Words Derek Taylor Photos Ace Kvale Upon this hill I plundered from the pool I look around I search the skies I shade my eyes So nearly blind And I see signs of half remembered days I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways I recognise... The hope you kindle in your eyes —Roger Waters, “5:06am (Every Strangers Eyes)” AND now, from where I stand Ace Kvale forwards a link to an article in the New Yorker . It’s about 7,000 words, not a single one of which mentions the Boulder, UT-based photographer. Nor are any of the images his. That this is what he sends along as insight into his current sense of place speaks volumes about Kvale. Notably, that when you ask Kvale to talk about himself, you most likely will end up hearing about someone else. In that spirit, this isn’t a profile about Kvale. This is a story about hitchhiking, an odyssey that begins with a teenager standing on the side of the highway in 1970s Rochester, MN, with dreams of big skies, open spaces and deep powder to the west. “I just picked a place on the map and hitched a ride to Steamboat, basically,” Kvale says. The journey that follows—from ski bum and climber to photographer to mountaineer to philanthropist—contains many chapters, a great deal of which start off in similar fashion. The most pivotal may be the ride he and a girlfriend hitched from Chamonix to Verbier based solely on the knowledge that a ski shop there carried the same gear he used. “I walked into the bar, and there’s Marko [Shapiro]. And the girl he was sitting with said, ‘Were you guys looking for a job?’ Within two hours of arriving, we had a place and a job cleaning bathrooms and cleaning out chalets once or twice a week.” In between, and beyond, are dozens more chapters, each, if not life-altering, at least emblematic of the character and resolve that have defined Kvale’s life and career. In short, he’s never been afraid to stick out his thumb—proverbially or otherwise—when the only guaranteed outcome is unfore-seen adventure. ”Remember Into the Wild and the hitchhiking trips? I did those trips,” Kvale says. “I hitchhiked from Telluride up to Banff and Jasper, over to Vancouver Island, down to San Diego and back to Telluride on 50 bucks, working along the way and living on peanut butter and honey. I shoveled shrimp on a boat in Oregon. I painted curbs at a gas station. After my first year in Verbier, I arrived back in New York, took trains to Connecticut, hitchhiked up to Maine with a girlfriend, dropped her off, then hitchhiked across Ontario and back to Minnesota. Said hi to my mom, then I hitchhiked back to Telluride. But that was the ’70s. People hitchhiked more then.” Kvale spent close to 20 winters in Verbier, where the ex-ploits of he and his friends living in a chalet in the hamlet of Clambin have been well documented. His crew, led by Shap-iro with Kvale and John Falkiner always close by, are credited with creating a new paradigm of ski photography that is still largely adhered to today. Kvale, who started as a model skiing for Shapiro’s lens, is quick to credit Shapiro for launching his own photography career. But it was Kvale’s penchant for adventure that was the true catalyst. 078 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 12, Issue 3: Page 78
