How I Started Ski Touring in the Cascades

I did a bit of skiing when I was a kid, but growing up in Rhode Island, where the highest point in the state is a landfill (literally), there weren’t a lot of opportunities. Some of my friends would go on ski vacations to Maine, Vermont or New Hampshire, but we never had the money to do anything like that. In high school, I dated a girl whose family vacationed at Mt. Snow and they took me with them one time. It was amazing. The chair lift carried me higher than I’d ever been in my life. And once at the top, we skied down massive runs between thick forests of trees painted white with snow. I felt like I was flying. It was the most effortless feeling of freedom I’d experienced in my entire life.  All I had to do was follow my heart’s desire.  In college, I dated another girl whose family had a cabin in Vermont and I went skiing with her and her brothers one time. I don’t remember that trip so much, other than the two of us getting really high and staying up late watching Scooby-Do. 

In 1999, I moved to Oregon for graduate school, and each winter I would do at least one day trip to a local hill – Hoodoo, Willamette Pass or Mt Hood Meadows. I skied just enough to remember how to snowplow my way down a simple blue run. I attempted black diamonds from time to time, but that was usually a shit-show – legs akimbo, skis flung in the air and my pants full of snow. Looking back, I wish I’d done a lot more skiing, but I was confined by a simple factor most would-be-skiers face: cost. It’s a ridiculously expensive sport for someone without a good-paying job. I was a simple grad student making about $1000/month. There was no way I could afford ski gear, let alone a season’s pass. So I stuck with my annual treat of a day at the resort, renting my gear and wearing old coats and worn out rain paints I found at Goodwill. I remember when I bought a pair of goggles for $20 and felt like I had made the biggest splurge.

I moved to Seattle in 2003 for a full-time teaching job, which meant I was making enough to cover rent, student loans and have a little extra for fun. Not wanting to spend all of my winter days in bars and coffee shops (though I did spent quite a few), I thought I’d try snowboarding. It looked like fun and the gear was cheaper than skiing. So I took a few lessons, and was starting to feel pretty comfortable on mellow green runs when a fateful fall on a particularly icy day cracked my L3 vertebra and sidelined me for the rest of the season. The next year, I took a couple more snowboarding lessons, but soon realized that unless the conditions were soft and fluffy, I was probably safer on two planks than I was on one. 

The woman I was dating at the time was an accomplished snowboarder who had lived the ski bum’s life for several years in Colorado. She was making the transition away from snowboarding and was trying to learn telemark skiing (I still have an image of her falling ass over tea kettle; she was surprisingly cute when she yardsaled.) During our exceedingly amicable breakup, she bought me a pair of cross country skis. This was a game-changer. For the price of one lift ticket, I got an entire season’s access to the snow. I could spend hours cruising the hills and valleys of the Cascades, soaking up the rarest treasure in the Pacific Northwest – winter sunshine. It was great exercise and I built a community of friends with whom I’d drive up to the pass, head out for hours at a time and enjoy great conversations while we absorbed the beauty of nature. And while it wasn’t usually as thrilling as downhill skiing, there were several times I found myself flying down a slope with no way to stop. It’s amazing how exhilarating ten miles an hour can be when you can’t make a turn.

But everything changed when my future brother-in-law, Ryan, moved to Seattle. 

Ryan started dating my sister while he was living in Utah and she was in New England. The two of them decided to give it a go and moved to Seattle where they had access to both mountains and family. Ryan was an accomplished climber, skier and ski mountaineer (which sounded absolutely crazy to me.) When he learned that I knew how to ski, he took it upon himself to introduce me to ski touring, which at the time I thought was going to be like cross country skiing, but with better downhill potential. Man, was I wrong.

To begin with, there’s the whole death-by-avalanche thing. Now, I understand that this is a possibility anytime you’re dealing with snow sitting on a slope, which is a prerequisite to any sort of skiing in the mountains. But when we were cross country skiing, we stuck mostly to the groomed trails at the Washington State Sno Parks. The biggest environmental worry we had when cross country skiing was whether there was enough snow to ski on. Now, I had to learn a whole new lexicon to keep from dying under a million tons of rock and ice. This included things like rollovers, terrain traps, surface hoar and storm slabs. Then I had to learn how to use a radio beacon to find my friend buried under six feet of bone-crushing snow and ice, and then how to dig them out should I find their withered frame. However, thanks to science (and good decision making) I realized that by reading avalanche forecasts before leaving home and knowing what to look for in the snowpack, one could largely avoid getting stuck in a slide in the first place. It’s sort of like in sea kayaking when you know to stay on the beach instead of risking a questionable crossing – you can’t get caught in it if you’re not actually in it.

And then there’s the gear.

Downhill skiing is an expensive sport to begin with. Backcountry skiing requires a whole new set of equipment, and none of it is cheap. In addition to the rescue gear – beacon, shovel, probe and backpack – that will run you close to five hundred dollars, you need a completely different set of boots, bindings and skis. I guess you could hike through the snow in alpine boots with your downhill skis strapped to your back (and I’m sure people have done it), but thankfully they’ve made some really cool, lightweight boots, bindings and skis that allow you to walk uphill and then ski downhill. It’s really pretty neat, but it is damn expensive and a hell of a lot heavier than cross country skis. You also need these things called skins, which are what allow you to hike uphill in your skis, an activity known as “skinning”. Skins are the most annoying, finicky pieces of gear you may ever deal with in the outdoors. Covered with carpet on one side and industrial-strength stickum on the other, they’re like five-foot pieces of duct tape you have to apply and remove from your skis while you’re touring. They always get covered in pine needles and snow, and will absolutely make your life miserable unless you treat them with the same care you would a silk shirt. 

So with all of this knowledge in my head, rented ski gear in my possession and Ryan encouraging me along, I was ready to venture into the backcountry. Ryan had a route he’d been wanting to try and so one Saturday morning in the depth of winter he picked me up at an ungodly early hour and drove us to the mountains. 

At the trailhead, he showed me how to properly pack all my gear, put my skins on and and not kill myself while attaching my boots to the skis. We then trundled our way up a snow-covered forest road to a little clearing where Ryan showed me how to do beacon drills. This was cool. I could understand the logic and science. I was learning stuff. The snow was beautiful and I was feeling excited about the rest of the day. 

Then we began the climb.

This is when I realized that, although I thought I was in “good shape”, I really have no idea what “good shape” means. I’m your typical middle-aged, body-conscious yuppy. I do some yoga  in the morning while I read the news on my iPhone. I run a few times a week while listening to my favorite podcasts. My wife and I ride our bikes to get pastries. And before Covid, I’d even spend an hour or so each week at the gym playing with those funny machines they have. So I thought a few hours of ski touring on a Saturday would be no big deal. Again, I was totally wrong.

To begin with, this skinning thing requires a whole different set of muscles than most bipeds ever use. Because my feet were locked into heavy plastic shells and my toes were attached to five foot planks of metal and plastic, I basically used my hip flexors to pull myself up a mountain, often times through knee-deep snow. Before ski touring, the most I used my hip flexors (outside of the bedroom) was the occasional alcohol-assisted forray onto a dance floor. After an hour of skinning uphill, my groins were ready to give up. After two hours, they had gone into full revolt. And by the time we reached the top, I felt like I’d been punched in the nuts. Then of course, I had to ski down the hill I had just climbed, and this wasn’t a nicely groomed run at the local ski slope. No, this was a sixteen inches of thick and soggy Pacific Northwest snow, known locally as “Cascade concrete”. 

Ryan talked about the line we should ski and then he probed the snow, showing me that it was (mostly) safe.  Then I spent several minutes pulling off skins skis, messing with bindings, adjusting boots and flailing around like an idiot in the snow. Finally, confronted with the realization that I had nothing else to do but start skiing, I turned to Ryan with expectant anticipation. He looked back at me and said, “Isn’t this great!” He then proceed to bounce like a gazelle across a snow-covered Serengeti as he flowed effortless down the slope. He looked absolutely beautiful. It was inspiring, really. And so I steeled my nerve, pointed my skis downhill and followed after. 

Pure bliss ensued. I felt like I was flying over the white-rimmed tree tops as my body and soul became one with the mountain. I was released.

And then I tried to turn.

Instantaneously, my body and soul were thrown headlong into the thick, globular snow. The skis, obeying their own call to gravity – but still attached to my feet – sailed off to the side, twisting my legs in angles not seen outside of Cirque du Soleil. My arms somehow managed to be both behind my back and under my legs at the same time. And my head finally came to rest somewhere near my left buttock, buried under a foot of snow.

“Woohoo! Isn’t it awesome!” Ryan shouted from somewhere below me.

I searched for my mitten-encased hand, determined which way was up and slowly raised a fist of pride into the air. 

“FRUMPK YEH!!!” my muffled voice shouted through he snow, trying to muster as much gnar-shredding cool as my mangled body could manage.

Somehow, I found my way to my feet, brushed off the snow, took a deep breath, peed my pants, and continued down the slope, twisting and jerking my way between trees, snow covered stumps and the occasional ice covered Volkswagen (at least that’s what they looked.) Did I fall again? You bet I did. I did fall a lot? Oh yes. When I got home that night, did I drink three beers, take two Advil and soak in the tub for an hour while contemplating a trip to the ER because I thought I had ruptured my spleen? The details on that one are a bit fuzzy. 

It was after that first ski tour I began to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of Type 2 Fun. While Type 1 Fun offers immediate enjoyment (think of eating a delicious meal, watching a great movie, or even a skiing an awesome run at a resort), the rewards of Type 2 Fun are felt after the experience itself. Depending on your personality, examples of Type 2 Fun may include things like running a marathon, cleaning your oven or spending the holidays with your family. With this first ski tour, the reward came long after the tour itself was over and I could look back on those few fleeting moments and feel like I had really pushed myself, discovered something beautiful and survived to share it with other crazy-ass people who for some odd evolutionary reason like to do the same thing.

And so I was hooked. I bought my own alpine touring setup, found a group of like-minded fools and now spend winter weekends dry-heaving my way up snowy slopes for the chance to make a few turns on the way down.