MEDIA REVIEW POWDER DAYS Words Megan Michelson BELOW Skier and author Heather Hansman and the cover of her latest book, Powder Days . Photo: Courtesy of Heather Hansman MAYBE YOU ALWAYS WANTED to be a ski bum, but life got in the way. Or perhaps you were one back in the day, but traded first chair and night shifts for benefits and a desk job. Or maybe you are still living the ramen-fueled life, one powder day at a time. (If so, good for you.) Regardless, Heather Hansman’s new book, Powder Days , will speak to you. Published in November 2021, the book is a deep dive into ski culture, as seen from the inside out. It takes a hard look at the ski bum dream, that ideal pushed onto us by ski movies and glossy magazines and, lately, by social media. A former editor at SKI and Powder , Hansman calls the idea of the ski bum mostly a myth, a literary hero. She suggests a simple, carefree life in the mountains doesn’t really exist—and maybe it never has. As the book points out, people started talking about the end of the ski bum back in the ’70s, when real estate prices began to climb and ski patrollers and lifties couldn’t afford to live near the base of the hill anymore. As Hansman notes, a movie called The Last of the Ski Bums came out in 1969. Today, ski-town living is, well, complicated. There’s the hous-ing crisis. There are systemic inequities. There’s a rising level of risk tolerance and mental health issues, the ever-increasing cost of skiing, a growing monopoly in the ski-resort industry. Don’t forget climate change. Hansman digs into all of these massive (and admittedly a bit depressing) topics, as well as her own personal history with skiing, with a prodding and inquisitive eye. “Can you be a ski bum forever?” she asks. “Would you want to?” Hansman takes a couch-surfing road trip around the West (plus an air-assisted stopover at Mad River Glen, VT) to visit salt-of-the-earth ski bums in now-ritzy places such as Jackson Hole, WY, and Aspen, CO. She drinks locker room beers with patrol-lers at Bridger Bowl, laps the Collins lift with some of Alta’s best skiers, and crashes on a friend’s floor in Silverton, tapping into the essential fibers that weave our ski world together. The storyline, and the eclectic cast of snow-loving charac-ters she meets along the way, makes you crave perfect storms and that impossible feeling at the end of a brilliant ski day, when conditions and friends line up perfectly. It makes you miss those wildly beautiful moments that only skiing delivers. But it also takes a chisel to the days, or years, you thought were dreamy. While you were out there enjoying a 12-inch storm, did you think about the low-wage workers who cleaned the hotel room you stayed in? Or the fact that the water-guzzling snowmaking equipment and energy-burning gondola at the resort are eating away at the same natural resources and public land you’re out there enjoying? How about the Indigenous people who lived on this land thousands of years ago, got pushed away and have never been welcomed back? Or the fact that ski resorts that aren’t owned by corporate conglomerates can barely compete these days? It’s a privilege to call ourselves skiers. This book challenges us to remember that. “I wonder if the ski bums of the future will all be trust-fund babies, corporate shrills, and weed dealers?” Hansman asks. (If it isn’t clear by now, she has a lot of questions.) “Did creating an industry crush the soul of a sport, or was the idea of soul always a marketing scam?” Ski bumming at its best, according to Hansman, is nature-centered and purposeful. At its worst, it’s “indulgent and immature.” And yeah, maybe the soul of skiing isn’t what it used to be. But nothing is. Life changes. So does the world around us. Hansman has been learning that lesson the hard way. Here’s what I propose: It’s not too late to bring the soul back to the sport we all love. We just need to recognize where we’ve been and the mistakes we’ve made, and do better going forward. Reading this book seems like a good way to start. POWDER DAYS Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow By Heather Hansman 272 pages. Hanover Square Press. $27 036 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 4: Page 36
