When most skiers took to Whistler Blackcomb’s slopes on opening weekend, they were shaking off the rust after eight long months off snow.
That wasn’t the case for Noah Jacobs.
The skier, who splits his time between Cochrane, Alta. and Montreal, Que., was in town to log some turns and mark a milestone. Jacobs has been skiing at least one day a month for the past five years. Saturday, Nov. 27 marked his 60th consecutive month of skiing.
That means his last time on snow prior to Whistler Blackcomb’s opening weekend was in October, in the backcountry.
“The last time I was on a lift would have been in May,” said Jacobs. Opening weekend in Whistler “was great,” he continued. “The energy’s always fun [during] opening weekend at any ski resort. Everybody’s smiling. Even though they are wearing masks, you can still see that smile with their eyes.
“And the skiing—you know, Saturday was absolutely phenomenal.”
The monthly challenge, unofficially dubbed “Turns All Year,” has a few parameters: Participants must ski on snow, whether real, man-made or indoors. Those heading to the backcountry must log at least 33 turns—“They don’t necessarily need to be consecutive,” noted Jacobs—while skiers riding lifts need to complete at least three runs.
Those turns don’t necessarily have to be enjoyable. “I’ve been at Mount Hood three years in a row for September-October … Two of those trips we actually had fresh powder, but one of those days we were literally skiing a sliver of black and brown snow,” Jacobs recalled. “We were all like, ‘Let’s get our 33 and get out of here.’”
Those rules were loosened during the lockdowns in early 2020, to allow for cross-country skiing, for example. (Waterskiing still didn’t count.)
“My April turns in 2020 were on Mount Royal on, like, patch of snow to patch of snow,” said Jacobs. Subsequent months were checked off on man-made patches at nearby ski resorts, before he headed west for a few backcountry turns in the fall.
It was a friend who first convinced Jacobs to hop aboard the monthly ski challenge train five years ago. But with that friend already at 150 consecutive months of skiing, Jacobs quickly realized his chance of catching up was slim. So, Jacobs instead decided to one-up his pal by challenging himself to ski on five different continents in one calendar year—while keeping up with his monthly turns, obviously. He accomplished that feat in 2018.
North America was already taken care of, so Jacobs headed to Morocco in February to cross Africa off the list. The South-America box was checked with a summer trip to Chile, while another winter trip to France and Christmas holidays spent in Japan knocked off Europe and Asia.
Jacobs works as a nation-wide manager for an IT company, meaning he typically takes about 120 to 130 work-related flights a year in non-pandemic times. (It also means collecting enough airline points to make travelling to ski destinations around the world slightly more feasible.)
Coupled with his work in Calgary, the monthly challenge was one major reason why Jacobs bought a property in Alberta shortly after the onset of the pandemic. Once he realized COVID-19 restrictions might hamper his goal, “I kind of panicked, when basically I knew the ski season was going to be pretty crappy on the East Coast,” he explained. With snow available year-round in the nearby Rockies, “Alberta has been a saving grace for my silly challenge,” he added.
Climate change is also posing some obstacles, Jacobs said, referencing the heat wave that swept through Western Canada in late June. “I don’t know if that’s going to be the new norm, but that’s definitely a challenge within this challenge itself: chasing the snow,” he said.
“At the end of day, skiing is something that unites a lot of people … whether you’re skiing somewhere in South America with only a couple of chairlifts or skiing somewhere like Whistler Blackcomb that is unbelievably well developed,” said Jacobs.
The skiing challenge also pushes him to be outside, to stay active and keep moving, he added.
So how long does he intend to keep up with the challenge? “My goal was to get to 60 [months]. But I’m at 60 and the rest of the ski season is ahead of me,” he said.
“I think 72 is a really good number to go to. So I’m going to go to 72, which is next November, and we’ll see where we go from there.”
