Ski envy

I’m sitting in El Chalten, Argentina, under the shadows of the majestic spires of Fitz Roy and Poincenot. Well, truthfully, there are no shadows being cast on this windy, rainy day. Since I arrived a few weeks ago, the weather rapidly disintegrated from hot and summery, to super windy, to the present state of socked in and sideways rain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having an amazing time. I’ve been on some absolutely spectacular hikes, caught up with old friends and made some new ones, imbibed more than a few bottles of delicious Argentinian reds, and am spending time in the boulders and catching up on reading.

Stepping out of ski season gives me a new perspective on the people I know who love to ski, but whose lives make it impossible to get on the snow regularly in the winter. Suddenly all those spiteful seeming comments on my status updates referring to “another 30 cm of fresh” and “endless faceshots” make sense. Suddenly I’m the one jonesing for the snow!

Sifting through a bunch of images our friend Chris Christie took on an early January week at VMT certainly doesn’t help matters. Chris, an accomplished adventure photographer and great skier, brought along Tobin Seagal, a Squamish-based ski fiend to ski with Evan and I for a week. The four of us skied everything from DEEP powder to wind pressed snow in dumping snow to clear and sunny conditions.

Below are some of Chris’s images from the week.