Powder Days Quotes

“Psychologists have found that the most significant common trait among people who are pulled to the mountains is something called sensation seeking. “Neuroscience calls it novelty, it’s the willingness to take risks for the sake of rewards,” says Cynthia Thomson, a health researcher who looks at behavioral genetics. “Compared to people who don’t ski, skiers are higher on the sensation-seeking scale. They have a low threshold for boredom, and tend to look for more exciting experiences, even if there are dangers associated with them.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“Studies have shown that people are happier when they don’t have as many choices. We don’t always want to be optimizing.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“Sometimes the good parts and the hard ones are so close together—like the inhale and exhale of the same breath.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“In 2018, the average US weekend window lift ticket price was $122.30. That’s thirty times greater than the $4.18 it was in 1965. Over the same half century, US disposable family income grew slightly less than threefold. That means the lift ticket price grew ten times faster than people’s ability to afford them.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“There are subtle markers that delineate space, as well as clothing, language, social codes, and behaviors that indicate someone might be an insider. I often make immediate judgy assumptions based on what other skiers are wearing, or how they carry their gear. If you look at the symbolism and the cultural clues about who is welcome—the athletes, the ads—they’re largely white. When you show up to ski, you’re facing everyday systemic racism, as well as the factors specific to these towns.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“The theory of person-environment fit says that you might be happier and more fulfilled in certain places because of your temperament, values, and goals. That your characteristics might match up best with a landscape or a location. It’s often applied to business structure, and organizational psychology, but could just as well apply to life in the mountains.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“Snow is a changing, fragile substance, which accumulates in layers: a deep puffy storm, followed by an inch of rain. Wind crust followed by cold light flakes. Avalanches are a combination of three factors: a sliding surface, a slope steep enough to slide, and a trigger. Here in Utah—and in other high, dry parts of the Rockies—more often than not, there’s a deep unbonded layer in that snowpack that could always slide, given a trigger. It seems to happen the same way almost every season. The first thin snowfall covers the mountains in a crystalized layer of sugar and anticipation. Then it stops, like climatic clockwork, for a few weeks. That layer of unbonded snow is exposed to the air, which sucks out moisture, creating slippery, faceted snow crystals called depth hoar. It forms a perfect sliding surface. When the snow starts in earnest, that surface, which avalanche forecasters call a persistent weak layer, is at the very bottom, slick and unbonded, ready to slide. That’s one of the constant hazards of skiing, you always know it’s down there. Just how big it could break is a question of what comes in on top of it.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow

“Being able to avoid thinking about something is the embodiment of privilege and for white people that is deeply embedded in American land use, social structure, and politics.”
― Heather Hansman, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow