Words, Photos and Captions Matthew Tufts “ YOU wanna know what Fergi’s all about? We take white trash and we turn ’em into skiers.” Years of cold mountain air and cigarettes layered Tim Tur-rentine’s raspy voice with the crackle of a transistor radio. An unseasonably warm breeze picked up his long hair and wafted smoke across the deck of Terminal Gravity, a small brewery 25 minutes from Ferguson Ridge Ski Area in Joseph, OR. “And that’s another thing,” Tim continued, as much to himself as to me or anyone else on the patio that could hear. “It’s a Ski. Area .” He enunciated each word and let out another snort. “I always laugh when they call Fergi a resort, like it has a golf course and accommodations and all that. We have a T-bar!” He laughed some more, which turned into a hacking cough. I had heard about Fergi the only way anyone really hears about the small ski area at the northern foothills of the Wal-lowa Mountains—through a local. At least a couple hundred convoluted miles from anywhere, situated on a dead-end gravel road, it’s not particularly easy to find, and the people here don’t go out of their way to change that. across the country in rural locales where the land is too flat, the population too small, the average income too low and the snow too unreliable to merit a resort. These are, as Tim put it, ski areas. And their place in a rapidly growing industry is uncertain. As the ski industry continues to accelerate toward com-mercialization and opulence, it has left rural ski areas with vague instructions: adapt or fade away. But as evidenced by my homeland hills in Vermont’s Green Mountains, in eastern Oregon’s quiet Wallowas, and as far away as British Colum-bia’s Northern Coast Range, these community hills form the essential down-home roots of our sport. A HANDFUL OF SKIERS bustled out of the wooden ski shop and ski patrol building. The structure was reminiscent of sugaring huts back in Vermont, its signs hand-painted in red on weathered plywood. One of the shacks was a converted chicken coop. A telemarking ski patroller carved down to the group with a bundle of recently cleared deadfall branches in her arms, de-scribing the thin conditions as “homey” to Jerry Hustafa, a man with a graying beard and matching ponytail. He wore tattered Carhartts cuffed above tele boots and grabbed me a wicket. Jerry was the mountain manager—for the day. Like all positions at Fergi, operations run on a rotating and volunteer basis. Fergi doesn’t sell season passes. They sell lifetime ski club memberships. Five hundred dollars buys a family lifetime membership with $100 yearly dues; individual lifetime mem-bership runs $250 plus $50 annually. The sums can be paid over affordable installments. There’s a kicker though: Each pass holder is responsible for “four days [each year] of help-ing out, catching tees, taking tickets, watching the top of the hill,” according to Charlie Kissinger, the former president of the Eagle Cap Ski Club. The club has managed operations on the north side of the Wallowa Mountains since the late 1930s. Most people volunteer well beyond their four required days. JOSEPH AND THE neighboring town of Enterprise tally a cumulative population near 3,500 residents. Tourism and agriculture are the primary economic drivers, but the region is a distinctly seasonal destination. Rolling into town in late December, I had the only vehicle with out-of-state plates. Still, my 1986 Ford fit right in. There aren’t many new Tacomas this side of Bend. A handwritten sign downtown informed locals that the ski area was open for the weekend, despite a recent warm spell. A handful of arid farm-laden miles gave way to bumpy gravel and relics of a fading timber industry as I pulled into the muddy lot. Across the way, Fergi’s solitary rope tow hummed its early winter tune to a lot vacant but for a handful of disinterested dogs. Amid a squall of mega-resort conglomeration and real-estate-development-fueled expansion, ski operations such as Fergi can feel like little more than a single swirling dendrite in a $20 billion ski industry blizzard. These hills are scattered Podunk Powder 035
The Ski Journal Volume 14, Issue 3: Page 35
