Editor's Note: Klar, who wrote this beautiful piece below, was voted by her peers on TGR to have put together the best trip report for the month of December 2014. Being our BettyDee Trip Report of The Month winner, Klar will be walking away with an awesome prize package from the good folks at Marker Apparel. We asked her to write a piece reflecting on her adventures to celebrate her win, and instead we got an awesome story about the everyday heroes that inspire people like Klar and you and me, but who you'll never see featured on the TGR homepage. Enjoy.
I was asked to write something, and since the occasion is the Betty Dee Trip Report contest, I thought about Liz Daley while trying to come up with something to write. I never met Liz but was aware of her as one of the few women professionally into the business of killing it and, making her an even rarer phenomenon, seemingly having tons of fun while doing so. I remember reading a piece she wrote about her experience guiding on Denali. I thought it was funny and badass and that I should tell her this. I never did. I have a few other women I admire who are still around and probably aren't aware that they are the subject of my admiration, so in the spirit of appreciating the living, I figured I might as well write about them.
I think of these people as my personal collection of everyday heroes. I know some of them quite well, and others only in passing, but for whatever reason they, or more accurately the idea of them, stuck with me, because of who I was when we met and who it seemed that they were. They are mostly invisibles to the ski industry at large, walking the walk without talking much of the talk. They are blue collar pros, bar tenders, ski instructors, guides, teachers, skiing moms.
Chronologically, the first such person I crossed tracks with was Jo. I met her on my second ski trip to South America. I was twenty and just getting into my travel habit and she was closer to thirty and impossibly, effortlessly cool. I was traveling alone, skiing anything I could get to by bus, and found everything exhilarating. For a few months, I measured my life in miles from home and degrees below zero. I mostly lived off tasteless Argentinian supermarket bread, dulce de leche and bananas. With Jo and the odd gang of French skiers that gathered around her, dinner was a sophisticated affair of cheese and good wine, which they naturally knew to distinguish from bad wine before opening the bottle – a life skill that remains a mystery to me but French people presumably learn in kindergarden.
Jo knew how South America worked, where to ski and what she wanted, from skiing, Argentina, men, and life in general. Very much unlike me. She had worked as a race coach for rich Chilean kids, taught Russians during the northern winter and competed in derbys and freeride comps before it was mainstream. Jo co-founded Bumtribe Skis (so aptly named) and builds skis in her garage. Sometimes they have a political message on the topsheet, hidden in a cartoon. She does not fight her battles with hashtags but she certainly fights them, quietly, because the world is what it is and someone has to do something about it.
A year or two later, I met Lydia in Las Leñas. I was staying with the Gendarmes down the road. Their barracks weren't full, and they rented the cheapest beds for miles to whoever found them. I had of course learned about this option form all-knowing Jo. Lydia was waiting for guiding work and part of a now legendary group squatting in a shack half an hour's skin from the Leñas base. We met on a skintrack. I was following around some Canadians who seemed to be playing a game of 'how steep can you go before you really have to do switchbacks'.
Lydia calmly declared the absurdly steep skin track ridiculous, and made her own. I was amazed: this was something you could do? Later she told a story about a female friend of hers who had done the Haute Route with an older guide, one of those oldschool mountain machos somewhat typical of Europe. Lydia's friend took too long a pee break, and he yelled at her to hurry up. She yelled back that she wouldn't be rushed changing her tampon. Ever since I have been waiting for a good opportunity to make a douchey guy uncomfortable with that line.
Later she told a story about a female friend of hers who had done the Haute Route with an older guide, one of those oldschool mountain machos somewhat typical of Europe. Lydia's friend took too long a pee break, and he yelled at her to hurry up. She yelled back that she wouldn't be rushed changing her tampon. Ever since I have been waiting for a good opportunity to make a douchey guy uncomfortable with that line.
Lydia, on the other hand, has been guiding for over a decade in BC, Europe, South America and random Arab deserts, with a few avalanche tech jobs thrown in on the side, unfazed by mountain men and their peculiarities.
I very rarely run into Jo or Lydia, but I often wonder what they are up to. Many others have since joined these two in my collection of people I marvel at, some I see every other day, some almost never. Most are women, and most are far from well known in the world of skiing, but much more relevant to me than the abstract concept of a pro skiing a line for the camera. To the unknown badasses, the carefully fearless, the tireless explorers, to those who ski smiling through the pain, the kind and infinitely patient, the unapologetic and irreverent, to my constant ski buddies and the distant ones: know that you rock.
Big ups to Klar for winning our December BettyDee Trip Report of the Month contest, brought to you by Marker Apparel. To see her winning trip report, The Real World, click the link. And be sure to check out other Klar classics like Patagonia Cruising, The Inbetween Season, and Reading A Book.
mbakerski
January 17th, 2015
Thank you so much for sharing. This was awesome.
Ryan Dunfee
January 19th, 2015
You’re the shit, Klar!!!
MarkVal
November 25th, 2020
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