It’s a Dangerous, Sometimes Deadly, Sport. I Won’t Stop.

By Christopher Van Tilburg

Dr. Van Tilburg is an author and wilderness medicine expert. He wrote from Hood River, Ore.

The Western United States has been desperate for rain and snow this winter, with many ski resorts patchy with dirt and grass; some have even been forced to close for a stretch. Then, six weeks of high pressure in the atmosphere yielded to a series of big storms that dropped at least three feet of powder in California’s Sierra Nevada this week.

A group of 15 skiers on a ski trip including four professional guides spent two nights at the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts — accessible in the winter only by skis or snowshoes — and were on their way back to the trailhead when disaster stuck. An avalanche nearly a football field in length broke loose. Six skiers survived, huddling together and communicating with emergency responders through satellite technology. Eight others were found dead, and one is still missing.

I have skied around the world, log an average of 80 days of skiing annually and have volunteered as a mountain rescue doctor for 27 years with the oldest mountain rescue team in the country, the Hood River Crag Rats. We lend aid to skiers, climbers, hikers and trail runners on what is likely the most climbed glaciated peak in North America, the lethal Mount Hood. I’ve seen my share of triumphs with rescue missions as well as death, with two climbing fatalities this season on Mount Hood already. It’s never easy to process when kindred spirits fall in the mountains.

Nonetheless, the backcountry remains an essential place to visit — to find solace, recharge, sweat, laugh, cry, unplug from the ills of the world and chase the flow state, the mental feeling of being so totally absorbed in a single activity that all other thoughts vacate the mind. Amid the dangers, there’s a reason so many of us are drawn to ski there.

The search for backcountry snow is old. Skiing probably started in prehistoric times in Russia as a means of travel. Skiing for sport became popular in Europe in the 1800s, with people hiking or using mohair skins on skis to go uphill. Rope tows to pull people up mountains began popping up in the early 1900s, and in 1936, the first chairlift was erected in Sun Valley, Idaho. In the last decade, as ski resorts have become more crowded and expensive, backcountry skiing, mostly on public lands, has flourished.

For me, there’s a great thrill in gliding down the mountain far from urban noise and steel and concrete buildings. On the surface, it appears purely hedonistic, and we are indeed chasing euphoria from being in motion, dopamine from achievement and the serotonin good mood from being outside with friends. We savor the sense of well-being from exercise, the laughs and high-fives, the escape from the stress of finances, politics and people.

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