Featured Photograph: Colton Jacobs | Skier: Cody Cirillo | Location: Revelstoke, BC

Take into account the game of snowboarding.

For many of us it’s greater than that.

For many of us snowboarding just isn’t aggressive. It’s fortunately devoid of organizers, scores, groups, and your entire judgmental idea of winners and losers. For many of us, snowboarding is a seasonal excuse to be outdoors in excessive locations. Snowboarding for us is a ardour, an dependancy, a religious connection to Nature, a faith, or, on the very least, an satisfying exercise that defines us.

However in our ardor for the sensual pleasures snowboarding affords, we frequently overlook what snowboarding means to those that don’t ski. Or these of us who do however don’t take a lot of something too severely.

Not like, say, just a few grouchy schussboomers you realize?

Basically, snowboarding is the act of going up so you’ll be able to come again down. Snowboarding’s very essence is simple-minded, repetitive and unproductive. Not all that completely different from the duty Zeus gave to Sisyphus for dishonest demise – twice! Actually, there are simpler and much less expensive methods of getting your self excessive.

Clinically talking, our obsessive habits characterised by highs and lows is what these within the medical professions name Bipolar Dysfunction. Euphoria resulting in Despair. Actually the polar half applies and if despair is outlined as “going downhill quick” then that might appear to be correct, too. There’s additionally one other extra psychological description you’ll be hard-pressed to disclaim.

Snowboarding as Masochistic Conduct.

Take into account all of the hardships kin to snowboarding which regular individuals cheerfully search to keep away from:

Hazard. Folks die snowboarding. In avalanches. Tree wells. Publicity. Unexploded snow management fees. Collisions with different skiers, snowboarders, snowplows, bears….falls from cliffs…non-fatal accidents…frostbite…bear chunk…huge consumption of alcoholic drinks…rocks…STD’s…falling from lifts…being chased by bears…

Discomfort. It’s chilly. Oxygen deprivation attributable to altitude. Ready in traces for meals, enjoyable and loos. Absurdly stiff, heavy boots. Noxious gaseous discharges in tram vehicles and gondolas. Carrying gear from the automotive park to the place you’ll be able to really ski. Storms. The dearth of storms. Being eaten by bears.

Value. Journey. Lodging. Gear. Classes. Meals. Tickets. Medical bills. Journal subscriptions. Bear repellent. Then there are all of the missed however necessary psychological and emotional ski-related conditions resulting in stress similar to:

This line is hardly transferring. We’ll be right here for hours!

What do you imply you misplaced our reservation?

How are you going to be out of respectable rental skis?

This burger prices how a lot?

Bartender? Good day? Can I get some service right here?

Am I invisible? What do I’ve to do to get a…

You there… Good day? 

This stick of lip balm prices how a lot?

What do you imply our daughter left her ski class with a snowboarder hours in the past. The place the hell is she?

What do you imply half the mountain is closed due to wind…ice…world warming…protesters…not sufficient snow…an excessive amount of snow…the unsuitable type of snow…some kinda multi-day competitors…

What do you imply the highway’s closed due to wind…ice…visibility…building…a sink gap…avalanche particles…wait, are these bears?

To the non-skier, these objections would offer ample arguments for saving cash and avoiding all of the aggravations snowboarding appears inheritor to.

For the remainder of us—eager to slip down mountains alone or with mates as usually as humanly attainable— we don’t ski regardless of something. We ski regardless. Something that makes extra snowboarding attainable is our buddy. Good or unhealthy, it’s a part of the bundle. A part of the entire expertise. It’s within the pact we make with ourselves and the weather to miss, settle for and endure in return for these moments, weeks and years we push off on the high, collect pace and joyfully create our personal methods down.

If that’s Bipolar Dysfunction, then I’m all for it. 

I imply, why not embrace an acute, unrepentant, innocent, snow-fueled insanity?

Maybe you’re troubled, too.

Medically talking, if there’s a remedy for snowboarding, I do know I’ve by no means heard of it.

With luck, I by no means will.

Or as Alice of Wonderland fame advised the Hatter when he requested, “Have I gone mad?”

“I’m afraid so. You’re solely bonkers. However I’ll let you know a secret. All the perfect individuals are!”