A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to land some good turns up at the Highlands. There was a foot of fresh (ahem), few stumps, and safe conditions...prime. It was no new routine to me. My buddies and I had trecked similar ridges and lines since my days as a freshmen, but for some reason or another, I finally noticed something perplexing: where the hell were all the snowboarders?
Without pointing the figure at the lax standards of marijuana distribution these days (I have no problem with it...go legislature), it appears that boarders, at least in Missoula, simply don't care to earn the turns anymore. I have had several instances in the backcountry where it has been me and a dozen telemarkers, all of whom look at my snowshoes as if I were wielding a beeper, and the plain fact is...I'm lonely. So what the hell is going on? Why am I now alone in an esoteric realm once so familiar to me?
Perhaps it is a problem with standards. We as snowboarders face a vexing handicap in the backcountry. Our boards are bulky, our snowshoes suck, and the only equipment shops specializing in board equipment these days are overrun with "dudes." So less I purchase some retro douchebag threads or ditch my beloved new Custom X, I am doomed to dig for tracks amongst the proposed scholars of backcountry, also known as Telemarkers. And I have to admit...I am beginning to waver.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Hits and Ho's...Winter
Most Missoulians are interconnected in sentiment during the winter season. Powder days bring prosperity while dry freeze temperatures bring dismay. It’s a simple cause and effect system for what is still, but not for long, a simple town. And the point of it, well, is that despite the perpetual gray veil that hangs over Missoula like guilt over an Irish Catholic, we endure and seem to survive for what is sometimes, an interminable 6 months. And, like always, with every color clad, Patagonia fiend, a few turns and trips to the white room can alleviate what is for others, forever.
Disparities exist in other corners of the state. Butte I know is not even worth mentioning being that it perpetually holds the temperature of an ice box, despite the teasing blue skies. Eastern Montana and beyond is more like purgatory being that if you live there during the winter, you wish yourself dead to begin with, and around Glacier to south of Hamilton well…I’m afraid plain ignorance is to blame for lack of a comment. It is in Bozeman and the million stories of signatures in the blank, untracked faces of Big Sky and the now infamous schlasmans (or however the hell you spell it) that make me think just how relative the winter experience is in Montana.
Winter for me is an exercise in patience. Most days are trials of adding insult to injury, waking up in darkness only to leave work in the same predicament. I have endured seven winters in Missoula and it never gets easier. My mountain bike sits neglected and ornamental, my climbing gear collects dust, and I am continually grinding my teeth at the spiked prices even Snowbowl, which is the dime hooker of snow resorts, is charging for lift tickets. But, like always, I simply cannot pass up a cheap fling, even if inflation hasn’t spruced up the old whore.
In respect the majority of us Missoulians, and Montanan’s for that matter, are whores in winter. We submit our pride to those pimp mountains in hopes that we will accrue what profit we gave up. Or more benign, we simply want what is owed to us, what we expect in return for the dull skies, black ice, sleet, slush, and shite: a pristine moment, if only brief (for it always is), to make us realize that sometimes, winter can’t be long enough.
Disparities exist in other corners of the state. Butte I know is not even worth mentioning being that it perpetually holds the temperature of an ice box, despite the teasing blue skies. Eastern Montana and beyond is more like purgatory being that if you live there during the winter, you wish yourself dead to begin with, and around Glacier to south of Hamilton well…I’m afraid plain ignorance is to blame for lack of a comment. It is in Bozeman and the million stories of signatures in the blank, untracked faces of Big Sky and the now infamous schlasmans (or however the hell you spell it) that make me think just how relative the winter experience is in Montana.
Winter for me is an exercise in patience. Most days are trials of adding insult to injury, waking up in darkness only to leave work in the same predicament. I have endured seven winters in Missoula and it never gets easier. My mountain bike sits neglected and ornamental, my climbing gear collects dust, and I am continually grinding my teeth at the spiked prices even Snowbowl, which is the dime hooker of snow resorts, is charging for lift tickets. But, like always, I simply cannot pass up a cheap fling, even if inflation hasn’t spruced up the old whore.
In respect the majority of us Missoulians, and Montanan’s for that matter, are whores in winter. We submit our pride to those pimp mountains in hopes that we will accrue what profit we gave up. Or more benign, we simply want what is owed to us, what we expect in return for the dull skies, black ice, sleet, slush, and shite: a pristine moment, if only brief (for it always is), to make us realize that sometimes, winter can’t be long enough.
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