Promised Land of "Exstatriots"

by Lars Banff

As a young skier growing up in Colorado, I was convinced that the skiing world barely existed outside the state's borders. As I got older and started reading all the ski magazines, I realized my mistake, of course. But I remained brainwashed by the declarations of superiority coming from my state and other pretenders to the U.S. skiing throne, which included slogans like "Come to Utah! We won't lose your luggage," or "Come to Colorado! We have better bars."

The shameful truth is that it took going away to college and then a season of ski bumming in Colorado's Summit County to figure out that I might be missing OUTDOORS Promised Land of "Exstatriots" something. And the buzz on the street among my fellow ski bums was all about Tahoe. So in September of 1995, based on nothing more than a few photos in the ski magazines, the testimony of a friend who had moved to San Francisco and some juicy segments in a Greg Stump ski movie, I headed west, joining what I soon found out was an endless parade of skiers from around the world that move to, then fall in love with, The Lake of the Sky.

I admit, when I settled in and became familiar with my beautiful new surroundings, I remained, at my Colorado heart, a skeptic. When mid-November arrived without significant snow, I was ready to pack it up and high tail it back to the Rockies. "It's going to come," promised the longtime locals. "And when it does, you better be ready!"

Banking on their faith, I stuck it out; the following week, enough snow fell to open the lifts. But it wasn't until I woke one morning in early December and found my little Subaru buried under 4 feet of fluffy new snow that I first realized where I was—snow heaven! Back in Colorado, we'd call 18 inches "deep powder." By the end of that first winter, I discovered what bottomless snow was really all about and had truly become an aspiring local. Those who have moved here from Canada, South America or elsewhere in the skiing world may be expatriates, yet I am proud to be an "exstatriot." Although I love and miss the great things my home state has to offer, I just can't help but boast to the Coloradofaithful that, here, the storms are measured in feet not inches.

"When I first moved here, I was a stubborn Colorado kid," says Ephraim Schwartz, another exstatriot. "I liked my Colorado mountains just fine and thought the steeps at Arapahoe Basin and Telluride were as good as it gets." Schwartz, a Boulder, Colorado native and member of the University of Colorado freestyle ski team, took a job in San Francisco after graduating.

"By the end of my first season in California, I started to lose my ignorance. The variable terrain and the steep runs speak for themselves. I would much rather have interesting mountains over some 20- minute catwalk cruiser at Vail, where you can spend half your time trying to keep your speed to get from one lift to another. Before I came to California, I was strictly a bump skier. California taught me to ski differently and has made me a much more well-rounded skier."

Despite the host of Colorado skiers who have migrated to the Sierra, our number pales compared to those of East Coast states. Every autumn, they flow into the Sierra. Cars are loaded down with gear usually sporting license plates from New England, their drivers full of pre-winter energy and determined to experience a Sierra winter.

Through the years, many of those cars have yeilded Vermont license plates. As University of Vermont (UVM) alum and now Incline Village-based attorney Andy Wolf testifies, "There was a real ski culture at UVM, and the word traveled fast. During my first year in California, there were at least ten others from my graduating class that had moved here. When I first decided to drive out West in the fall of 1982, POWDER magazine had just published pictures of Scot Schmidt [an exstatriot from Montana] launching huge air at Squaw Valley. We stopped in Colorado and entertained thoughts of living in Vail. Then we drove through Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah, but we kept going toward California. We were on our way to the Promised Land."

Nicole Dreon, another East Coast deserter, moved to Lake Tahoe from Upstate New York in 1996. A former collegiate ski racer and big mountain competitor, she got a job as a race coach at Diamond Peak on Tahoe's North Shore. "Compared to New York's ski weather, I couldn't believe how sunny it was here," says Dreon, who has worked with ESPN at the X-Games for many years. "Now when I go other places, I love to boast about where I live."

As former pro big-mountain skier Dave Steiner will tell you, it's about the whole Tahoe package. Originally from Monmouth, Maine, Steiner set off on a post-college mission to find "the best place to live." He traveled the world on the professional ski circuit and later, through various jobs, tried out towns like Vail, Park City and Hood River. But he finally found his nesting place in Tahoe. "The terrain here is both challenging and fun," he says. "These mountains have a mix of everything to accommodate all skiers, from beginners to the pros. And there's so much more sun compared to everywhere else."

Season after season, the skiing- or riding-addicted continue to arrive, carrying licenses plates from Alaska to New York, or passports from New Zealand to Argentina. Their spirits are high and their wallets light. If they're lucky like me, a decade and a job or seven later, they will still be living the skiing dream that brought them to these fabled peaks so many winters ago.