“How the hell do I take these things off,” I yelled out to my visibly annoyed dad.

“I showed you four times this morning. How can your fourteen-year-old brother figure this out, but you can’t.”

“Fine, but you’re gonna be waiting a while if you won’t help me.”

After a good ten minutes of my younger brother and dad watching me struggle to rip the skins off the bottom of the skis and click into the bindings, I was ready to finally enjoy the rewards of our work. It was time to ski down our trail and back to my grandfather’s front door. The dream of making a ski trail by spending our summer trimming tree limbs, taking out dead trees, and moving fallen debris to form a homemade trail was about to be realized in the purest form.

This type of skiing is considered backcountry skiing only accessible with special gear called Alpine Touring gear. This form of skiing has been becoming increasingly popular recently and experienced a boom over Covid. This is how my family and I got into it and began to explore other parts of the ADKs known for backcountry skiing. Backcountry skiing has become an increasingly growing sector of the ADK winter activities, and this past winter continued growing thanks to restrictions on the number of skiers allowed at regular ski mountains.

The ADKs, can offer this activity all winter long and have some of the best late-season backcountry skiing conditions in the northeast. While not solely specific to the ADK region, the Guardian reported the boom in backcountry skiing, which saw gear sales up 76% from the prior year and an estimated more than one hundred thousand new skiers. In a year where most sectors of the economy regressed, the backcountry skiing community saw increases in sales and number of skiers, an impressive feat. My family was among the new community of backcountry skiers and was able to see parts of the ADKs we don’t usually explore during the year. Two of the main attractions for backcountry skiers in the ADKs are the whiteface memorial highway and the Bennies Brook Slide (pictured below). This winter, I tried purchasing an uphill pass to Whiteface but was unsuccessful as they had already sold out, something they had never done before. Bennies Brook Slide saw an increase in viewership of its website of nearly 50%. Both of these things are signs of dramatic increases in this now-not-so-secret way to explore new parts of the Adirondack wilderness.

Sources:

Guardian News and Media. (2021, March 5). Backcountry skiing sees resurgence – and the deadliest week for avalanches since 1910. The Guardian. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/05/avalanches-deadliest-week-skiing.

Lynch, M. (2015, November 17). 5 backcountry ski trails in the Adirondacks Worth Exploring. newyorkupstate. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.newyorkupstate.com/adirondacks/2015/11/backcountry_ski_trails_adirondacks_ny_winter_skiing.html.