The restaurant in Maslo, Mon-tenegro, features old school charm and new mountain energy under a single roof. Photo: Slavko Nikolic/ Solutions4you We gain the windy ridge of Three Border Mountain with no visibility, quickly retreating down on a mix of windboard and wet, heavy mank. “At Ski Fest, you have to start off with struggles so you appreciate every little good thing that comes along,” Boris says, aware of this statement’s cultural relevance. Back at the Maslo restaurant—a stone-walled family residence the government commandeers periodically dur-ing times of war—the owner, Almir, is throwing a party for locals with money from the Ski Tour Fest to establish a positive association with winter ski tourism. Meat is on the grill, balloons line the doorway and old-time music plays, featuring accordion sounds and operatic ballads from every Balkan nation. Men sit and smoke while several generations of women hold hands and dance, then smoke as well. But even this idyllic scene isn’t immune to the looming specter of the politics that have kept skiing here a mere pastime. “We had to pay (read: bribe) the local government to clean the roads just for this week,” Almir laments. Plans to build a highway and tunnel through the valley are what Almir considers “a project to take money from people and buy votes with temporary jobs,” increasing pass-through traffic while skipping over local economies. Ski Tour Fest, Almir says, is a step in the opposite direc-tion. “We want people to come and stay for a few days and enjoy the nature, stay in guesthouses and eat our local food,” he explains. “Now when we organize something like this… the people will trust us more than the local government. Three years ago, no one even came here in the winter.” I’ll be skiing in my jeans, the cotton T-shirt and underwear I’ve been wearing for four days, a trench coat I found in a closet, wool mittens knitted by a Slovenian grandmother and borrowed skis. With winter tourism infrastructure in the region still starting its growth process, you pretty much need to attend Ski Tour Fest to be able to backcountry ski here. That also means first descents are waiting to be notched with countless aspects still untouched by skis. During our last day in Bogićevica, my friend Tyler and I recruited a young Slovenian for a predawn mission to climb and ski a promi-nent double-fall-line couloir with snow painted across the cliff band of a 2,370-foot mountain called Krš Bogićevica, a face we’d been staring at all week. After a few hours of sunrise skinning up a road past some boarded-up cabins, followed by an hour-and-a-half bootpack, we put our mark on a virgin 45-degree run—exposed pow turns up high and heavy pillow drops through the forest down low. The rewarding mission and snow conditions, along with my gear miraculously showing up the evening before, reinforced my stoke in this place. 058 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 2: Page 58
