Tremblant doing her best to impress.

by BroBomb reader Sam Turner.

I knew in coming to the East Coast that I was going to be faced with some cultural differences.  I’m a westerner, born and bred in Vancouver, BC – salt-stained by that Pacific Ocean, and raised in the shadow of the Coast Mountains.  I throw around terms like hella or fade without fear of reproach, I watch prime-time sporting events in the middle of the afternoon, and when it comes to skiing, I know a thing or two about stoke.  I figured there was no way any east-coast plebs could understand the feelings conjured when the all-clear is given by patrol on a powder day, or the glory of breaking through the clouds during an inversion to shred in above-zero sunshine (you Yank’s can sort out the Fahrenheit equivalent on your own).  I assumed this sort of appreciation for the finer things that skiing brings us simply couldn’t exist in a place where 2000+ vertical feet is a treasured anomaly.

I was wrong about that.  My very first day on the new coast was at Tremblant, in Quebec.  It rained from the minute I woke up that morning to the minute I got home.  At points in between, when it seemed like maybe the weather might break, wind or fog or both rolled in reminding me that a) I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and b) I was going to need to harden up if I intended to survive for any prolonged amount of time in this new region.  While I whimpered about the fact that my 0/k waterproof pants didn’t actually do anything about repelling moisture, and while I moped around the five or so ride-on features that Tremblant’s park boasted, I couldn’t help but notice that the people around me were having a good time.  They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves, even as Mother Nature took her angst out on us in monsoon form.

At a certain point it struck me that I had been looking at things all wrong.  What I knew to be stoke was indeed stoke, but it was a different strain than that which pervades out east.  Here no one is under any false impressions; no one is presuming to have the most epic day of their life, they’re here because they can be, and shame on me if I can’t wrap my head around that.  It’s not fair for me to laugh at the two gapers marvelling at “all this powder, dude” as the stare down six inches of rained-out crust, and I shouldn’t be surprised that a blind two-sev out of a flat box is cause for congratulation.  This is stoke in its purest form and it is intrinsic to sustaining ski culture in the east.  I will always retain a certain superiority complex over my new-found home – that goes without saying – but I’ll bear in mind that being a self-flattering douche can only get you so far and that I should lighten up once in a while.

*Got something you want to write for the ‘Bomb? Hit Dunfee up at ryandunfee85 at gmail dot com, since his BroBomb e-mail is currently clogged with mail enhancement product spam.