Backcountry skiing with my mom helped me build confidence in the mountains.
Originally published: Powder Magazine
I brace myself against the icy slope as another gust of wind blows straight up the scoured couloir we’re climbing. Strapped to my pack, my skis act like a sail in the wind as I kick hard into the rotten mixture of ice and rock, trying to gain my footing.
I look behind me to make sure my mom is still there. She’s only about 30 feet below me, but the winds are howling enough that she can’t hear anything I shout. She’s taking slow, careful steps and I can tell she’s scared. After a few more steps she joins me next to a large boulder I’ve hunkered behind to block the wind and we huddle together to rest a moment and gather our courage for the final pitch.
“Am I ski mountaineering?” she asks me, grinning. I laugh and hand her my Whippet to use for the last steep section of the bootpack.
My mom is my favorite backcountry ski partner. She’s strong, smart, always the first to whoop and holler when she’s having fun, and can outlast anyone on the skintrack if good turns are on the line. She also carries extra snacks for me, which comes in handy when I’m trying to keep walking as long as she can.
Backcountry skiing is our mother-daughter time, and it’s been that way since eight years ago when we slapped on our first pair of skins and timidly planned our first ski tour.
My mom and I have always been close, but as a 16-year-old girl who’s number one priority was walking, talking, and dressing like every other 16-year-old girl, our time together rarely included outdoor adventures. Despite my high-maintenance teenage attitude, we’d both gotten hooked on powder skiing after a few days in Crystal Mountain’s inbounds hike-to terrain and signed up for a women’s introductory backcountry clinic to figure out how to venture further on our own. We spent an evening at the Evo ski shop in Seattle to get set up with touring gear and safety equipment, and the next day our group of beginners skinned out of bounds near Crystal with a handful of female ski patrollers and guides.
Looking back, to be guided so gently into a sport as rough around the edges as backcountry skiing was a huge gift. At the time, I had mixed feelings. My rental boots were agonizing on my feet, I was embarrassingly out of shape, and the concept of a kick turn seemed like an unnecessary performance of acrobatics. But despite the frustration, it was impossible to ignore the addictive reward of earning our own turns, and being on the same footing as total newbies created a new dimension to my mom and my relationship.
Thus began our very clumsy entrance into the world of backcountry skiing.
Our first season in the backcountry wasn’t pretty. We trudged around on heavy frame bindings, took Avy 1, got lost, got passed by dozens of mansplainers, and sometimes bootpacked in the skintrack when we couldn’t make a kick turn. I cried a few times (high school girl, remember?), sweat through layers that were totally inappropriate for ski touring, and we both got scared and bailed on a lot of lines.
But slowly, it got easier. Skinning felt more natural, we got better at reading terrain, learned where to find the best snow, and developed confidence as a duo in the mountains. When we ventured into the backcountry we became partners, working together to make decisions, push ourselves, and inspire confidence in each other.
When I got tired, she set the pace. When she was scared, I skied first. And when we were hungry, we ate lots of peanut butter cups.
I’ll always rely on my mom, but skiing together in the backcountry gave me the chance to prove that she could rely on me too.
Watching her learn to backcountry ski in her fifties has taught me to never be afraid to try something new—to put myself out there, push aside my pride, and embrace new and scary experiences with open arms.
Living in separate states now, we don’t get to ski together as often as we did while we were stumbling into a life of backcountry skiing. But while our outings are limited to a handful of trips each year, our ski days have gotten longer, our objectives bigger, and tears are kept to a minimum. And we sure as hell don’t bootpack on the skintrack anymore.
Back in the Tetons, my mom and I crank down our boots on top of our line and agree on a safe zone about 1,000 feet below. “You take it,” I tell her, and she gives me a quick pole tap before pushing off into a sea of boot-top powder. I watch her arc turns down the steep slope, thinking about the days we spent floundering around and second guessing ourselves.
I wait for her to give me a shout before pointing my skis down, giddy with gratitude at how lucky we are to share the pure and wild joy of exploring high places on skis.