What a Skier Leaves Behind

Walking through old town, under an unrelenting sun, past well-kempt yards and those forsaken to another summer of Colorado drought,something out of season caught my eye. In front of an old home lined with hollyhocks were two pairs of skis, set roadside for the taking. 

One of the sets was an immaculately cared-for older model, a pair of Tua’s with the name Montes MX printed on them in a vintage typeface. Melting wax, perhaps last applied decades ago, beaded down their narrow, 200cm length.

I ran my hands down their topsheet and inspected the edges for burrs and rust. I then thought of a few sets of boots I had that might pair well with them, including an old pair of leathers I had inherited. And I imagined the challenge it would be to ski them, maybe in the soft corn snow of what would hopefully be a good winter to come. But I had plans, so I set them down and continued onward.

On my way home, I passed by that same house again, and the planks were still basking in the midday heat. Without a second thought I shouldered them and walked the two miles to my house, where I set them next to that pair of old leather boots a friend had given me. They were both additions to my collection, but they weren’t merely one more ski or one more boot. They came to me with stories of their own. For the skis I scavenged from the curb, an unknowable history. 

In the case of those old leather boots, it was a story I not only knew, but even became part of.

I first met Art at a friend’s wedding. In Billings, Montana. The venue was a sweeping meadow adorned with Old West machinery and a miniature boardwalk-lined town, all beside the broad Yellowstone River. With a beer in one hand and his other reaching forward to shake my hand, he introduced himself under a big sunset during the welcome party. “My name’s Art, like on the wall,” he said with a laugh.

Art’s gray goatee and the rambling way he spoke immediately made him seem every bit the wild man. He had moved to Jackson Hole from Nebraska in the seventies, in search of the good life, but Art had relocated to the wilds of the West not just as a skier, but to work as a pharmacist. That venture eventually came to an end, and Art made his way south to the desert of Arizona, this time for warmer weather. But not before engaging in some ski bum fun and telemark skiing.

Art likely never remembered me. He was attending a family member’s wedding, meeting scores of people he would never see again. And though I did cross paths with Art later on, he introduced himself to me all over again. “Like on the wall!” he repeated with the same wink and smile. It was only later I learned that he had begun forgetting things he had known for years. After getting lost on an international trip with his extended family, Art moved in with his sister and brother-in-law. And then into a memory care unit. 

Around the time I heard that news, I got an unexpected knock on the door. My friend Andrew, and Art’s nephew, stood on the porch with an old pair of telemark boots in hand. “We were going through some of Art’s old stuff, and I thought you might want these,” Andrew said. 

The boots were stout, hand-sewn, and worn from many years of use. The toe was warped forward, pointing upward from many thousands of lunging turns inside a telemark binding.

They had their mystery, too. Their logo was a series of geometric mountains set beside the letter ‘F,’ which I later came to find identified them as Scarpa Fabiano’s, a model produced in the 1980s. And though the boots themselves were well-loved, they had been refurbished; the sole was hardly used, and of a newer make. 

But time went by, and they sat in my shed, mostly unthought of. We had come through a paltry winter with highs in the 80s in March and into an unusually hot summer. Skiing in any manner, least of all one perhaps archaic and on vintage gear, hadn’t been front of mind even in-season, and certainly wasn’t now. And my own mind had seemed to escape me at times. I had recently begun taking anti-anxiety medication and was speaking with a therapist. Those boots—and Art—mostly left my waking thoughts.

Until another hot day that summer, standing in the balmy kitchen with no air conditioning, choked with dirty dishes and a full wastebin. “Oh, I don’t know if I told you, but Art died,” my wife said. The news took my breath, but didn’t devastate me. I liked Art, though I hardly knew him. But it was more than that. 

I had something of his.

A few days after receiving that news, I found those old Tua’s sweating beside the road. The brand had for generations been a fixture in free-heel skiing, but long ago had faltered.  “I’m not sure how much value there is in the brand at this point,” designer Paul Parker told the late free-heel website TelemarkTips in 2003. “Too much of it is nostalgia, I think.”

Even so, those boots and skis now sit together in my garage, not shrink-wrapped, not the newest model waiting for their first outing. Instead they wait out another hot summer amidst dust and clutter to perhaps continue their stories—one of which, at least in part, I know. The other, like the snow to come, or who might take our own implements when at last we leave them behind, remains unknowable.

About The Last Chair Column

This article was written by POWDER writer Jack O’Brien for his bi-weekly ‘Last Chair’ column. Click here or below to read the previous column.

Related: Lessons in Loneliness, and a Little Redemption on the Gondola