Editorial Storytelling | Voicebox West

Powder Magazine

The Room

Travel Essay
Fall 2009, Volume 38
425 Words

Powder Magazine features editor Porter Fox asked me to write a short travel essay on an extremely short deadline, but this project resulted on one of my favorite essays about the life of a ski journalist. Drawing on a memorable trip spent stuck in the Rogers Pass, BC, Glacier Park Lodge with a UN of AT, the location of the essay was mistakenly changed during the edit phase to Montana, but it still held up as a window on ski culture.
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- Most of the ski parties checked out when the avie danger spiked, leaving the hallway racks empty and a case of TNT malt liquor half-buried in the parking lot. We stayed one tour too long as the roads closed and the eerie quiet made staff stories that the hotel was haunted with souls of avalanche victims seem almost plausible. Just one night before, the Grizzly Bar had been a raging U.N. of A.T. with über-serious Germans, 12 loudmouth Spaniards and keen-but-bloodied Canadians still looking for their friends.
- Each delegation was toasting big vertical days with Tall Timbers on tap. Volume increased with each round, and our stereotypically loud American crew started trying to speak the euphoric language of deepness with the Spaniards. The intersection of jobsite Spanglish and phrasebook English left some gaps in the stories, so we supplemented with touring maps drawn on bar napkins and hand signals indicating sweet backcountry and friendly hippies to the south. They gave us an animated report of their home mountains and it was this shared fervor— for the next line in the next place—that signaled we were all on the same quest.
- An angry tourist trying to sleep threatened to shut down the party, but it only moved to the gift shop. A panish woman browsed the shelves for a souvenir as the stories rolled on. Turning to the crowd, she modeled a beaver hat pulled from the top shelf.
  
  “How does it look?” she offered in her best English.
  
  “Perfect,” I replied.
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