All In: The Only Way Out is Down

By Tess Bowler STORY

This article was originally published on April 19, 2023.

This Sunday, after many falls, curse words and newly formed bruises on my body, I discovered I’m not nearly as good of a skier as I thought I was.

It all started when I had a little too much fun on Saint Patrick’s Day in my hometown. After showing my high school friends some photos of the New Hampshire winter, I texted my boyfriend asking if we could ski Tuckerman Ravine next winter — the steep bowl of Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast. This was something he had done several times before, but I had never even attempted. His response: We can actually ski Tucks this spring.

Before receiving that text, skiing in April was something that never crossed my mind. I thought that once temperatures hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit, like they did this weekend, skiing season was dead on arrival. My assumption may have been naive, but let me defend my thoughtprocess here: Unlike the many people that come from all over New England to hunt down the few surviving runs, I don’t really consider myself outdoorsy. Sure, I’ve always been active — as a kid, I played outside a lot and competed in every sport under the sun — but in the fatlands of Nebraska, where I grew up, the closest thing we have to a proper hike is a large hill. Don’t even get me started on the skiing options.

So, standing at the base of Mount Washington in a parking lot full of experienced outdoorsmen and women with their strange, expensive-looking gear, I couldn’t help but think I was a little in over my head — that I was fying blind. Others, however, knew more or less what they were getting into.

Early Tuesday morning, I spoke to Ryan Cooper ’25 on the phone as he drove up to Mount Washington for not the frst, but the second time this past week. Last Thursday, Cooper and fve other Dartmouth students trekked to Huntington Ravine hoping to ice climb, but they found the ice too unstable due to the high temperatures. Instead, they skinned from the base of Yale Gully in Huntington Ravine, where they then traversed from the top of Yale across the Alpine Garden to The Lip, a run on Tucks, in order to ski the bowl.

While Cooper said he had been to “Mount Washington and Huntington Ravine dozens of times” for climbing, this was the only time he’s ever skied down Tucks, which he described as the “premier backcountry destination on the East coast.”

“It was the frst time I’ve done that kind of skiing — very steep [skiing] with a lot of [equipment] on you,” Cooper said. “Committing to the steep section was mentally tough.”

Though Kiki Levy ’24, a member of Dartmouth’s Ski Patrol, was born to two ski-loving parents and has considerable experience with backcountry skiing, this weekend was also her frst time attempting Tucks.

“Doing Tucks was always something that I pushed of last year because I had a midterm or something I felt was more important,” Levy said. “But [this weekend] ended up being one of my favorite Dartmouth weekends ever. It’s kind of a [risk], but it’s so worth it.”

I thought that after Tucks I would be able to preach about how rewarding it is to try something new, and that though you might not succeed at frst, you can ultimately learn something greater about yourself from that experience.

But the reality that I faced was much less poetic than that. Skiing Tucks was more or less a cycle of falling, getting up, attempting to jump, turning, falling again, twisting my skis, getting really mad at myself and trying not to show it. And I’m not even mentioning the hike to the top of the run which requires skiers to climb 1,100 feet at a steady, steep incline in their ski boots.

I’ll admit it: Like most students at Dartmouth, I am a high achiever — unfamiliar and uncomfortable with failure — so when I try something and I’m not good at it, that’s the end of the story. But just as I was beginning to go down a cynical rabbit hole as I refected on my lap, I thought about what I was doing this time last year – or rather, what I was not doing this time last year. And I defnitely wasn’t hiking up part of Mount Washington and skiing down Hillman’s Highway, a run next to Tucks’ main bowl. When I was younger, I skied a lot. My father’s family is full of big skiers and I had aunts, uncles and cousins on my mother’s side that lived in Colorado, so we often went on trips to visit them or go skiing nearby in Utah. But late in middle school — the part of life where you suddenly become conscious of how dangerous things actually are — I had an incident when I was night skiing in Vail, lost control and nearly fell of a steep clif. Though I walked away from this moment injury-free, it instilled one of my frst real fears within me. As a consequence, I shied away from skiing entirely, always coming up with frail excuses as to why my family shouldn’t go on trips to Utah anymore or why I preferred hanging out in the lodge.

When I came to Dartmouth, I hadn’t skied in over 6 years. But amongst the mountains of New Hampshire, I fgured that I couldn’t avoid it, so I might as well from illegal to medical, I think it’s still a pretty low percentage of our student population [that uses marijuana].” Bowden said that regardless of whether the laws change, he wants to make sure students have access to resources about substance abuse and recovery. At the end of the day, the health and wellness of students is his priority, even if that simply means small adjustments in their relationship to drugs.

“As for my position as a healthcare provider, as a counselor, as a substance abuse assistant, the law piece is pretty irrelevant,” Bowden said. “We provide counseling services or educational services that would help to increase a person’s commitment and support of using [marijuana] in a low risk way — [if] that’s just decreasing their usage, sometimes that [small action] can be a win for them.” embrace it. What started as a few blue runs at the Skiway my freshman winter later turned into days spent at Sugarbush, my frst time skinning my sophomore winter and fnally Tucks this spring.

About a little more than halfway down Hillman’s Highway, I fnally managed to land a jump turn. Though I had failed to land it more times than I’d like to admit, I came out with a sense of overwhelming fulfllment and a smile on my face. For most skiers this move is nothing to write home about, but several years ago, I wouldn’t have ever imagined that I could have even attempted something like this, let alone that I picked up skiing again.

So, maybe there is something to be said for failure. Fall on your ass, get up, and try again. Bruises only last for a little while.