Winter Adventure in The New Yorker
By Joshua Rothman
Double Take: Highlights from magazine's coverage of winter adventures.
Over the years, The New Yorker has covered all sorts of winter adventures, from extreme skiing to extreme symphonic composition. Here are some of our favorites.
**"Dangerous Game," by Nick Paumgarten (April 18, 2005)
** About the ski mountaineer Andrew McLean (a ski mountaineer is someone who "climbs mountains and then skis down them"). Paumgarten and McLean go skiing together. "Last fall," Paumgarten writes, "before [McLean] and I met, he'd sent me a copy of 'The Chuting Gallery,' his self-published guide to the chutes in his home range, the Wasatch Mountains, which are just east of Salt Lake City. He had inscribed it: 'I'm looking forward to skiing with you this winter. If you die skiing one of these, I promise it will be renamed in your honor!' I can't say that the prospect hadn't crossed my mind."
**"The High Mark," by Mark Singer (March 25, 2002)
** About winter life in Montana. "Most avid snowmobilers believe that where the trail ends the real fun begins. One dubious but popular local activity is high-marking, an amusement that thrives in inverse proportion to good sense. High-markers seek steep slopes covered by fresh powder, and there they play chicken with the laws of gravity, full-throttling uphill until the moment when either they turn back down the slope or their sleds topple. While high-marking obviously involves a certain quotient of brawn and athleticism—demanding more finesse than, say, competitive peeing for distance—it was most aptly characterized, for me anyway, as 'a perfect example of what happens to people's brains when they get a big machine between their legs.' "
**"Let It Snow," by David Sedaris (December 22, 2003)
** About getting locked out in the snow by your mom. " 'That bitch,' my sister Lisa said. We pounded again and again, and when our mother failed to answer we went around back and threw snowballs at her bedroom window. 'You are going to be in so much trouble when Dad gets home!' we shouted, and in response my mother pulled the drapes. Dusk approached, and as it grew colder it occurred to us that we could possibly die."
**"Song of the Earth," by Alex Ross (May 12, 2008)
** About the composer John Luther Adams, who takes his inspiration from the Arctic, and creates music that responds to "seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic" data. "Adams strives to create musical counterparts to the geography, ecology, and native culture of [Alaska], where he has lived since 1978. He does this not merely by giving his compositions evocative titles—his catalogue includes 'Earth and the Great Weather,' 'In the White Silence,' 'Strange and Sacred Noise,' 'Dark Waves'—but by literally anchoring the work in the landscapes that have inspired it."
**"The Ice Balloon," by Alec Wilkinson (April 19, 2010)
** About S. A. Andrée, an explorer who, in 1897, made an ill-fated attempt to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon. "Of all the hundreds of people who went looking for the North Pole before the twentieth century," Wilkinson writes, "only Andrée used a balloon." It was, he argued, a more logical way to explore. When a ship full of explorers was lost, dozens of men could die; his expedition would only risk the lives of three.
Joshua Rothman, the ideas editor of newyorker.com, has been a writer and an editor at the magazine since 2012.
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