By Kurt Hoy

March 1, 1999

Steppin' Out Snowboarding was born in the backcountry, unbound on nameless hillsides. Pioneers, most of them still unknown tinkerers, took garage boards on Boy Scout winter outings and refined their powder riding-the only kind of riding there was. The backcountry served as a forum for friends to put together some turns and work out the kinks in their concave, spoon-nosed boards with fins. Snowboarding was simple and innocently low-tech.

The feelings were undiluted and the relationship between riders and the mountains was romantically harmonious, even if they didn't know it. As snowboarders, they were tapped into the source, drinking straight from the well. I remember my first turns, on a roadside embankment a couple miles shy of Mountain High. "Let me out here," I said, jumping from the truck and scrambling up the hill with a board I'd ordered from a Burton catalog. The snow was a shabby, low-elevation Southern Cal conglomerate, and my turns-all three of them-were a feeble mixture of whatever surf and skating experience would apply.

The struggle convinced my friend to not even try. It was a far cry from the pin-up world we consider backcountry riding today: helicopters, snowmobiles, the glitz, glamour, and glory of heroic, almost unattainable lines. We've found all kinds of ways to get out there, but whether we're any closer to the backcountry now than we were before, I'm not sure. I just heard a song that reminded me of that idea, something like, "the less I seek my source, the closer I am ... " It was on the radio, and I thought it applied, all right? Evolution and progress, it seems, are sometimes antonyms, and convenience usually takes a pretty big bite out of the reward. If anything, the technology has probably made us more removed from the mountains and what backcountry riding really is. I bet a lot of riders don't believe they could ever get to it at all. But the backcountry isn't really such a far-off place. In fact, it's more a space than any certain place at all. It's wherever you feel in touch with the mountain, and yourself or your riding, or whatever your thing is. Mine is quiet.

And undistracted. And really clear. It's where, for me, snowboarding becomes more than the action of riding a board, and turns into using the board to ride the mountain. If you look at it that way, this enticing but intimidating backcountry thing is a little more recognizable, even friendly, and it's only a step away. The backcountry is really all around us-a few paces into the trees of a local resort, a New Jersey backyard kicker, and yes, even a roadside embankment on Highway 24. Kurt Hoy Contributing Editor