MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall / Winter 2017

62 MLCM FALL/WINTER 2017 bottoms and had long, feathered hair. I had tight Levi’s, really short hair and pimples.” Despite the language and fashion barriers, one of the first people to befriend Jorge was Canadian ski racer royalty, Felix Belczyk. The Alvarez sisters also bonded with Felix’s two sisters, forming a close Canadian kinship to this day. These ties led to Jorge meeting many more ski racers, including future legend Rob Boyd, and the entire Alvarez family learned to ski. The sport would expand Jorge’s horizons. “I left town five years later,” he says, “with a bunch of other people from Castlegar including Greg Pondilechek (infamous Savage Beagle bartender) and the Belczyks. We went to Vancouver, but it was still too small—nobody even knew what a cappuccino was!” With his father set to return to Spain, Jorge decided to accompany him, even though it would mean 18 months of military service. Before that, however, he took a chance ski trip to Whistler with Sandy Belczyk and the plot of his life carved another sharp turn. “We said, ‘Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We can ski year-round?!’ That changed everything.” Jorge and the entire Castlegar contingent moved to Whistler’s Emerald Estates together on November 1, 1984.  “It was easy to find a place,” he says. “And there were lots of jobs— Andrea got a job at Umberto’s and told us we should all go there. I stayed at my job at Nasty Jack’s (now Garbanzo Bike and Bean) while they were all making huge money in fine dining.” Jorge informed his father he was now staying in Canada and needed money for university tuition. “But it was really for a ski pass!” he says. “He found out later and was really mad.” Jorge’s new life, friends and the landscape of Whistler fired up an old passion: photography. “I invented photography when I was ten,” he jokes. Actually, that was the year he gave all his money to an uncle and had him buy a Diana camera from a duty-free port town in Chile, where Jorge lived in his pre-teens. “You got 12 shots on each roll – 120 film – and you had to manually estimate distance and light.” Jorge shot all the family vacations throughout Europe as a child. When they moved to Canada, he bought his first Canon AE-1 and began shooting photos for the local Castlegar newspaper, his first paying gig. “I saved enough money to upgrade to a Nikon FE 4 years later. I was so proud of that camera with a titanium shutter.” In the pre-digital era, Jorge had to mail away his rolls of Kodachrome and wait three weeks to get the developed film back. “IN MY LATE TEENS, I DECIDED TO BECOME AN EXOTIC DANCER PHOTOGRAPHER. WE DID THE SHOOT IN MYMOM’S LIVING ROOM. I DECORATED IT AND HAD MY SISTERS ACT AS ASSISTANTS WITH CLIPBOARDS AND EVERYTHING TO LOOK MORE PROFESSIONAL.” CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Ace and Jorge, a timeless friendship.The infamous first pass. Jorge in paradise at Nitinat Lake.Toad Hall handiwork. Spring cruising on Blackcomb. SUBMITTED