Farewell to a skiing pioneer
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
By Brooke Williams
In my last column on skiing, I referred to Dolores LaChapelle as a
mentor of mine, a powder skiing pioneer who helped me make deeper, more
meaningful sense of skiing and all human powered outdoor activities. I
didn’t know that Dolores had died while that issue was being printed. I
met Dolores back in the mid ‘80s at a deep ecology workshop she was
teaching. The workshop was designed to introduce, rather re-introduce
participants to rituals, the subject of Dolores’ early books, “Earth
Wisdom” and “Earth Rituals.”
The workshop had been fascinating, but what really intrigued me was
that while this woman was an expert on primitive cultures, natural
history, human evolution, and even the work of D.H. Lawrence, she
claimed to have “learned” everything from skiing powder.
At the end of the workshop, I mentioned to her that I was a powder
skier and we became friends. We corresponded over the next few years,
and I learned that she had been one of the early powder skiers at Alta,
where her husband, Ed, created and operated America’s first avalanche
research station. I learned that she skied with some of my skiing
heroes: Junior Bounous, Dick Durrance and the Engens.
A few years later, SKI Magazine bought the idea of profiling this older
woman who was part of a group of people from Alta who introduced powder
skiing as we now know it to the world.
I was a little nervous contacting Dolores about her being the subject
of a story in such a mainstream magazine. I was surprised when she said
that she would go along with the idea, but only if I was able to write
a story that would get through the typical commercial hype for which
SKI Magazine is famous to the elemental and essential, to the real core
of skiing. I told her that I would do my best.
I arrived at her home in Colorado fairly late one night. She had stacks
of paper spread out on a large wooden table. She told me that it was
her latest book, “Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep,” which
she was publishing herself.
We worked together assembling the book and talking about skiing until early in the morning.
The next day we went skiing off of Red Mountain Pass, above Silverton.
She never stopped talking about her philosophy while we climbed up
through trees to the top of hidden gullies or wide bowls with untracked
snow. I remember watching her ski: her perfect rhythm, her silent upper
body, her wide grin.
The previous night, when explaining to me what powder skiing had to do
with deep ecology, she told me that we are part of the earth, that
there is no separation and what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.
Watching her ski, I understood. She was part of the mountain. She gave
form to gravity.
A few years later, she wrote another book, “Deep Powder Skiing.” I
can’t find my copy so I went to the library to read it when I heard
that she had died.
I felt reverent as I turned the pages, realizing what an important role Dolores had played in my life.
From “Deep Powder Skiing": “Powder snow skiing is not fun. It’s life,
fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. What we experience in
powder is the original human self, which lies deeply inside each of us,
still undamaged in spite of what our present culture tries to do to us.
Once experienced, this kind of living is recognized as the only way to
live — fully aware of the earth and the sky and the gods and you, the
mortal, playing among them.”
I remembered something from that day skiing with her. I had just
finished a perfect run and was giddy as I came to a stop in front of
her.
“You like that, don’t you?” she said.
“Yes. Yes.” I said, catching my breath.
“Of course you do,” she said matter-of-factly before skiing off to find more.
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