The wind off Swaner Nature Preserve had a November bite this morning. The dark clouds were vogueing above Square Top like it was a winter day. Just idle posturing, no snow fell, but the threat was real and strange for August in the desert. I stopped at the ski rack in the garage to do a quick gear check. What’s going to the Park City ski swap? What do I need to replace?

Sadly it looks like it’s time for my XXXs to wrap up their career. They were a gift from George at Rossignol. He said, “I’m sending you some new tongue depressors, I think this fat ski thing is going to take off.” Seven years later, hundreds of thousands of vert on their scarred bases, one serious injury, two near avalanches, three jobs, four countries, four A-stars, one Bell JetRanger, three pairs of bindings and countless ski resorts…and some kid is going to take them off my hands for $50. There ought to be a graveyard for skis like these; a solemn resting place for workhorses that have done more than their duty. In these hammered bases I see my ski history, each weld represents a gamble that paid off or a bad decision narrowly won. The TGR sticker on the tail is from the Harvest year when my allegiance to one movie company was strong, but it’s scratched to hell and I think I’m past my sticker days.

But next to the XXXs is a spanking new pair of Atomic ReXs with Naxo alpine touring bindings. I skied them three days in the spring and they grooved like pole dancers through every type of snow. But I have yet to use their super-slick touring functionality.

My wife gave me a pair of Atomic TMeXs with Burnt Mountain TeleBulldog step-in bindings. I whaled and flailed my way down the mountain like a movable yard sale, but I can now say I drop the knee. Riding in my pack they felt as light as a pair of cross country skis and every step in the bootpath was easier. They make the peaks seem a little nearer, a little more accessible.

The final pair in the rack is the absurdly wide Fischer Big Stix 10.6. They wait for the deepest days that are sure to come. I live five minutes from the gondola…fifteen minutes from first tracks. The strange weather of this summer hopefully bodes well for an insane winter. And that’s the heart of the Big Stix—deep in the 60” storms, days when crashed snowboarders bob and flail in the bottomless pow like ocean buoys in a hurricane.

But I’ll need something new to fill the slot left empty by my XXXs. Time to begin my new history.

Thanks George.

–John Bresee

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The cusp season of fall into winter is the sweet spot of the year. The water off of Cape Cod is warm, yet the humidity of August is gone. The deep pounding heat of summer in Moab relents and it becomes the desert playground again. In Vermont the spectacular colors are queued up and begin their show. And in San Francisco, the cold 52 degree days of summer end and its 49 square miles of perfect temperature begin.

Weekends are time to scramble and get the long rides in, the multi-day hikes, the last gasp paddling as water levels drop to stone-grind. Finally you have the best lungs and legs of the year and the rides are faster and smoother than ever.

As the nights lengthen beyond what we need for sleep, we sort the summer gear into their storage slots, clean out the deep sand of Burning Man, unpack the sleeping bags and unfurl the Thermarest. We pull out the old Powder Magazine’s and ancient videos. Give, Harvest, Sick Sense, Ski Movie or even Blizzard of Aaahhh’s one more spin.

In October the first few storms roll in from the coast as the jet-stream starts to tease; In November we begin the ritual of checking the snow cams where curiously the best picture is often no picture at all. One storm marks the change, the warm pavement doesn’t fight back as quickly against the snow, the grass doesn’t poke through and suddenly you’re into your next obsession. –John Bresee

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1. Seasonal Death and Rebirth

I’ve always had this feeling that I’ll die young…or youngish–at 41 young is no longer available to me. Assuming I take my dirt nap in less than the industry standard 75 years then I am, somewhat, running out of time. I want to get a number of things done before I shuffle off. Why I don’t know, it’s not like I’ll be sitting by the pearly gates saying, “sweet, I checked off ‘Stay in one of those cool cabins on stilts in the Maldives before global warming wipes the islands away.’” I mean, when you’re dead, you’re dead and presumably at that point you either have larger things on your mind or really, nothing at all. But that doesn’t change the fact that every time Outside or Men’s Journal comes out with a “100 Things You Must Do Before You Die” issue, I’m suckered in. And their lists just don’t jibe with mine. I really don’t need to run with the bulls in Pamplona…it just seems like a pointless brutal exercise.

So, in short, here’s my list:

1. Ski Alaska—I mean really ski it, spend a month, fly with Dean Cummings and ski aspects I won’t have the stomach to ski in five years. Have Paul Claus fly me and some friends into the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and drop us off for two weeks on the glacier….always with the ominous threat that he may not be able to get back to us because of inclement weather.
2. Mountain Bike the San Juan Hut Route (Durango to Moab)—I missed this trip when friends did it before and it sounded like a muddy bloody mess. Can’t wait to check it out.
3. Lotoja—the Logan Utah, to Jackson Hole Wyoming ride. Not just for the cool sticker on my car. A 206 mile one day road ride is epic and I want to say I’ve done it. It’s also a kick-ass training goal. Sadly that amount of saddle time seems to guarantee a nice bout of erectile dysfunction. Sweet.
4. Sail around the Greek islands—nothing gnarly about it, just looks like good clean fun to loll about the deck of a boat in Greece with frosty cocktails and the crisp feel of fresh sunburn.
5. Utah Slot Canyons—All of ‘em. Utah is beautiful beyond words, but the slot canyons, for me, are the pinnacle of the Utah desert experience.
6. Raft the Grand Canyon—ideally on a friend’s trip, but if not then paddle only…not motors please. Three and a half weeks away from everything electronic deep in the Grand sounds like paradise.
7. Appalachian Trail—sadly, this looks farther and farther from the realm of possibility. I just can’t see finding six months for this. But having hiked much of the Long Trail North in Vermont, I long to see more.
8. Chamonix for the winter—I can’t stand crusty French bread, I like mine fresh and soft like the people at Hostess intended. But a winter living among the premiere alpinists, choosing terrifying and exotic massifs to ski might be the finest winter of my life.
9. Haute Route—seems silly to list this after the winter in Chamonix, but it’s my dream and I’m sticking to it. Simply the pinnacle of ski touring.
10. Summit some monster—I’ve never had the “climb it because it’s there” urge. But after forty years of trekking up a slew of relatively piddly peaks, I feel like I need to knock off one big one, just to understand the experience.
11. Alaska to Patagonia—with a big honking V-8 Sportsmobile and all the toys I can stuff in it. Six months on the road.

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1. A letter to Penn

Penn,

I want to tell you about a world you may never get to know. Its fall 2008 and my new skis are on the way…ungodly big mothers that are more than I should be meddling with. The winter is coming, still full of promise and prayer. And you turn three on Sunday and I hope to be taking you skiing soon. It will scare you and excite you and hopefully become for you what it has been for me; a lifestyle, a vocation, a way to find my partner in life and the only connection with an ethereal plane that I have ever known.

In a graceless world I find fluidity and rhythm on the hill. The mountains forgive me my runaway-freight-train-fu that is often described as unwise. But it’s mine and anyone who knows me can spot my plume from miles away.

I want you to feel what I feel Penn, I want you to know the bitter cold of the High Traverse in whiteout, the relentless dumping that seems to be Alta’s gift to the world. I want to ski with you and show you all of the shots that I love. Maybe you will let me tell you the stories of when Dad was unafraid. Of a time when to turn meant to admit defeat.

I am a skier. And Penn, I’d like you to have that chance as well. I just pray for the snow to stay in the mountains for enough years that you can know the pure joy of bottomless relentless foolishly deep powder. And when you ski the deep, may it still exist, perhaps you’ll find a church within and be instilled with a faith that only those who enter the white room can know. And when you do, please pray for it to continue for generations to come. It’s good this thing we do, letting gravity have her way with us, ending up soaked head to toe in powder and happy once again that the world is just as it is.

On a rapidly warming planet I know fresh tracks shouldn’t be my first concern…but on your third birthday and the many you have in the future, they are.

Love Dad

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1. Welcome Penn

Sara is holding my hand as I roll into heart surgery. “You haven’t changed The Will have you?” Uh, no, its minor surgery, it’s like the toe-nail clipping of heart procedures…baby please, focus, healing energy. Her questions continue until the anesthesia kicks. “Who would you like to read your eulogy?” James Earl Jones. Can you think of anything cooler than Darth handling the show? “Where do you want your ashes spread?” Ideally there’ll be no ashes…but she’s onto an interesting question. Easy answer, off the top of Wolverine Cirque, full on paddle-out, everybody hoofing their own way up and taking their own line down, but with prizes for biggest huck and best line, and somehow…somehow Sublime playing really loudly across the whole cirque. These are my thoughts as I drift off.

I wake imagining a list of favorite places and realize I don’t have them as geography but instead as a fusion of locations/times/people that create that perfect, y’know, Zen thing. And sitting by my hospital bed, patiently (for days), is Sara, a storm of tears and bewildered upset trailing across her face.

The moments that I most often try to recreate are the deepest powder days when people stream like ants away from the mountain and the blizzard rages sideways and upside down. On the stormiest days, I like to stop, plunk down trailside in the snow and just hang for a bit. I watch freezing people race home as I sit toasty, layered perfectly with a warm core, clear goggles, wriggling hot fingers. And then I get antsy, because instead of lamenting the intensity of the storm, I soon get to rage right back at it as hard as I can on ungodly powerful skis, busting a track viewed by no one through the deepest snow. Rinse, repeat please.

During the fall equinox I biked the Crest trail with a friend, a pure freerider who descends like mercury and has little patience for “hippy stuff.” A hard snow squall blew across the Solitude ridge-line, heading fast toward our path; we decided to cross back down in a hurry. The fusion of white graupel on brown trail and yellow aspen leaves was intense as we pedaled our legs off. Being at-speed on my bike in bitter weather, yet all of my gear working seamlessly, chasing a ripping rider through epic fall colors, sliding the banks, trying to beat the weather was, well, perfect. The anti-hippy wanted no part of my faux-Zen musings and forced me to chase or be left behind.

Yet if forced, if I just had to choose just one best place/time, I guess I’d go with 6(ish) a.m., September 1^st, 2007, Black Rock City, Nevada, sitting on the hard alkaline soil of the deep playa as the sun rose pink. I wore the perfect piece of gear to sit and watch a cold Burning Man dawn; a GlowFur* jacket powered by sixteen AA batteries, glowing kryptonite green as 47,000 neo-hippy’s dance in the foreground to a thousand different beats, weaving endless fluorescent trails in the desert sky. It’s a very different kind of storm and it’s just too cool. –John Bresee

* www.glowfur.com; courtesy of the king of the playa, David Lee. Respect!

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1. Right time, right place

The steps are becoming smoother…one footfall after another, graupel and crystals spraying from the impact, ankles articulating to off-camber terrain. Somewhere above the tree line you get your physical groove on.

But mentally, ahhh, that’s where the sweet spot really lives—you have finally checked out. Elvis has left the cubicle. The pumping rhythm of your legs and heart are the mantra that enables you to dissolve, for a time, the normal urgent You.

We often make excuses about why we hike, bike, run; we rarely dig beneath the surface. We claim, “it helps clear the mind”, “it’s for our health.” It’s rare that we head into the backcountry announcing, “Gotta be at the church on time.” A house of worship has many doors and many rooms. And yet we sinners fall away from the backcountry; we get lost in the world of pavement, mini-malls and endless cube farms. We forget the healing powers of a clean line, a well-cut skin trail, or a boot pack without false peaks.

All it takes to start back on the path of righteousness is that first painful step on the trail. We sneak away from the office and trundle toward a distant peak, skis strapped to our packs, hydration system a bit skanky from disuse. Quickly the repetitive power of the boot trail starts, and as happens at most Quaker meetings, we melt into our thoughts.

On a good hike your partner only intrudes when they have something meaningful to say. In the Quaker church it’s known as “when the spirit moves you.” And those who are true to the teachings know only to interrupt the reverie of others when what they have to say is meaningful to everyone within earshot. Those are the soulful days.

On powder days worship becomes somewhat like a southern Baptist tent revival. Skiers rip great swaths of untracked while hooting and hollering out of pure rapture. The chairlift riders nod along with each “Wooohoooo” and say “Amen brother. Right on, right on, right on!” Where else in life do we hoot?

And when it’s your turn to testify you nail turn after turn, cutting perfect lines in a pure tapestry of untrammeled snow…and involuntarily the spirit moves you and you get right with The Lord and say, “Wooohooo.” Moments after, your butter pump hammers in your chest as you survey your line, your offering that will quickly disappear…and the riders on the chairlift shout “Amen brother!”

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The patroller wanted volunteers for a probe line. Unfortunately I didn’t know what a probe line was but I figured as long as it wasn’t rectal it beat washing the never-ending pots in the Albion Grill kitchen. In the back of my mind I worried it was yet another in a series of newbie practical jokes that were constantly pulled on me during my first season living in Alta. “You have to wear your beacon at all times on the hill”, “powder cords are a must”, etc. etc. ha, ohh stop, insert belly laugh here, you guys slay me.

I sprinted into my gear, grabbed my shiny, unused Ortovox F1 and beat feet to join the group of far more knowledgeable volunteers than I.

An avalanche had come across the road and one witness thought someone was in it. The powers that be decided it would be bad form to just run the massive snow blower through the slide without giving a quick check for something warm.

We formed up and were handed immense probes. “uhh, how do I know when I’ve found someone?” “What’s a body feel like?”…all these and more I asked. Sensible to me but great big badges of cluelessness to the hardened backcountry goats I was probing next to.

As we probed I could feel my beacon pressed against my chest—turns out when they say wear it close to the body they didn’t actually mean skin-level—and I knew with a hard certainty that the F1 was by far the coolest thing that I owned.

Later, in my two and a half room seven person stanky apartment, I sat cradling the F1 with the crappy ear plug that would never stay in my ear, and listened to the endless BEEP that signaled my roommates Pieps.** It was somewhere past the immense hooka-like bong but not as far as the original Winterstick Swallowtail. I felt confident that if the Pieps had been strapped to a person instead of shoved under a cushion, I would have rescued him quickly.

The drills on snow the next day quickly disabused me of my confidence. The additional dimension of depth really changed the game. That guy would have been stone cold and found sometime in the spring. But through all this the shininess was wearing off and I was learning the first rules of life in the mountains. I learned of the different beep tones of the Ortovox vs. the Pieps, and the importance of dual frequency so that the old timers who weren’t on the new 457 frequency could find you with their ancient SKADIs.*

Over time I learned that the shovel I bought wasn’t just to build kickers; it was also a sled, or part of a backcountry stretcher if you’re more of a MacGyver than I. But the shovel was small, light, and when wielded effectively could move tons of snow in a hurry to save your partners life. My shovel never saved anyone, thank God, but it did help me get my car out time and again. Well, it never lost anyone either…still virginal I guess. One of the earliest lessons I was taught was that if you make the right decisions you probably will never need to begin a search.

These pieces became part of my kit and I treasured them above everything else I owned. It was their quality, their deadly seriousness, their minimalist design that I loved. When I strapped them on I became something other than a college kid avoiding a career—instead I was a backcountry skier.

Over my first two winters I skied many of the classic lines in Little Cottonwood Canyon. I thank those first partners like Bjorn who took me under their arm and taught me what I needed to know. It wasn’t entirely charity, it was his ass on the line as well. And I would have hated to be below the snow with me running the search above.

Every one of us at some point is new to the backcountry. When we are new we rely on those with experience to share it, to help us to understand both the danger and the possibility. The sooner we pass on our knowledge the safer we all are. This isn’t like the line up at Waimea where locals rule. In the backcountry the life you save by sharing everything you know may well be your own.

Three beacons, two shovels later and they are still the best pieces of gear that I own.

–John Bresee

*SKADI’s were the original avalanche beacon developed in 1968. “The word Skadi comes from the old Norse word Skaði, variant Skade. This female is often referred to as the goddess of skis, she traveled on skis, carried a bow, and hunted. She was the daughter of the giant Thiazi, and married Ullr, the god of skis.” –Lou Dawson, WildSnow.com

**The greatest change to the beacon was not going digital but merely the addition of a speaker instead of those terrible ear plugs.

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The cusp season of fall into winter is the sweet spot of the year. The water off of Cape Cod is warm, yet the humidity of August is gone. The deep pounding heat of summer in Moab relents and it becomes the desert playground again. In Vermont the spectacular colors are queued up and begin their show. And in San Francisco, the cold 52 degree days of summer end and its 49 square miles of perfect temperature begin.

Weekends are time to scramble and get the long rides in, the multi-day hikes, the last gasp paddling as water levels drop to stone-grind. Finally you have the best lungs and legs of the year and the rides are faster and smoother than ever.

As the nights lengthen beyond what we need for sleep, we sort the summer gear into their storage slots, clean out the deep sand of Burning Man, unpack the sleeping bags and unfurl the Thermarest. We pull out the old Powder Magazine’s and ancient videos. Give, Harvest, Sick Sense, Ski Movie or even Blizzard of Aaahhh’s one more spin.

In October the first few storms roll in from the coast as the jet-stream starts to tease; In November we begin the ritual of checking the snow cams where curiously the best picture is often no picture at all. One storm marks the change, the warm pavement doesn’t fight back as quickly against the snow, the grass doesn’t poke through and suddenly you’re into your next obsession. –John Bresee

Related posts:

1. Fall

I’m chasing the Pink Girl across the ridge line, riding as hard as my short stems will spin, trying to reach the crest before the snow. The graupel is starting to come in but it’s mostly aesthetic on top of brown trail and yellow aspen leaves. Pink Girl is a fast descender, even though she says she isn’t, so I’m pushing to keep up, sliding the banks, popping off little rocks and everything is just flowing.

Four weeks earlier she’d asked me what my favorite place is and I’d been unable to answer accurately; “uhh, Maui is nice but I also like Alta”, or something.

Somewhere in the Aspens, faster than I should be going, when I didn’t crash, when the steam and heat flowed off of me but the rain and snow were repelled, I hit that moment…I don’t know, I guess it’s that Zen thing. I realize that I’m exactly where I want to be, doing the only thing I want to do, with the right person. “Pink, this is it, it’s not a place, I don’t have a favorite place, I just have favorite moments that I try to recreate.” She looks at me, with mud on her face and says, “fucking duh!”, and rips back into the trail. Zen is not for her.

For the rest of the ride I collect all of those moments in my head: bottomless wallowing deep powder days when I’ve chosen the right skis (Sqauds), right jacket (Burton AK 3L), right gloves (those same leather Scott gloves they have been making for years) and right goggles (Smith Regulator TurboCam- So dorky but so key on deep days). I feel like a gladiator, armored perfectly for the battle. I watch others who have not chosen their gear wisely, streaming back inside. The mountain empties as the storm intensifies and I’m toasty and I just couldn’t be more in the groove.

–John Bresee

Related posts:

1. Same as it ever was…

The heat of summer slides away, and with its passing we set our focus on getting out those last few times before we pack up the bikes, the climbing gear, the boats, the tents in exchange for our winter passions. Every minute seems to count more heavily than the last. It’s that quiet-now voice in the background reminding us that in a few months our minds and bodies will focus wholly on the pursuits of the frozen world; the adventures and epics of the warmer seasons won’t register more than the idle scratching of that scar you picked up on the Crest Trail. Get it while you can. It’s not because we worry we won’t have another opportunity, nor are we upset about the impending onset of winter—far from it, we’re stoked—it’s because that is how we live our lives, as though every moment is more valuable than the last. Seize it. You only live that minute once, whoops, too late, it’s time for the next and the next and….you know it; you live it too. We chase moments as children chase fireflies, and it doesn’t take long before we all realize the objects of our pursuits are ephemeral.

Unabashedly speaking, this very strongly parallels the gear found on these pages. Get it while you can, because in a few moments it will all be gone. Within, find the best deals on the best gear around. As usual, our gearheads scoured the globe for the best of the best, and we pride ourselves on passing those incredible deals on to you. So get in there, get some, and then can get outside and hit it a few more times before the snow flies.

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