Whistler, British Columbia, has bred more rippers than any other snowy place. From Rob Boyd to Kye Peterson, the sprawling steeps named after whistling marmots have spawned countless swaggeringly cool experts in all disciplines of descent.
“It was a California-like place, where ‘bum’ was never a pejorative term, anything seemed possible and trends found footing to ripple out across the White Planet,” writes Leslie Anthony, the sultan of ski writing in his latest tome, “White Planet.”
Spurred by Whistler’s century-deep squadron of speedy skiers, Anthony is the modern-day Dolores LaCha-pelle, spreading the often-garbled stoke of skiing with wit, intellect and passion.
With a Ph.D. in zoology, Anthony, the world’s foremost knee-dipping herpetologist, has spent decades tracking the evolution of his beloved skiing. “White Planet” follows his signature tracks across the slopes of Mexico, Lebanon, Austria, Chile, Iceland and India, to name a few.
With a floating, easy tone, Anthony shares the dense histories, geologies and personalities that buttress snowsports. His singsong prose, like the effortless dance of a skier dropping through a cascade of steep slough, reveals the emotional, physical and scientific complexities that make up a sport that is so much more than simple sport.
Anthony, probably more than any other ski writer out there since Ernest Hemingway, can vividly share the magic that compels us to travel, spend and chase elusive yet captivating moments found in snowy descents.
From an ill-advised and icy descent of a Mexican volcano to wine-soaked laps of luxurious powder with European darlings, Anthony’s “White Planet” captures the playfulness that far too often is overshadowed by skiing’s competitive and industrial business perspectives. But then Anthony proves equally adept at exploring those more serious aspects of his pursuit, from the maturation of North American ski racing to losses of family in a game where the tiniest miscalculation costs lives.
Anthony’s keen eye and breadth of experience on snow have made him one of skiing’s most deft chroniclers of how both the acrobatic antics of new-school freeskiers and their wide, floaty rides have triggered the most dynamic era in the sport. His “X Marks the Spot” and “Just Shoot Me” chapters in “White Planet” brilliantly mark the new reign of radical in skiing.
Weaving a lifetime of Anthony’s best magazine articles, “White Planet” indeed lives up to its tagline: “A dash through modern global ski culture.”
With pitch-perfect profiles of skiing’s most colorful characters — who are almost always the ones who are never known beyond their own slopes — and a casual yet contextual intermingling of essential skiing history, “White Planet” should be a required read for anyone whose heart skips at the sound of a clicking binding.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
