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DIY frontcountry-backcountry

From the summit plateau of Hankin Mountain you can see a lot: west to the Coast Mountains, east to the Rockies, south to the spectacularly sheer walls and glaciers of Hudson Bay Mountain.

From the summit plateau of Hankin Mountain you can see a lot: west to the Coast Mountains, east to the Rockies, south to the spectacularly sheer walls and glaciers of Hudson Bay Mountain. During a 30-minute bootpack up the east ridge we've also seen three snowboarders drop three very different — but equally tempting — lines in the main north-facing bowl. Now it's our turn. Brian chooses the largest and closest chute, a shallow, natural halfpipe that sweeps away beneath his tips; I opt for the next one over, requiring a small cornice-drop to enter. After watching Brian make happy pow turns to the bottom some 300 vertical metres below, I drop in. Despite preternatural late-March warmth (we'd skinned up freeze-thaw chickenheads to the staging cabin at treeline in t-shirts) the snow up here is unscathed and powdery. Combined with a sustained 35-degree pitch and a mere five-minute walk back to the start of the ridge it makes for something, well... kind of perfect. For residents of Smithers, B.C., who can drive to the base area of the Hankin-Evelyn Backcountry Recreation Area in under 30 minutes, perfect is, well... kind of normal.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that 10 sporting goods stores serving 5,500 souls makes Smithers a different sort of place. And you wouldn't be alone. Unlike many northern whistle stops, folks choose Smithers and the Bulkley Valley more for lifestyle reasons (of which there are many) than somewhere to land a resource-based job (of which there are few), a basis for the town's strong community-mindedness, burgeoning outdoor scene, and ability to support a forward-thinking initiative like Hankin-Evelyn, which comprises low-elevation snowshoeing and cross-country loops, beginner, intermediate and expert downhill runs, as well as significant high-alpine terrain — all available free of charge.

The story begins in 2008 when local Brian Hall secured funding to develop a dedicated area for non-motorized backcountry usage. A longtime skier who'd done avalanche control at Lake Louise back in the 1970s, Hall later worked in consulting, resource industries, real estate, and created the Valhalla Pure chain of outdoor retailers before turning to running the Stork Inn in Smithers with his wife Kim. Adept at problem solving, Hall sought a way to move past the perennial conflict between self-propelled and motorized recreators in B.C.'s busy backcountry. With seed money from the feds earmarked for unemployed forestry workers, and partnering with everyone from friends to backcountry user groups to the province, Hall had fellers cut seven runs on Hankin and a couple more at nearby Evelyn Mountain/Elliot Peak. Though originally slated to be a yurt, a cabin with a woodstove was constructed atop the cut trails at treeline, a respite from which to attack the alpine. From the start, volunteers were the lifeblood; local business and individuals support the project with winter road plowing, improvements and ongoing maintenance.

Emphasis here is on small-footprint sustainability (compost toilets, dontcha know — whose manufacturer wants to partner with the area) and avalanche-awareness education. Each trailhead, as well as the cabin, has avalanche-beacon signal gates that check those passing through. Snow safety clinics take place and the cabin's interior is adorned with an Avalanche Terrain Exposure System map produced by the Avalanche Canada. Trailheads also feature automated counters to track usage: some 2,000 in winter 2010/11, then 4,000 the next (how's that for growth?), even more after that.

It's a unique model of DIY, user-responsible, frontcountry-backcountry that other mountain communities are looking at, and some towns — famously in the Chic Chocs mountains of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula — have already embraced. At the moment, however, it's unique enough to draw visitors from across North America and Europe, as well as present a season-long option for indigent ski squatters. As we'd climbed from the parking lot that morning, Brian related the story of a guy from Prince George who camped in the lot most of one winter. Because there's no user fee and Hankin-Evelyn is so far off the grid, no one cared like they would have were this a more populous area. As it was, a symbiosis developed: in exchange for not being harassed, the dude would make special coffees for skiers who showed up on storm days, and clean up the dog shit in the parking lot and nearby hiking areas. He left a wood-carved face with bark hair in his wake.

At the juncture of ridge and cabin again after our run, Brain and I decide to make another circuit. For our second pass, we climb maybe two-thirds of the way up to ski a narrower chute in north-facing shadow. Brian went for a ride in a small avie here earlier in the year so he asks me to keep an eye on him. I watch him drop in; the snowpack is shallow where I sit, breaking through to rocks around hoar pits and therefore I expect trouble. But all goes well, and I drop in behind. We make large sweeping turns out into the bowl and follow the rolling breaks even further than last time. Then it's a smart schuss across to the sunny side and a hockey stop at the forest's edge, a stamped-out area from which people skin and boot-pack back to the hut. The sun seems scorching here in the hollow, the footprints leading back to the cabin full of grey smears — swarming springtails, a phenomenon Brian has observed on ski tours but never known the cause of. I welcome the chance to reciprocate his largesse of the day and fill him in on the tiny, soil-dwelling insects, which are drawn to the parabolic heat generated in snow hollows. When I finish my nature talk we stand in a silence that seems profound, the scent of spruce our only companion.

No noise. No lifts. No people. No problem. Perfect again.

bbss.ca/hankin

Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn't like.