Dude, There's an Avalanche

Article by: Michael Grosberg, June 2006

I was in the Wasatch Mountains east of the small Mormon city. Specifically, I was stuck in the communal section of the Snowbird Ski Lodge which was increasingly taking on the air and smell of a low-key fraternity party. Once every few minutes there was a loud cannon-like boom, the result of explosives meant to trigger avalanches. Each thunderous clap drove home the reality of the danger and the perverse thought that the ice caps had exploded, triggering a sudden and massive climatic shift and that, like Dennis Quaid in the film Day After Tomorrow, I should really call and check on my family before heading to NYC on snowshoes.

Signs were posted at all the exits that it was illegal to leave the building but the room I was staying in and had just paid for was a mere forty or so feet away across a deserted parking lot. After seeking out alternative exits and being stymied by almost three feet of fresh powder on top of several hundred inches of packed snow I realised a childhood spent launching ambush snowball attacks on the neighbours was poor preparation for the risky manoeuvre of forging a path; eluding security; and hoping the avalanche hysteria was more paranoia than well-founded fear.

Once every few minutes there was a loud cannon-like boom, the result of explosives meant to trigger avalanches.

So I whispered to the security guard that I needed my medication and that he could try to stop me but I was willing to risk the twenty or so seconds outside to get across to my room. I knew he wanted to press me on the nature of my illness but I said I couldn't talk about it, purposefully leaving the impression that it was a cocktail of psychotropic pharmaceuticals that awaited me. Sure I felt guilty about lying and was worried he would check my medical records and find that in reality I'm only slightly asthmatic after a large meal. But it was worth it to pass the night in my room looking out through the picture window facing the mountain, the whole outside world filled with white on white and the promise of sliding and bouncing through it all on skis tomorrow.

The snow scene out west is a distinctly American one. It's a mix of old timer hippie/traditionalists - often identified by a long unkempt beard and an almost obscene knowledge of every nook and cranny of the mountain - and hippie/technophiles, some also with equally unkempt beards, but employing the use of the word 'dude' as a subject, object and preposition and possessing equipment worth thousands of dollars. Other types do exist but certainly the bottom of the pyramid is occupied by those like myself - East Coasters with pointy, narrow skis and uncoordinated clothing who embarrassingly misuse the phrase 'dropping a load'.

Sure I felt guilty about lying and was worried he would check my medical records and find that in reality I'm only slightly asthmatic after a large meal.

A short half-hour drive takes you from dissolute après-ski habits like downing forties in the sun and seeing whose homemade dummy can survive a killer jump intact, to a church that prohibits alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. And let us say nothing of expressions like 'that board is tits' (sir, you have a good snowboard).

Before the storm hit, I spent a day walking the long blocks of downtown Salt Lake City. Everything looked and smelt perfectly hygienic and a little artificial, like stepping into a new car. Founded by Mormon pioneers in 1847 when the region was part of Mexico, the city and its environs have become hosts to two seemingly disparate institutions: Mormons and the ski industry.

A truly home-grown American religion, the story of Mormonism's origins purports that 24-year-old Joseph Smith, after repeated nocturnal visits by an angel called Moroni, uncovered a box containing a book written in Egyptian script. He translated this script in the hills of upstate New York. Claiming that post-resurrection Jesus Christ taught in America to the descendants of a Jewish clan who fled Jerusalem before the destruction of the first temple, Mormonism is now considered the fourth largest religion in US. But you'll also see them outside the US - from Jakarta to Accra, pairs of conservatively dressed young men in short-sleeved white shirts and pressed slacks pound the pavement.

Everything looked and smelt perfectly hygienic and a little artificial, like stepping into a new car.

To my New York City eyes, the people around me seemed like a pretty homogenous group. I wanted to spice it up a bit. Inspired by the new HBO series Big Love, a drama set in a polygamous community outside Salt Lake City, I started imagining that my fellow skiers were somehow hiding their illicit marriage status, and that the young snowboarders cruising for 'arctic cougars' (an older women who goes looking for younger guys on the slopes) weren't the only ones defying Utah's straight-laced reputation.