VIE EN MONTAGNE PAR/BY MOUNTAIN LIFE - Hiver | Winter 2020

35 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. 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. 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. 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 FOR THE LOVE OF TREE SKIING Alain Denis s'amuse dans la féerie hivernale du Mont Blanc. / Alain Denis popping through Mt. Blanc's winter wonderland. JENNIFER SMITH