Backcountry is the New Black

Even though cool people like Pep Fujas have been skiing the backcountry for years, it was mostly nerds who brought duct tape, wore black, knew what Scarpa was, and skied on skis mounted behind the center line without twin tips that spent time in the BC. Now doo-rag New Yorkers who ski open jacket 24/7 like Ahmet Dadali own snowmobiles, people with bright baggy clothes own avalanche beacons (a few even know how to use them), and every rule of outdoorsmanship and ghetto street cred is thrown totally out the window as hoards of cotton tall-teed afterbangin’ wanna-pros show up ten miles into the wilderness with no water, first aid kit, or map to build a kicker in a slide path after mowing down endangered species habitat on their sleds.

Park is now two years away from being “played,” and the East Coast will be irrelevant once again. Now that things like skinning, digging snow pits, and getting up before dawn to do something other than sneak out of the beat girls’ room you just made ugly love in are cool, you should probably go somewhere to get some experience and knowledge and stuff so you don’t, you know, die out there. Also now that you have to actually read something to learn about the backcountry, reading is now cool. Thus, BroBomb, whose limited audience has been in it since the beginning for the text, is now officially cool. Don’t worry, as soon as someone on Newschoolers says we’re hesh, Jon’s going to change the name of the site to YoBeat.

Mormons Go Digital

In the fall, I made some prophetic claims about the Church of Latter-Day Saints wising up on their marketing and sneaking in at the last moment to claim a title partnership at the Dew Tour.  Again my forecasts for the 2011 ski branding season came up short, and Dew fans were not fortunate enough to be treated to live re-tellings of the Joseph Smith story nor see a 600-foot tall Tabernacle jib.  However, in a suave marketing move that may be a first in organized religion, they now have their own Youtube channel.

People Went Skiing

With the worst of the recession likely behind us, those whose houses had been lost to foreclosures had gotten bored of pounding whiskey, crying, and shooting at the rest of their credit card-bought possessions with a .22, and pulled their skis out from the pile. With record snowfalls across much of the US, places big, small, shitty, good, flat, steep, dumb, and fun saw record ticket sales. With more idiots on the hill day drinking or chasing their kids than ever before, weekends in the park were an exciting crossbreed of getting snaked, snaking others, landing on people, colliding with beaters, and watching the woman ahead of you in a snowplow scream in terror as she passed by you while you hiked the flat box. Skiing was back in full force this year, and even though we don’t own a resort, man it felt good. Did I just write something positive?

Smart Is In

It used to be that you had to graduate early from high school so you could compete at the US Open and maybe get noticed in order to become a pro skier. Going brain dead and losing your ability to perform long division used to be par for the course for the professional shred. Now everyone from Grete Elliasen to Tom Wallisch is taking classes in the fall and earning degrees. Park jocks beware – with the way comp skiing is headed, with corporate sponsors on the hunt for clean-cut, presentable action sports robots, it won’t be long before you’ll need to win the X Games and win a geography bee before getting sponsored by Target.