Whether you’re in Japan’s beech forests, Europe’s larch or BC’s conifers, skiing the trees offers a different aesthetic. And tree skiing in eastern North America is different altogether. Words :: Leslie Anthony.
We are “under the wood.” Sous bois, as they say in French. My friend’s shouts—bending around trunks and muffled by the dense canopy a metre overhead—reminds me there’s a surprising amount of space under these twisted birch and stunted spruce. Not to mention plenty of snow. In fact, on a February day during one of the driest winters on record, skiing isn’t just passable at Massif du Sud, east of Quebec City near the Maine border, but downright good, with week-old powder lurking in most of the glades.
Alain Denis popping through Mt. Blanc’s winter wonderland. Photo: JENNIFER SMITH
Whether you’re in Japan’s beech forests, Europe’s larch, B.C.’s conifers, or Aspen’s… well, aspens, skiing the trees offers a different aesthetic than other natural features like bowls and chutes. And eastern tree skiing—lacking the West’s fuzzy warmth and cathedral spires—is different altogether. Hardwoods aren’t for everyone: they’re the rough bouncers at a club ready to repel anyone who doesn’t belong, or an honour guard to welcome those who do. And if you’re a powder hound at all, these are clubs worth joining: Le Massif, Mont Sutton, Jay Peak.
It reminds me how much I love skiing in trees.
As we move downslope and larger hardwoods prevail, things open up—though never enough to make our next move completely obvious. Tree skiing east of the 100th Meridian, where you can actually see around them, is all decisions, discovery and endless permutations; make a turn around one, a new line comes into view and suddenly everything looks different. Your next turn repeats the trick. The slope uncoils over the natural contours of the mountain, connected by lines that follow the logic of topography—a logic that trees follow as well.
Growing up skiing in Ontario and Quebec, I spent a lot of time skiing trees. In addition to simply enjoying the beauty of a winter day, it’s a way to appreciate a forest at its most essential, outside the botanical pageantry of summer. Though it feels like you’re moving through a state of suspended animation, there’s plenty going on in the wood—hibernating creatures and burrowing insects, hormones ready to send sap racing upward at the first hint of warmth.
And yet, aside from an occasional creaking in the wind, all this industry is carried out in silence. Skiing the trees in winter is like entering a realm populated by beings whose stoic nature is their very allure—as if they both conjure experience and bear witness to it. Perhaps they do: research shows the human genome to contain 20,000 genes, while a poplar tree has 45,000. What does it mean when the complexity of the human brain is governed by fewer genes than a block of wood? Perhaps only that when it comes to DNA, the wisdom and vigilance of trees is more hard-won.
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For skiers, trees are also shelter in a storm; for the snow that finds its way into them, a filter and preservative, minimizing the effects of wind and sun. Natural microclimates help: a mountain that spends a lot of quality time in the clouds pulls down significantly more snow than neighboring peaks, and the soft turns beneath the trees rule the mountain’s personality.
Perhaps most interesting are the myriad forms that trees take in winter—from tiny, hunched snowghosts, to improbable towering spearheads. For years I merely skied through these alabaster sentinels, paying little attention to what seemed a frozen plight. But some recent reading on tree biology has delivered me a different impression.
The statuesque nature of snow-encased trees, it turns out, reflects millions of years of evolution. You see, alpine firs and spruce and cedar are snow trees, exquisitely evolved in form and function to make use of the white stuff. When there’s a heavy load of snow, their pointed symmetry sheds just enough to allow the branches to bend but not break; in cold weather, they hold enough snow to protect buds and shoots; and melting snow from a tree’s branches drips in a circle to feed its roots, which require a steady moisture supply. Indeed, the entire arc of a snow tree’s spring, summer and fall existence is also in play as you ski by it in winter. In a sense then, some trees “like” snow. And that makes me love them even more.
Excerpted from Vie en montagne, hiver 2020.
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