Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25165
THE LEGEND OF THE SNOW SNORKEL TEXT: MITCHELl!.. scan "I REMEMBER THE DAYS WHEN THE SNOW WAS SO DEEP WE'D HAVE TO SKI WITH SNORKELS JUST SO WE COULD BREATHE." 72-YEAR-OLD SNORKEL SKIER Th is is a true story ... 1111. It was the day they had been waiting for their entire lives. In the heart of one of the biggest storms in years, two snow-covered skiers inched their way upwards through the backcountry toward a descent of unimaginable depth. They followed a fresh skin-track. A couple of other skiers had passed before them leaving a trench over two feet deep, and already it was starting to fill in with light, dry snow. They lived for conditions like this. They had recently given up the city life and wet snow of the coast for minimalist digs in a small , hipped-out ski-town in British Columbia's snow-blessed southern interior. They arrived in search of full immersion. Now they lived in the middle of some serious mountains where the frequency of savage snowstorms replaced the rat race. At the summit they caught up with two longtime locals deskinning and preparing to descend. They knew that this face, this descent, in these con- ditions, was the only place in the world to be. The circumstances were epic. Too much snow to count, a freak combination of cool temperatures and major pre- cipitation. Powder had been fa lling for days. The slope stability was good and right now each flake that fell was a perfect six-sided crystal. One by one they stacked like a deck of cards, trapping within them tiny caverns of air, creat- ing waist-deep powder that was, by all definitions, perfect. This was going to be the run of their lives. Just as the two locals were about to drop in , they pulled snorkels from their packs, placed mouthpieces in bearded mouths and tucked the tubes up and under their goggle straps. The young skiers looked on in astonishment as the snorkelers released massive contrails, ripping all the way to the va lley floor in a gracefu l explosion of snow. They cou ld barely be seen through the bil- lowing trail of sky-sent crystals left in their wake. Of course, the young skiers knew the legend, but they thought snorkel skiing was trapped in an age gone by, when the world was colder and the storms bigger. Now, right in front them, the legend had come to life. Slaveri ng in anticipation, the two dropped in to find themselves chest-deep but only able to link two or three turns before having to stop and evacuate their lungs of frozen crystals. In glazed, red-eyed stares at one another, with smiles stretching ear to ear between coughing fits, they realized that this was the day- the rare day you needed a snorkel. Very few skiers experience such a day. Envision it: Snow billowing over your head, being encapsulated by so much snow that visibility is excit- ingly random, and wildest of all , your breath comes, rubber-tinged, through the Darth Vader-like sound and rhythm of a_snorkel. For many skiers, this little rubber tube is the reason they tour the backcountry 40 days a year, watch The Weather Channel I ike others watch Survivor and commit a big portion of their lives to riding snow. A five-dollar hunk of breathing apparatus is the center of an entire, obsessed demograph- ic . All so that on one day, one very special day, they can pull from their pack the cherished J-shaped grai l, and descend through snow so deep that breath can only come by gripping a mouthpiece tight and inhaling the cold oxygen that swirls behind a snow-caked hat. That day-that moment-they can for- ever lock in their memory and retell without exaggeration. They wi ll have joined powder skiing's apogee: The esteemed realm of snorkel skiers . •