It’s a world full of characters - people who call themselves dirtbags and try to be accepted into a group labeled Jackson Hole Airforce. It’s a world where people work multiple low-wage jobs and cram into substandard housing. It’s a world we think we know well because it is all around us. It’s the world of the ski bum.
But a lifestyle centered around the love of the perfect turn and the dopamine rush of untracked powder is one that is disappearing. Ski towns like our own are struggling with the realities of increasing housing costs, increases exacerbated by short-term rentals. The gap between wealthy vacationers and the folks needed to make ski towns run grows larger and larger as annual snowfall declines.
Author Heather Hansman who knows the ski bum lifestyle has written a compelling story of the challenges facing the shrinking community of dirtbags in her new book Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow.
For an excerpt from the book, please visit the February issue of Deseret Magazine.
