“Oh, I think I get it,” my dad said. “They’re like cold surfers.”
It was the morning after Thanksgiving. The family had trickled down to the living room, each filled a cup of coffee, and filed in one by one behind me to partake in my favorite Thanksgiving tradition: drinking coffee and watching ski movies on YouTube.
“Cold surfers” he said. The implications were damning. Surfing is a helluva sport. It’s as challenging as it’s beautiful, and, in a lot of ways, shares an aesthetic with backcountry skiing. In each sport the putative reward occupies a small fraction of the time spent pursuing it; hours on the skintrack yield minutes of powder turns the way hours of paddling yield moments in the curl. In each case the purpose of the sport far transcends that fleeting rush, and happiness comes from the calm of the day.
Of course this isn’t at all what my dad was talking about. He was talking about this:
We sound like idiots.
Without detracting from some of the passionate conversations that we all have about skiing, there are a few words I’d like to expunge from the skier’s lexicon, so that we all might be taken a little bit more seriously in the future. Remember, you might have to talk about this at a cocktail party.
Epic – This one is a no brainer. The pow yesterday was not epic. The traffic on I-70 on Saturday is not epic. The 11k vert you hiked one day last winter was not epic, even though it was windy and your buddy was hungover and you had to break trail, like, the whole time. The word “epic” refers to stories of heros and gods that span decades and govern the fates of nations. Nothing you have ever done is epic. I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.
Awesome – This one isn’t just misused by skiers, but I think we should carry the banner for relegating the word “awesome” to the fringes of discourse. To be in awe is to be agape with reverence and fear. To be struck dumb by wonder. Boot warmers are not awesome. Your new $500 hardshell is not awesome. The water cycle that makes it snow every year is actually pretty awesome, though, if you sit down and think about it.
Bro – Bro had a good run. I almost didn’t hate it for a while. It evoked the kinship of fraternité in the rhetoric of our time. One for all, all for one, bro. And then I spent a little time on the beach and guys I just met, otherwise intelligent, successful, articulate guys, kept calling me bro without a hint of irony. It was wrong. A cartoon. A caricature of solidarity. It’s time for bro to go. Also if you keep using it you’re just going to wind up getting ridiculed on Jezebel or something.
Sick – I never understood this one. When has sick been good? Is this supposed to be ironic? If so we should look past the work of Alanis Morisette for that definition, because it’s also wrong. The only way “sick” is a good thing is if you lie about being it to go skiing. Otherwise you’re just putting yourself in the same camp as these guys.
Fireball – I’d like to think that we’re all on the same page by now, but apparently that’s not the case. This word turns up most frequently as your jerk roommate is clamoring for a place at the bar après. Fireball? Really? What the hell, do you not watch Fox News? This shit is antifreeze. Stop drinking it.
I think I’ve covered the most egregious affronts to the skier’s image here, but if I’ve missed any, please don’t hesitate to chime in.
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Well said…I like the thought of evolving skiing conversations to something more than bro-brah backslapping bullshit babble. So with that, I’d argue that we shouldn’t even refer to BC skiing as a sport. Sure, ripping gates and spinning lap after lap on the lift could be considered a sport. Hell, it’s an Olympic sport.
But BC skiing is much more of an art form then sport. Rules can be broken in sport. Break a rule BC skiing and you’ll most likely be dead or lucky. And lucky people don’t live long as BC skiers.
It’s a tricky concept I struggle to explain to people that don’t ski tour, but this distinction could help in the long-term as more and more people bail on resort skiing and start walking up hill.
Thanks for the post…
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for reading! I’m with you that defining “sport” is tricky. Hemingway drew the line at mountain climbing, bull fighting, and auto racing, remember. Everything else is just a game, right? Ultimately I think that competition in the backcountry is bad for safety, but that isn’t reserved for the world of sport. I know a lot of awfully competitive artists out there.