO
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Above: Parkin Costain | Below: Jake Hopfinger
Check out Sweet Protection athletes Parkin and Jake in Benshi Creative’s new film:
Live to play another day sweetprotection.com Jonathon Finch