BACKYARD
Stories on the Mountain Significant firsts on one of Sea to Sky’s most iconic mountains words :: Feet Banks For any rational skier or snowboarder, daydreams of sliding down Mount Currie command the imagination much in the way the mountain itself dominates the southern skyline from almost anywhere in the Pemberton Valley. More so than the actual height above sea level, much of Currie’s visual allure comes from its web of steep chutes and couloirs and its prominence—the sheer drop from summit to base. “Mount Currie is 2,596 metres or 8,517 feet high,” longtime local Pemberton photographer Dave Steers writes in one of his many odes to the mountain. “It rises 2,300 metres or 7,546 feet above its base. What’s rather amazing is that Mount Everest—while 8,848 metres or 29,029 feet high and consequently a whole lot higher than Currie—rises only 3,500 metres or 11,483 feet. Thus, Mount Currie’s rise is over two thirds that of Mount Everest!” The altitude is, of course, vastly different but many a big mountain tale has been written beneath (and on) the storied slopes of Mount Currie. It was officially named back in 1911 after John Currie, an early settler to the area. For thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years before that, however, the Lil’wat people had their own name for the steep, towering massif: Tzśil, meaning “slides on the mountain” after the numerous avalanches and rockslides that tumble down its face throughout the year, almost as if the mountain itself is alive. The Lil’wat people have legends of massive serpents carving up the rock chutes on the mountain’s north face, and of two mischievous hunters turned to stone up on the western ridge by the Transformers. Since the mid-1980s, skiers from Whistler, Pemberton (and beyond) have added their stories to the mountain, climbing and skiing the same chutes and gullies that helped give the peak its original name. And yet, for all those descents over all those years of steep, deep, and sometimes harrowing ski and snowboard action, there remained a few stories untold…
Talon Pascal drops into the first ski descent of Tzśil by members of the Lil'wat Nation.
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BLAKE JORGENSON