Midlife Crisis and Being a Skier

MC2 5678F589 wrote

 
All so that he can feel comfortable being an asshole to me online because he never had to look me in the eye and say those things to my face.

campgottagopee wrote

MC2 5678F589 wrote

 
All so that he can feel comfortable being an asshole to me online because he never had to look me in the eye and say those things to my face.

How is that any different than some of your convo's with  PeeTex??

 Remember the time I told you that if I ever talked to any one of my friends the way you talked to him I would expect to get punched? And I will add rightfully so.

gorgonzola wrote

ayup, another fine thread in the shitter.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Oh shit, he's a Vikings fan, too?

Hey Freeheelwilly, how about if the Saints beat the Vikings Sunday, you have to buy me a beer and talk with me until I finish it.

If the Vikings win, I'll buy you a case of PBR and have HPD or someone at Whiteface deliver it to you to maintain your precious anonymity.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Harvey wrote

Politics in the OT please

Agree with giving mountainhigh OT posting privileges again. Can't wait to hear him explain HOW fuck this.. and WHY fuck you....

MC2 5678F589 wrote

I'm sure your convos with camp could be boiled down to "Fuck This"/"Fuck That"/"Fuck You", too. It's the easiest thing in the world to be a critic. Harder to post something worthwhile.

Highpeaksdrifter wrote

Yeah you should. IMO this place was dying a slow death. It is much more interesting with NJ in it.

mountainhigh wrote

MC2 5678F589 wrote

I'm sure your convos with camp could be boiled down to "Fuck This"/"Fuck That"/"Fuck You", too. It's the easiest thing in the world to be a critic. Harder to post something worthwhile.

You're "sure", huh?  Good grief, stfu.

I

Highpeaksdrifter wrote

Since we don't know each other how were you going to pull that off?

D.B. Cooper wrote

sig wrote

 being a 50 something you wonder how many powder days you have left. its getting harder and harder to put back to back days together.

Last year my mother got back on skis for a day.  She was 76 and had taken a 25 year hiatus.  No Mikaela Shiffrin that day, for sure, but there's more than you may think.

sig wrote

  at that age would be smart to stay close to a bathroom.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Highpeaksdrifter wrote

Since we don't know each other how were you going to pull that off?

I don't know, man, ask the nearest mountain host where I can find you? See if I can find SJ and ask him? I think I know your first name. Shouldn't be that hard to find you. I'm an industrious guy.

The Wild One: Bill Bowen inspires through his youthful spirit

A week after his 61st birthday, in February 2014, Bill Bowen skinned up 4,100 vertical feet to the top of the Jackson Hole Tram and leaped into S&S Couloir. On his feet were a pair of 175cm skis he built himself—with help from the local boutique brand Igneous—out of old-growth Douglas fir he scavanged from the forest. The skis were mounted with lightweight Dynafit bindings, and his boots were backcountry-specific Dynafit TLT6s, hardly the tools recommended for such a rowdy line.

The bigger and more menacing neighbor of Corbet’s Couloir, S&S requires a mandatory 15- to 30-foot drop and mid-air right turn to avoid smacking a sheer rock wall on the left. It is the most committed line on the mountain and has a way of giving all skiers, no matter how good, a serious reality check. Wearing his goggles strapped around the outside of his hood (his trademark style), Bowen stuck it as he always does and skied away in style. It was tradition, after all, a ritual he has performed on his birthday every year for the last 25 years.

“I’ve known Bill since the 1970s,” says Wade McKoy, the longtime Jackson photographer. “I remember he always loved dropping into S&S. He still does, which seems amazing considering he’s kinda old. It’s inspiring for me, also kinda old. I don’t think I’ll be skiing S&S ever again and haven’t since I was a 20-something. But Bill Bowen does inspire me—to see someone that still loves skiing as much as he does after all these years.”

It would be easy to say the S&S ritual is how Bowen earned the nickname “Wild Bill.” But there are other reasons, such as his ability to persuade his much younger female ski partners to get naked. Or that he’ll regularly wear Carhartt and denim jackets while skiing, an ode to his blue-collar roots. In the summers, he explores caves, the deeper and darker the better. He says it gets him closer to the powerful energy he feels emanating from the mountains. That energy, he says, is what compels him to do the things he does. In order to be first on the hill on 4/20 (an annual gathering atop the Jackson tram, a few weeks after the resort’s closing) he skinned up to the cave inside Corbet’s Couloir to spend the night, solo.

At 6-feet-2 and about 155 pounds, with shoulder-length brown hair framing his long weathered face, Wild Bill is hard to miss. He’s also easy to misread. He’s a ski bum but not a derelict. He’s worked hard for decades as a skilled wood-worker and home builder. As a longtime Jackson local, Bowen represents the old-school ski bum culture that will never be duplicated.

Today’s rookies enter a different world than when Bowen started skiing, one driven by quarterly returns, uphill capacity, and over-sharing on social media. Even at a throwback like Alta. Which is where Wild Bill himself started as a ski bum, his first full season in the early ’70s . He had been going through a tough time in high school in his home state of Pennsylvania. “Spent some time in the nut house,” he says. “I ended up quitting high school and moving to Alta. I had my draft card, but the army wouldn’t take me because they thought I was crazy.”

That was a good thing, he says, because he probably wouldn’t have made it out alive. Instead, he found skiing. “Some friends of mine took me up on High Rustler, and that was the first time I had ever seen slow-motion turns,” he says. “It was that moment.”

In 1979, he landed in Jackson, got married, and moved over Teton Pass to Victor, Idaho. When his marriage fell apart, he came back to Jackson and is currently renting a room in Wilson, at the base of the pass. During the summers, he works as a carpenter to pay for the winter.

For a guy who’s seen it all over 40-plus seasons, he defines success not by money or possessions, but by how content he is when he goes home at night. More often than not, it depends on whether he went skiing that day, which is just about every day in the winter. “Being happy is the greatest thing ever found in this galaxy,” he says. “Maybe not the universe, but definitely this galaxy.”

raisingarizona wrote

Dude, I really think you must have read a different article than I did because that’s not what I got from it at all.

It wasn’t scorning anyone or saying that everyone needs to grow up. This guy in particular was lost and everything he used to feel was important to him all of a sudden wasn’t anymore. That’s a very typical scenario for middle aged men.  

When Peter Pan Enters Middle Age
PART 1 IN THERAPIST TIMOTHY TATE'S EXPLORATION OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MEN IN MOUNTAIN TOWNS HAVE TO STOP PLAYING AND GROW UP

 I know that my story is a lot different than most of you guys on here but I'm curious how the transition into becoming middle aged had affected you?

Harvey wrote

I assumed the author wrote an article about the mountain man because there would be a lot flatlanders who have thought "f" it, I want to do that! But maybe never did it.  It seems like people like that (me!) would be interested to read about it.

Brownski wrote

Peripherally related article. Pretty good

https://www.outsideonline.com/2272171/great-dirtbag-pissing-contest