The Ski Journal • Volume 15, Issue 3 • BACKCOUNTRY MACGYVER

Whatever it takes. Peter digs into a deep bag of homemade tricks to get up and out into the North Cascades backcountry off of Washington state’s Highway 20. Photo: Scott Rinckenberger

Surely Vesta Stoudt, the Illinois mother that invented duct tape in the 1940s, had no idea her creation would inspire generations of ski-bum gear-hacking, but these days her creation adorns aging puffies in mountain towns everywhere, like utilitarian badges of honor. I never met Vesta, but I like to think she’d get a kick out of that.

Yet duct tape is merely a manifestation of a more telling part of the ski psyche. At our core, skiers are problem solvers. The activity itself was created so early humans could finally track and hunt wild game in deep winter. Similarly, most skis since have been designed to address an issue, whether that be linking an easier turn, reducing chatter at high speed, or, in the monoski’s case, keeping ski friends on a powder day to a bare minimum.

But skiing has also created its own problems. Cost continues to be one of its most glaring barriers to entry—both to getting into the sport and to staying there. Our sense of cool is another—that there’s a certain way to look, a certain way to act (and ski) in order to be inducted into the cult of mountain chill. And yes, magazine editors might be the biggest perpetuators of it all.

To solve those problems, there’s Peter Larsen. I met Peter at the bottom of Washington Pass near North Cascades National Park—part of a group headed to ski a recent burn off Highway 20. He was decked out in head-to-toe orange, a walking traffic cone with a mustache. Quietly, he pulled more and more ski equipment from his yellow Chevy truck. But this wasn’t gear from a factory assembly line. This was a backpack with glued-on strap-line water bottle holders fashioned from old rubber bracelets. Powder leashes made of bungee cords and empty film canisters. Two pairs of skins sewn together to cover the 120 mm waist of his 25-year-old Voiles. In fact, aside from his avalanche beacon, shovel and probe, Peter’s equipment was almost entirely DIY.

The setup wasn’t born of cultural defiance, nor a middle finger to a sport obsessed with the newest technology. For this Backcountry MacGyver, home-tinkered gear was a means to a snowy end, innovations necessary to keep skiing, no matter what. None of these creations were heading to market anytime soon, and he sure as hell wasn’t trying to influence-ize the internet.

After sledding to the turnaround, our group rose through a sea of scorched timber. Peter moved at his own pace. His hunting bibs breathed like fluorescent Saran Wrap, but they got him there, he liked them, and that was good enough.

Topping out on the ridgeline, he pulled a soft SpongeBob SquarePants lunch box out of his backpack. Sensing our questioning stares, he said, “Just big enough for a six-pack,” handing around his frosty bounty.

While we tugged at featherlight future fabrics and adjusted ergonomically designed hip straps, Peter worked on the bike handlebar wraps he’d wound around his aging ski poles and took a pull from his chest-strap water bottle. He joined our group as we dropped, one by one into the burn below. We yo-yoed the slope together, all of us tapping into the familiar gravitational euphoria of steep, untracked snow.

Back at the sleds, we shared a secret grin. But while the rest of our group hurried to get back to cell service and wifi hotspots, Peter slid over to a sun umbrella he’d covered with an old cargo parachute. The makeshift tent wrapped over his sled, trapping the heat from its cooling engine. Methodically, he started peeling off outerwear layers and prepped some sausage for a portable grill. As we started our trek to the parking lot, Peter collapsed into a lawn chair that, like so much of his ensemble, seemed to appear out of nowhere. After all, there was still light in the valley, and he had nowhere else to be.

The Ski Journal - Volume 15, Issue 3

BACKCOUNTRY MACGYVER

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