Art of the Skintrack

When you’re on the skintrack, you have a lot of time to think. Skinning is a moving meditation: hours of gentle focus and simple repetition that allow the mind to wander.

I’ve spent the last decade of my life creating and following these skintracks, and countless hours pondering the person behind the path I’m walking. Much like a signature, each hints at the creator’s motivations and approach to the mountains. There are the self-conscious trailbreakers who constantly question their route. There are those who calculate for precision and efficiency, while others aim for the quickest way to the top, efficiency be damned. Some take an existential approach, dancing with the terrain rather than simply climbing it. Each one tells a story.

The more tracks I saw, the more I noticed shared styles and themes beginning to emerge. I began thinking of the snow-laden mountains as a canvas and the track-setters as artists, their works scrawled across the landscape like a frozen art gallery.

These are some of those artists.

“The Engineer”

This is perhaps the best known and most appreciated track-setter: the one using physics to calculate every kick turn, taking every step toward a greater logic. They’re often guides or have higher backcountry education, and their skintracks consider terrain, weather inputs and avalanche conditions. Though they’re physically fit and do extensive amounts of trail breaking, they will never waste energy on a careless line—it’s about the value of efficiency, which means they build their skintracks to last (until the next snowfall, at least).

“The further ahead you can plan, the better your track will turn out,” says ACMG Ski Guide Adam Zok. “I like to put tracks in places that are usually fairly safe, and not just good enough for the day I’m out there … if I can help keep less experienced users out of trouble two or three weeks from now by making the safer option more convenient, I’d like to do that.”

“The Investigator”

Investigators’ tracks fulfill an innate natural curiosity, which can make their goal hard to pin down: Are they creative or meandering? Intentionally probing or aimlessly wandering? For the “Investigator,” a skintrack is a way to examine potential descents, explore the landscape and test the limits of their skinning abilities. They often jump on and off existing skintracks as it suits them, be it for efficiency or an animal’s footprints, knowing their departures and many detours may be confusing to those who follow.

“I like to joke that I set a skintrack as if I don’t want to arrive at my destination—meaning long, mellow and meandering,” says backcountry chef Celine Lussier. “But I also quite enjoy the acrobatics of kick turns and spicy maneuvers and find myself somewhat disappointed when some considerate skier digs out the corners.”

“The Get ’er Done”

The bravado of the “Get ’er Done” track-setter is fueled by stoke and snow froth. The zigzags of their skintracks are lightning bolts that morph into laser beams pointed straight uphill. Generally, these folks need to get somewhere quickly, be it getting to work on time or simply to the top of their line before anyone else to achieve untracked powder dreams. Their uptracks typically produce elevated heart rates and sweaty baselayers, to the chagrin of those who follow.

“We are here to go uphill, after all,” says Brian Coles, a boot fitter and carpenter who describes his uptracks as steep and unforgiving. “You’re in the mountains, en route to experiencing something unique, pushing yourself and having fun with friends. It fills the soul, one step at a time.”

“The Spiritual Walker”

This Zen track-setter sees the experience of breaking trail as an intuitive journey, one that allows them to dance and glide across the terrain’s contours. They listen to the mountains and surrender to what the landscape tells them, deepening their relationship with Mother Nature and their own mind, body and spirit. Touring has both mental and physical aspects, and they push themselves in order to better understand the difference.

“When there’s a track, the mind can wander freely; when setting a track through complex terrain, our focus must be so attuned to every topographic subtlety, prepared to make innumerable micro-adjustments,” says photographer and writer Matthew Tufts. “And yet, when you find a flow, a rhythm—when you’re really dancing with the terrain—you can receive a reciprocal energy from the land. It’s invigorating, sense-heightening, grounding and soul-nourishing all at once.”

We’re not all going to like every skintrack, just like we’re not going to like every painting we see. But that’s not the point. Touring provides us with a moment to access our truest selves, the person we usually bury under the to-do lists of regular life. It’s much like the space between words in a sentence, the moment to catch your breath.

Aristotle claimed that “the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Like romantic chemistry, we’re drawn to certain tracks and the intention behind them. It’s not our job to determine their worth, but instead to understand and appreciate the approach of the artist.

In the end, every skintrack delivers the same gifts of the mountains, and each is as impermanent as it is unique. Soon another storm will wipe them all away, leaving a blank canvas for the next artist’s snowy signature.