Deep Powder and Steep Rock: The Life of Mountain Guide Hans Gmoser
by Chic Scott, 346pp. Assiniboine Publishing Limited, 2009
$50. Special Hardcover edition with DVD featuring three of Hans Gmoser's films
Bugaboo Dreams: A Story of Skiers, Helicopters & Mountains
by Topher Donahue, 293pp. Rocky Mountain Books, 2008
$29.95
"A man should have wings to carry him where his dreams go but sometimes a pair of skis makes a good substitute." Hans Gmoser
If he weren't already dead, Hans Gmoser would be blushing. Two books detailing his life and achievements in the past six months? He wouldn't know what to say but chances are he'd quickly change the subject if asked. More likely than not, he'd find a way to guide - literally - the conversation into mountain travel, climbing, skiing, biking or any one of a number of people, other people, he would rather have talked about, people he loved and people he relied on to build the first, biggest and best heliski operation in the world: Canadian Mountain Holidays.
Sharing the principal character and a rich assortment of photographs, the two books are decidedly different in their approach. Likely that stems from the close, personal relationship Chic Scott enjoyed with Hans, as opposed to Topher Donahue, who met his subject late in life. Read together though, the two volumes describe the arc of a life well lived and a legacy that blazed a new trail to skiing nirvana.
In Deep Powder and Steep Rock , Canadian climber, backcountry traveller, writer and now publisher Chic Scott, paints an intimate portrait of one of western Canada's least-known Horatio Alger stories. In his only conceit on chronology, Chic starts at the end, July 3, 2006, the day a 73-year-old Gmoser set off on a long bike ride along the scenic Bow Valley Highway in Alberta, a ride he never finished.
From there, we flash back to 1932, to Braumau am Inn, Austria, Gmoser's birth, the product of an unmarried mother and cold, authoritarian, distant father who never played that role in his son's life and left a void as yawning as the most dangerous crevasse because of it. Through the magic of a first trip to the mountains led by his parish priest, Gmoser finds what so many of us find in mountains: challenge, fulfillment, majesty, humility, grandeur and peace. He also finds his life's passion and ultimately, the seeds of future success.
Driven perhaps by that uniquely European trinity of mind, body and spirit, Gmoser not only finds himself in the mountains, he chronicles seemingly every foray in a series of tourenbuchs , diaries. Scott draws heavily on these first-hand sources - written in German and later in English - in illuminating Gmoser's early life in Austria, his accidental emigration to Canada and his very satisfying, early life as a mountain guide in the Rockies.
Scott lavishes the care and attention to detail on Gmoser's life that comes from writing about a friend, icon and role model. True to his own bias towards ski touring and backcountry adventure, Scott doesn't dwell on Gmoser's development of heliskiing to the same extent he explores his earlier accomplishments as a ski guide and mountain climber who laid down numerous first ascents and difficult new routes up previously unclimbed peaks. The section outlining the expedition to bag Mount Logan's east peak - featuring a young, bookish Karl Ricker - and the almost tragi/comic finale attempting to raft back to civilization down the Donjek River, is riveting.
Complementing the intimate portrait of mountain pioneer, the real gem in Scott's book is, ironically, a DVD featuring three of Gmoser's promotional films. Borrowing a page from Warren Miller, Gmoser spent the decade from 1957 to 1965 on the road each autumn, showing films he'd made about skiing and climbing in the wilds of British Columbia and Alberta to enthralled skiers and climbers around North America. The scratched, grainy, black and white films are true archival gems, documenting some of the first human activity in the best damn skiing mountains on the planet.
Topher Donahue, a mountaineer and journalist from Colorado is, by contrast, a helivangelist. He met Gmoser - and discovered the addictive qualities of what many would identify as his subject's greatest achievement - the same way many journalists do: through the very efficient marketing department of CMH. An assignment with Climbing magazine led to a chance meeting with Gmoser which daisy-chained into the challenge of telling the CMH story, a story he tells well in Bugaboo Dreams .
In telling that story, Donahue lightly covers the highlights of Gmoser's early life, relocation to Canada and the unique collision of chance, opportunity, technology and geography that led to the birth of one of mankind's wackiest ideas ever: using helicopters as chairlifts. He approaches the task with a wide-eyed, gee-whiz wonderment and has the enviable opportunity of speaking with almost everyone who ever worked with Gmoser to make CMH the success it is today.
A book for those who have enjoyed the thrills and comforts of one of CMH's backcountry lodges, or those who have wanted to, Donahue's work could have used an editor with a heavier hand. It tends to meander and ramble and as a result, leads the reader back over terrain previously covered. Still, it's a spirited read and taken in conjunction with Scott's biography, provides a complete picture of a fascinating man, a stellar achievement and something Canada offers that no place else in the world can match.
