Vulnerable Adult Learners.

There is a general hunger, amidst a Covid-battered public, for our extreme sports. I am a surf journalist, of course, and have plied my trade on the ocean’s edge but oooooeee. If there ain’t ten times as many utter VALs (Vulnerable Adult Learners) in the water. 20 times. It’s a dangerous disaster of people not knowing what they’re doing, clogging already tight breaks.

Making life hell.

In the mountains, my birthright, things are downright out of control. Utah is in the midst of its deadliest avalanche season on record. Experts blame Covid creating a severe hunger for our extreme sports, exorbitant resort costs driving these VALs to the backcountry, a tough snowpack.

Per The Salt Lake Tribune:

One of the hottest commodities last spring, just after coronavirus outbreaks shut down ski resorts, was climbing skins. As hard to find as toilet paper and hand sanitizer, stores couldn’t keep the long strips — lined with nylon or mohair and attached to skis for easier uphill traversing — on the shelves. Online outlets had them on back order.

Diegel said that was a natural extension of a trend that has developed over the past decade. Though alpine ski growth has mostly remained stagnant since the late 1970s, backcountry touring has experienced a surge of interest, propelled mainly by gear that made accessing and skiing the backcountry both easier and safer. But it also gained momentum from a backlash against the expense, hassle and restrictions of skiing or riding at resorts.

Between the start of the 2016 season and the 2019 season, Snowsports Industries America reported sales of alpine touring equipment and backcountry accessories grew 81%. In a report last month, SIA’s Nick Sargent said alpine touring sales swelled by 104% between August 2019 and March 2020. And that didn’t include splitboards — a snowboard that can be split into two planks and used like skis for uphill travel — which he said added another $5 million in sales nationwide.

“There wasn’t much that was needed to push people over the edge, but the whole COVID thing pushed people over the edge,” Diegel said. “Some people bought puppies and some people made sourdough bread and some people bought a lot of backcountry gear that they’d been thinking about buying for a while anyway.”

Etc.

But how to fix? Shame VALs severely? Sort a modern way to clip tickets?

Help!

Hello, tomorrow.

Travis Rice saunters toward the Continuum hotel breathing heavily, fully geared, snow dappled. Exhausted. A random European stops his progress, begs for a picture, compliments him for what he had witnessed.

The “great days of snowboard ever.”

Travis, ever gracious, talks story from the hill, leans in and throws his patented devil horns.

He has just come down from that Natural Selection course, working shoulder to shoulder all day with the crew, tearing platforms off the features, breaking down what can be broken down.

Nature hath selected and to nature it shall return, mostly so some random European inspired by the broadcast doesn’t come and try to Austin Sweetin.

There were many inspired random Europeans. Chileans, Australians, Canadians, etc., Americans too. An absolutely shocking amount who tuned into both the first day and the final day, witnessing snowboarding’s re-birth.

That’s what it felt like, what it became, over the week and was spoken about over, over and over again.

Snowboarding’s re-imagining.

Foremothers and fathers lauded, a style of riding they pioneered taken to a next level, love of powder, progression, punk, not caring about anything but going as big as one could, impressing gathered sisters and brothers, impressing the ghosts of snowboarding past.

The week was about snowboarding.

“Thank you, snowboarding” was what Mark McMorris uttered from the balcony at the Natural Selection afterparty award’s show and he meant it. He was happy to be part of a crew of derelicts, of ne’redowells, of stone cold bastards and bastard-ettes.

Mark McMorris is a multi-gelded Olympian yet this was his moment. He had gone to the last iteration of Natural Selection in Bald Face, four-odd years ago, and tomahawked down that bald face like an embarrassment but, there, he realized what and who he wanted to be and became in extraordinary fashion.

Shaun White was here early, also a multi-gelded Olympian though not a part of the crew. Crew-adjacent maybe. A bastard but not stone cold. Shaun rode the Olympic hype, that Flying Tomato, Target, Us Weekly-thing to great success but snowboarding died under his watch. Not the kid dreaming, kid skinning into backcountry, kid jibbing in his derelict town imagination but some greater unifying vision.

He left before Mark McMorris hoisted his moose antler, proclaimed this was the most important thing he’s ever been part of, thanked snowboarding, shined a spotlight on some new greater unifying vision.

This matters.

It matters because it is absurdly fun, because it is destructively fun. Because it has a history, because it resonates, because it is rotten, because it is… stupidly real.

In this broken era, snowboarding feels like salvation. Pointing down a hill, doing powder turns, doing icy wind-buffed side-slips, poking into trees, remembering what it feels like to sail airborne, remembering what it feels like to fall and fall hard, laughing or crying about it with friends at the 4 pm end to a day is salvation.

An obscenely rose-lensed summation from a damned surf journalist?

Certainly and this surf journalist asked the very same question while backcountry-ing fresh powder at the beginning of the week with the world’s finest snowboard journalists.

“In surfing, new participation is the end, the curse,” I said. “Why do you even put up with my presence?”

“All snowboarding requires is for someone willing to hike to the next peak,” one responded, while beckoning to the surrounding mountain ranges bathed in cold light. “Someone willing to push slightly further.”

All of this feels like the next peak.

Something glorious.

A naively positive conclusion from a cursed surf journalist?

Obviously.

Travis Rice pushes into the Continuum hotel and is immediately accosted by media, professional, personal requests.

He smiles and throws his patented devil horns.

Börk.

The aerial tramway creeps into the swirling, whirling below-freezing snow billows halfway up the grand teton, chilling the air but not the mood. An impossible-to-suppress energy percolates and for good reason. The corrugated metal floor, red siding, tinted windows with iconic silhouette of cowboy bucking bronco is the very lap of luxury.

Early ups.

Two trams head from the base of the mountain 4139 vertical feet to the highest point at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort each morning before official day opening leaving a virginal expanse for an hour, or such. Slots on those trams are allocated to certain guides, celebrities, professional snowboarders and skiers, politicians, persons of note.

That lame Tom’s Shoes guy, who refuses to mask up, and I wish he would not due Covid but because he is spewing some utter nonsense to his pals.

A surf journalist, today, but not because he is a surf journalist. The only perk in a surf journalist’s life is increasingly rare text messages from the World Surf League’s senior vice president of brand identity.

No, he is here because his young daughter’s godmother is mountain royalty.

Jody Kemmerer.

A rare American blue blood psychotherapist who alternates time fixing inmates at New York’s Riker’s Island, chatting with the Karmapa Lama over yak butter tea in Tibet and snowboarding faster than anyone I know.

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort belongs to her and, today, she is bringing this surf journalist and a famous chef Fredrik Berselius, owner of two Michelin stars, co-owner of Aska, one time model, from New York as her guests.

It’s colder, now, and I look around the lap of luxury and see big wave professional surfer Ian Walsh. He comes from Maui but, like many surfers, has a serious powder addiction. I don’t know who his patron but also know it’s not as good as mine. I see professional snowboarder Blake Paul and we discuss his Natural Selection Round 1 victory over Elias Elhardt, his upcoming heat against Austen Sweetin. The two rode together the previous day, spending time in Dick’s Ditch, and are chuffed that one will knock the other out.

It’s coldest, now, as the tram docks at its final station and that impossible-to-suppress energy bursts through the sliding doors into a blizzard but deep, fresh, fluff lies below, untracked, and everybody knows it.

Even Ian Walsh.

The lucky few huddle outside Corbet’s Cabin, the waft of freshly baking, legendary waffles floating through the door, cleaning goggles, jumping, keeping warm. A sense vibrates through that the ok will be given soon.

The group moves, as one, onto the snow. And when the ski patrol lifts his hands, giving the go, a hoot fills the air. I already have my bindings strapped down, having received a stern talking-to, the previous night, from my ex-professional snowboarder wife who seethed at me not to hold anyone up. I am taking her spot and promised not to bring shame upon the family.

Jody snowboards fast.

Down I slide, traversing blind across the windswept ice until vision and snow magically reappear and…

…absolute perfection.

Knee deep, at least, and entirely smooth, without a mark. I put my ugly scrawl on it but didn’t hold anyone up, racing after Jody and Frederik, following them into the trees and feeling silly joy, hollering and hearing their hollers too. In front of me but not so far in front that my wife would seethe.

We float all the way to the Sublette quad and kick on with the resort still unopened. Chasing at least one, maybe two, more tabula rasas.

On the chair, Fredrik talks about how much he loved t-bars in his native Sweden. I knew he was Swedish, living in New York, but it struck me for the first time in that moment.

He is a Swedish chef.

A Swedish chef.

The Swedish Chef is my childhood hero, artistic inspiration, north star in practicing surf journalism.

And now snowboard journalism.

Börk, börk, börk, börk, börk, börk, börk.

I spend the next two stainless canters carefully observing Fredrick’s lines, soaking in the wizardry.

Learning everything I can.

Trying to keep Jody in my line of sight.

Trying not to bring shame on my family.

At the end of the day, stumbling back to the hotel, I see Ian Walsh. We fist bump, surfers in a strange world, comrades. I ask him how he liked it.

“Felt like heli drops…” he says. “Mind blown.”

“Börk,” I respond.