A Backcountry Ski Career. Decades of Flailing About

Prehistory. 

1979-1994. 

I was born for the winter. Though I didn’t always ski. I remember skiing as a kid. But I once claimed, in the presence of my mother, that “I grew up skiing”. She clarified; we’d ski once or twice a year, plus some very brief school ski programs. I didn’t have the immersive youthful ski experience that it feels like I had. As family budget and moody Catskills snow cover allowed, we’d cross-country ski through the woods. Hook, set. 

My sister and I, Catskills, NY

Weird flailing around in the woods.  

1995-1999. 

As a sophomore in high school I came across a photo of a backcountry skier high in Colorado’s San Juans. That blew me away. I learned of backcountry skiing and I learned of the mountains of the US West. I spent these high school and early college (UMaine) years acquiring equipment, learning a rudimentary telemark turn and exploring Eastern winter wilderness. 

Ski-related highlights include: 

  • Finding the steepest lawns I could find and lapping the heck out of them. 

  • Skinning from UMaine’s ski cabin to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain and sliding back down. 

  • A ski “traverse” of the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. 

  • Countless summer, winter, solo, and group backpacking and mild mountaineering excursions. 

  • I’d say this “phase” ended with an ill-fated excursion to Maine’s Katahdin. That mountain and legal epic “scared me straight” and focused the motivation and discipline for all my future steep endeavors.

  • estimated annual backcountry day count in this era: 5

Skiers go on expeditions. Expeditions haul sleds. So I hauled a sled.


Broader horizons. 

2000-2002. 

Late in college I settled in with a motivated and close group, found true adult fitness and strength, worked on accumulating formal training, and ventured further afield. 

Ski Highlights

  • Regular Mount Washington visits. 

  • Checking off New England’s classic “CCC” ski trails. 

  • A Greyhound spring break mission to Western Montana’s Bitterroot mountains. 

  • Creek skiing. We used to ski forested peaks via their water courses. Living in the west, with more open forests, means this isn’t as necessary. I’m now an “ex-stream skier”. 

  • This era ended with a ski resort terrain park maneuver gone bad, an ensuing full knee “blow out”, and a mandatory half year off of “real skiing”. I came back from that recovery with the focus of an athlete and the perspective of one having had something important taken for a bit. 

  • estimated annual backcountry day count in this era: 15

We learned from Andrew McLean articles that ski mountaineers went on “Dawn Patrol” and skied stuff so steep you needed a rope. So we did that. Chick Hill, Maine. I think that, on this particular headlamp morning, we spent more time digging for the bolted rock climbing anchors than we did skiing.

Early Bishop days.

2003-2008. 

College complete, knee healing, I motored to Bishop, California. Intending to stay “for the winter”, I didn’t move away for 12 years. 
Highlights: 

  • Great Western Divide ski traverse.

  • First of 8 consecutive, annual, solo “bike to bag” ski missions.

  • First recorded descent of Deerhorn Peak’s NE Couloir. 

  • 2005 “Turns All Year”. 

  • This era ended with my 2008 participation in an AMGA Ski Guide Course. You can’t finish such a course and be the same skier you were. 

  • estimated annual backcountry day count in this era: 40

Yours truly. “Skiing”. High Sierra, 2008.


Travels and drought. 

2009- 2014. 

Ski wise, I both consolidated and expanded my repertoire in these years. My guiding career took off, my guide certification motored on and my passion for skiing burned brighter still. All despite an historic California drought. 

Highlights: 

  • Chugach Ski Traverse. 2009

  • Valdez immersion ski touring week, 2011 and 2014

  • Formal ski professional development in Pemberton, Girdwood, Snoqualmie, June Lake, Hatcher Pass and Red Mountain Pass. 

  • Canadian road trip. Powder Highway to Icefields Parkway ski mountaineering. 

  • Skied 2/3rds of the length of the High Sierra in a series of point-to-point, overlapping day trips. I really want to finish this project some day. 

  • Weirdest of ski adventures in California’s gnarly 2012-2016 drought. 

  • This era ended in the midst of that drought. Powder fever and the quest for viable guiding volume sent me on the road for work and snow with ever increasing frequency. By late 2013 my Sierra foothold was no more than stuff stored in various closets and garages. 

  • estimated annual backcountry day count in this era: 60

Chugach Ski Traverse. April 2009. I still have that Buff and those boxers. And an obsession with Alaskan adventure skiing.

Wander Years.

2015-2017.  

Just like it sounds. I spent more time on the go than in any one place. 

Ski Touring/Mountaineering Destinations:

  • 2015 

    • Leadville

    • Tetons

    • Vail

    • Silverton

    • Wind River Range

    • Mammoth

    • Lake Louise

    • Glacier Circle Hut, BC

    • Cordillera Blanca, Peru. First ski descent of Huandoy Este. Ski descent Pisco.

  • 2016 

    • Tetons

    • Silverton

    • Executed my first (and second, and third) ski descents of the Grand Teton

    • Haute Route, CH

    • Chugach basecamp

    • Mount Sanford

    • Mount Saint Elias

  • 2017 

    • Tetons

    • Silverton

    • Red Line Traverse

    • Rocky Mountain National Park

    • Cordillera Blanca (Pisco, Copa, Vallunaraju)

    • Cerro Marmolejo, Chile

  • recorded average annual backcountry day count in this era: 82

Selfie captures the pace and mood of my 2017 “Red Line Traverse”.

Teton Immersion. 

2018-Present. 

With some travels, of course. 

Highlights: 

  • More Chile time. Volcanoes road trip and expedition ski traverse of 2x 6000m peaks. 

  • More GTNP explorations, including the first guided ski enchainment of the Grand-Middle-South. 

  • Deepest pow days of my life, over and over again. 

  • Wapta-in-a-Day

  • Shasta pandemic ski guiding

  • “Half a mil in half a year”.

  • Pandemic adaptations and explorations. 

  • First guided ski traverse of the Picket Range, WA. While also setting that route’s “FKT”.

  • recorded average annual backcountry day count in this era: 91.

Deepest of Teton pow.

*Total lifetime days of backcountry skiing. 1280 as of Jan 1, 2022. Obviously, those early years are rough estimates. And many of these “days” are just a few hours of "flailing about” (that archetypal day that is “just a few hours of flailing” about is perhaps the most common theme through these 26 years of backcountry skiing. I continue to flail about. Let’s all continue to flail about).

Jediah Porter