Some of the most important things that happened this winter.
Words: John Clary Davies and Heather Hansman
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. No, really, it
was. Despite the losses we sustained, and the snow we didn’t ski, this
winter was still full of highlights, and really high ones at that.
Here’s what we’re going to remember from this winter.
Powder turns 40
In 1972, the following poem ran in the first issue of POWDER magazine:
There are mountains that i have come from
and mountains i will go to.
the mountains have shown me a love,
a happiness, that must be shared.
In December 2011, POWDER editors, writers, photographers, readers
and the skiers that graced the pages gathered in Sun Valley, where Dave
and Jake Moe started the magazine 40 years earlier as a rebuke to the
prevailing ski titles at the time. “To us powder means freedom…” the
editors wrote in that first issue. To celebrate the anniversary,
everybody in Sun Valley that weekend got free. -J.C.D.
Deaths rock the skiing world
This winter was overshadowed by death. We lost a lot of skiers—good
ones, people who were pivotal to the sport and to our communities, and,
for a lot of us, integral to why we started skiing in the first place.
It hurts any time there’s a death in the skiing world, and it hurts
even more when it feels close to home and when the hits keep coming.
This season, more than any in recent memory, made us question if
skiing is worth the risk, and why we still love it. But it is, and we
do, and we’re going to keep believing in Sarah, and getting rad for
Rudolph and skiing hard for them, and for Jamie Pierre, Steve Romeo,
Jim Jack, Johnny Brennan, Chris Onufer, and the other skiers we lost to
the mountains this winter. -H.H.
Snowfall disappoints, unless you’re from Alaska
By Christmas, it had snowed a total of 26 inches at Squaw Valley.
The area wouldn’t break 100 inches until mid-February. The previous
winter, Squaw broke the century mark on Nov. 23. It was that kind of
season from Tahoe to Utah, where Alta saw its lowest snowfall in its
online records, to Killington, which recorded its weakest snowfall,
too.
But it wasn’t all bad. It snowed 865 inches in Alyeska this season.
Teton Gravity Research decided to base their entire film there, while
countless jib crews took their winches north. Meanwhile, in the
Northwest, both Whistler and Mount Baker set snowfall records for the
month of March, during which Baker received 260 inches. -J.C.D.
Ski movies get creative
Photo: Sweetgrass Productions
This year’s batch of big-name ski movies was largely predicable:
Sage and Dana went big in Alaska, Ingrid skied pow, and Ahmet got
twisty on some rails. Cool? Yes. Innovative? Not really. But small
production houses, like Sherpas Cinema and Sweetgrass Productions,
turned out creative, plot-focused, incredibly well-shot films that
we’ll be watching for a long time. And we’re not the only ones who feel
that way (cough,
Powder Awards Movie of the Year,
cough). Even non-skiers took notice, as JP Auclair’s street segment
from All.I.Can. went extra viral and Switchback Entertainment’s
The Freedom Chair won major accolades at Banff and X-Dance. -H.H.
Josh Dueck lands first sit ski backflip
Photo: X Games 2011
In 2004, Josh Dueck, at the time a freestyle skiing coach, became a
full paraplegic after overshooting a jump while attempting a backflip.
Eight years later, with a serious middle-finger to paralysis, Dueck
landed a backflip in his sit ski for a
Salomon Freeski TV episode.
The clip has nearly 750,000 views and landed Dueck on the Ellen show.
Earlier this season, Switchback Entertainment chronicled Dueck’s story
in a short film called
The Freedom Chair. The film won the
2012 Powder Video Award for Best Documentary. “You know don’t what kind
of curveballs life is going to throw you,” says Dueck during his
acceptance speech. “But you just do what you do and you make the most
of it and you enjoy the good times.”-J.C.D.
Airbags blow up
After Elyse Saugstad credited her ABS airbag with saving her life in an
avalanche at Stevens Pass in February, brands like BCA sold out of
their airbag packs, EVO and other stores couldn’t keep them in stock,
and casual sidecountry skiers started wearing them. Next year, The
North Face and Dakine will be making airbag-compatible packs for the
first time. Despite their statistically high level of success—the Swiss
avalanche institute found skiers with ABS packs to have a 97 percent
survival rate—airbags aren’t a perfect safety net. Days before the
Stevens slide, Telluride skier Nathaniel Soules died in an avalanche in
Bear Creek when his airbag shredded after he deployed. -H.H.
It’s the winter of Wally
Tom Wallisch. Photo: Reddick/Taylor/Smith
On his final run at Winter X in Aspen, Tom Wallisch was behind Nick
Goepper in the standings. Wallisch opened his run with an uncanny ollie
five feet up to a rail casing, then stomped a backside 450 out. The
judges gave his run a 96.00, good enough for first place and the
highest slope score ever. Even the commercial breaks were full of
Wally, as his North Face and Verizon spots ran regularly during the
event. The 25-year-old University of Utah student went on to win the
Killington and Breckenridge Winter Dew Tour stops, and took second at
Winter X in Tignes. He even beat out Shaun White, Kelly Slater, Kelly
Clark, Travis Rice and Travis Pastrana, among others, (as a 10-seed, no
less) to win the 16-person ESPN Action Sports star bracket, voted on by
the public. -J.C.D.
The Olympic’s influence creeps into freeskiing
When slopestyle and halfpipe skiing became official Olympic events
last spring, the sports started changing. Judging and courses start to
become more standardized. In November, the USSA named the slope and
pipe teams, which include Tom Wallisch, Bobby Brown, Jen Hudak, and
Torin Yater-Wallace, who all started reporting to the USSA Center of
Excellence in Park City for coaching, diet tips, and blood tests.
Athletes like Hudak, who had been fighting hard for Olympic inclusion,
say they’ve been waiting their whole lives to represent their country,
but others worry that things will become more cookie cutter, corporate,
and overly serious, given what’s at stake. -H.H.
Kaya Turski lands first switch 10
When Kaya Turski
stomped a switch 10
on the final jump of the women’s slope course in Aspen, her father
jumped in the air and yelled, “History!” And he was right. It was the
first time a female had landed the trick at Winter X, and by doing so,
Turski, the last competitor in the field, jumped from third place to
first, and claimed her third consecutive slopestyle gold medal. Turski
went on to win Winter Euro X, the Dew Cup, and the US Grand Prix
slopestyle comps this season. -J.C.D
The Mainstream media hypes the danger of skiing
You GUYS, it turns out that you can get hurt, or even killed,
skiing, and Brian Williams is on it. Our sport got some unfortunate
media exposure when a MSNBC special, called “The Death Zone,” focused
on Squaw skiers who have recently died from skiing. Sherry McConkey and
Robb Gaffney make cameos, and have thoughtful insight, but overall,
skiing is portrayed as dangerous and reckless. Then, HBO Real Sports
takes a look at backcountry skiing and says that, “you’d have to be
insane” to ski in the backcountry. They interview Tanner Hall who says
that we need to keep progressing skiing in the backcountry. And that he
wants to ski on Mars. You win, liberal media, you win.-H.H.
On
Christmas Day, 1965, Muskegon, Michigan’s Sherman Poppen’s pregnant
wife, Nancy, wanted their two daughters, Wendy and Laurie, to play
outside so she could get some rest. When the girls were disappointed
they couldn’t safely stand up in their sled to go down the snow-covered
dunes in their backyard, Poppen fastened together a pair of kid’s skis
and after some tweaking invented Muskegon’s most famous toy, the
Snurfer. The rest, as they say, is history. By 1968 Muskegon was
hosting the World Snurfing Classic, and Poppen licensed the Snurfer
name to Brunswick, which sold over a million of the proto-snowboards by
the early 1980s. And even though Poppen didn’t actually bother to take
up snowboarding until he was in his late 60s, he’s still considered the
father of the sport, honored by the Olympic Committee when snowboarding
was inducted into the Games. Poppen is being honored by the Muskegon
Chamber of Commerce at a ceremony this week. Via 
