Winter Skiing

WE ASCEND BECAUSE WE CAN, we skin up because we are cheap , we ski for penance, fitness and to grind our bleary-eyed alcohol-poisoned brothers on Saturday morning. We ski to sweat, to swear, to stitch temporal seams in the mountain canvas. Mostly, though, we ski because it brings us to the threshold of down. We ski because when the skiing is done, when the last false summit is verified, when we've run out of up and started cooling at the high point, we get to turn around and prove the law of gravity, we are commanded to prove the law of gravity, and to prove it's a good idea at that.
There's nothing wrong with skiing that can't be cured by a cold blast of powder to the face. There's nothing wrong with booting that won't be fixed by railing a coolie top to bottom. Which is the disease and which is the cure? Don't know, doesn't matter:

Whatever else that whole up-down thing is about - solitude, partnership, blue skies and black rocks-it's mainly about getting your freak on by falling toward the center of the earth through a pillow of crystallized magic. New schooler or no schooler, tattooed or pure, one track or two. freeride or granola, we all get wrapped up and made one by the big old enchilada of down. Synthetic or down? Down, of course. Is there really a choice?
Up is work, down is play. Up fights gravity, down becomes one with it. Up takes forever, down, revealing its only weakness, goes too fast. The contrast is as stark as black and white, and if the lines between us blur in
the same way an untracked blanket of snow yields to a chewed-up crud field, we never lose sight of the single defining motivation: fat skis or mid-fat, rando or knee-drop, we are compelled by the addictive rush of downhill running. Even freeriders and jibbers, who all too often get the hairy eyeball from the old guard, are just expressing the righteously exuberant freedom of a body set in motion.

Huck, spin, carve, grind, float, sink...call it what you will, it's all just down by law.
Compulsion, addiction, determination, motivation, the facets of our communal obsession are reflected in the gear we make and the stuff we ride. From the pre-work dawn patrols to a months-long assault on the Ruth Gorge to late nights inventing new tools and toys, we are committed to life on snow, to going up so we can get down. Just like you.