Words: Clare Menzel 2020-09-15 16:32:48
First Circle Here on this immense bunny hill wander the pure-hearted powder hounds who spent a lifetime chasing deep snow, romanticizing sufferfests, and skipping church on Sunday mornings. They prowl this godforsaken wasteland of low-angle corduroy for all of eternity, grumbling about the “good old days.” Second Circle In this unorganized million-person lift line, the leering and pow-lusting souls shout, “Single?! Single?! Single?!” until their throats dry out like late-season snowpack and spontaneously combust. Third Circle Sinners who got hammered on White Claw at a backcountry hut and forgot to turn off their radios before everyone went to sleep are now fated to stumble around in a darkened pit where it is completely silent—except for the random blip! from a wayward radio somewhere in the loathsome abyss, a place where the battery never dies and souls fumble through the black on the brink of madness. Eventually, their ears start bleeding and the blood blocks out the sound, which is nice. Fourth Circle In this circle, ski-conglomerate profiteers are lashed to lift towers, where they’re pelted fiercely with Canadian loonies by untipped waiters, bellboys, housekeepers, valets and bartenders. After a 1,000-year stint on the lift tower, dragon-breathed ski bums stuff these wretched souls into a commercial ramen noodle machine, then fashion their stringy remains into mopheads that are used to swab the deck of Hell’s last remaining dive bar. Fifth Circle Here, the hotshot skiers who so callously ridiculed gapers having a genuine good time are compelled—by a horned demon wielding a studded Steadicam—to hot-lap Hollywood on plastic Barbie skis. Sixth Circle On this flaming mountain of edge-exploding snow sharks, hordes of climate-change-denying, profits-chasing ski execs and their political cronies have their tears wrung by a precipitation-parched minotaur, who uses them to fuel Thanksgiving snowmaking and the latest opening day to date. Seventh Circle For their equally wicked crimes against ski-town humanity, the tax-evading billionaire owners of mountain trophy homes and the miscreants who let their hellhounds shit on the skin track are both condemned to guzzle from the scalding grease trap of Paradise’s base lodge cafeteria, where fried food flows freely and brown-bag lunches are always welcome. Eighth Circle The cretinous souls of cocksure bro-brahs who were all, “I got this,” and then sideslipped down the entrance of a dream line are to be stuck in a pitiful Groundhog Day loop of getting polluted with “the boys” at the bar, confessing their vulnerabilities, waking up the next morning knowing their friendships are a sham, and heading to the hill anyway because they need to get the footy and the battery is low. Ninth Circle There is but one treacherous soul here in the depraved depth of Hell: the ski magazine writer who blew up your home hill. Their punishment is to ski an endless breakable crust through a whiteout and fogged-up goggles. And even though no one else is here, if they even think about stopping on a traverse, a three-headed “loc dog” with a mullet will hip-check them off the cat track. And so it shall be. Photo Caption: Eagles and hotshots, both common near Whistler. Austin Ross tempts the demon with the Steadicam. Photo: Guy Fattal
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