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Crowding as the new baseline

Ryan Stuart’s essay starts with a familiar backcountry complaint: the old local stash is tracked before the day has properly begun. His ski partner Chris is furious, and the scene works because nearly every longtime tourer knows the feeling. The article is not trying to deny that something has changed. Participation has climbed for years, accelerated after the pandemic and kept growing even after the initial boom. The once-reliable fantasy of leaving late, finding silence and skiing untouched snow has become harder to count on.

What makes the piece useful is that Stuart does not stop at nostalgia. He treats the crowded skintrack as evidence of loss, but also as evidence of a larger constituency. More skiers mean more pressure on terrain, parking lots, wildlife and relationships with other users. They also mean more people with a direct stake in avalanche forecasting, land access, public funding and conservation. The essay’s central argument is that backcountry skiing’s growth is neither purely good nor purely bad. It is a fact that has to be managed, and the community is stronger if it can see the benefits clearly enough to defend them.

More people have changed the support system

Stuart’s strongest point is that the modern backcountry is safer and better supported partly because so many more people use it. Bigger demand has pushed gear companies to make lighter, stronger and more approachable skis, boots and bindings. It has also created better guidebooks, digital mapping tools and route information. The author contrasts an older Spearhead Traverse, navigated with thin beta and a penciled map line, with a more recent version where slope-angle shading and route overlays helped multiple parties share the same landscape with more confidence.

The same pattern shows up in avalanche infrastructure. Stuart points to expanded public funding, private support and broader community advocacy as reasons forecasting has improved across North America. Avalanche Canada has grown its budget and coverage since 2000, and similar efforts in the United States have helped sustain local centers even when public agencies face hiring freezes or budget pressure. The striking takeaway is that avalanche deaths have not risen in proportion to participation. More people are exposed, but the education and forecasting ecosystem around them has also matured.

That does not make the crowding painless. Stuart gives Chris the real counterargument: wildlife can be pushed from winter habitat, user groups can fight over limited terrain, roads and lots can fill beyond capacity, and the actual experience of being in the mountains can feel diminished. The essay is strongest when it admits those costs and then asks what tools already exist. Jasper National Park uses winter closures to protect caribou. Teton Pass has ambassadors who manage congestion and communicate safety information. Local ski associations collect fees, plow lots and haul trash. Rogers Pass uses a permit system to reduce conflicts between skiers, highways and rail operations.

The tradeoff is responsibility

By the end, the article’s real subject is not whether the old days were better. It is whether a larger backcountry community can act like a community. Stuart argues that numbers create leverage. A lone skier who misses empty slopes has little political power; thousands of skiers can fund avalanche centers, support land managers, oppose harmful public-land sales and make the case that winter wild places matter.

The final scene keeps that argument grounded. Chris is not converted by a speech. He clicks into his new skis, drops into tracked powder and admits that it still skis pretty well. That modest ending is the right scale for the essay. Growth has not solved backcountry skiing’s problems, and it has made some of them sharper. But the sport’s future will depend less on mourning secrecy than on building habits, institutions and political muscle strong enough to protect the places everyone now wants to reach.