A Legendary Snowboarder's Legacy Lives on at Mt. Baker

Even as someone who is admittedly a bit out of touch with snowboarding, Blehm’s book absolutely captivated me. Amongst other things, I learned about the ways in which the roots of snowboarding, BMX, and mountain biking are all deeply intertwined.

The show continued with the origins of freeride snowboarding, what the early days of athlete sponsorships looked like, and how some of the iconic cat ski lodges seen in films over the years came to have their own histories intertwined with that of freeskiing and snowboarding.

I’m not going to summarize the whole book right here- you’ll have to go read it, but I will leave you with a few key takeaways from the book that were at the very front of my mind as I drove up to pay Mt. Baker a visit last week.

For a bit of context, Craig Kelly spent the majority of his youth in Mt. Vernon, Washington, a sleepy town about 30 minutes south of Bellingham, and about an hour and a half from Mt. Baker. Kelly was one of the pioneers of not only snowboarding as a sport, but specifically lift-accessed snowboarding. Kelly called Mt. Baker home and was amongst the folks who lobbied for Baker to allow snowboarders on the lifts, making it one of the first resorts in the US to do so.

Kelly continued to be a prominent figure at Mt. Baker throughout his youth and early career. At just 19-years-old, he placed fourth behind other snowboarding legends like Tom Sims and Ken Auchenbach at the inaugural Mt. Baker Legendary Banked Slalom, before going on to win it several times over.

Kelly’s career took him from pioneering lift-accessed snowboarding, to freestyle snowboarding, to becoming one of the first splitboard guides before his untimely death. Tangentially, Blehm’s book chronicles the avalanche that killed Kelly and seven others in great detail. It stands out as an incredible examination of heuristic traps in avalanche accidents making it an essential piece of literature for anyone recreating in the backcountry, skier or snowboarder.

I drove the winding highway from Bellingham, Washington through the sleepy town of Glacier and up to Mt. Baker on an overcast, January afternoon. Upon arrival, I purchased a discounted ‘Wicket Wednesday’ pass— Mt. Baker still sells lift tickets on two-sided stickers to be wrapped around a wicket from the lodge at the base of the mountain, which is also one of the only buildings for miles.

Once at the mountain, I met up with a friend who has spent the last two ski seasons living in his van and riding Mt. Baker just about every day. It hadn’t snowed in a while, so we stuck mostly to Baker’s few groomed trails, but he showed me around pointing out iconic runs, the lines he’d ridden already, and the ones he still dreamed of riding. He greeted most of the lift operators we encountered, having gotten to know some of them throughout the season.

“I met the cutest liftie the other day. I had my own Kelly Jo Kelly moment,” he told me, referencing Craig Kelly’s first wife, Kelly Jo Legaz, who had been working as a lift operator at Mt. Baker herself when she met Craig. The two spent years snowboarding together at Mt. Baker and eventually marrying, like snowboarding’s first fairytale.

I wasn’t sure if it was the view of Mt. Shuksan, the exposure as the chair we rode swayed over cliffs, or my hopeless romantic tendencies that made my stomach flutter.

Kelly’s legacy is palpable at Mt. Baker. It’s not just the young snowboarders embracing whichever style happens to be up-and-coming, or the unassuming looking rider who you’d never know has skied every single line in the Mt. Baker backcountry. It's that throughout Kelly’s life and career, he was driven by passion, whether or not the world around him had caught up to his vision.

Mt. Baker as a whole continues to emulate this spirit. There’s no fancy lodging or high-speed gondola, and yet it remains one of the most legendary ski areas in the world because, like Kelly, Mt. Baker keeps dancing to the beat of its own drum.

People love to talk about the ‘soul of skiing’ these days and which resorts have lost it or still got it. In many ways, skiing (and snowboarding) have become a corporate industry based on a consumer experience. I’m not here to bash that, I’ve built a career on it.

What I loved about Blehm’s book, and the things it taught me about the history of Mt. Baker and snowsports, was that rather than wishing for a time past, or the ‘good old days,’ it allowed me to appreciate where these sports came from and the folks who pioneered them, and some of the values they held.

There are things in snowsports that have changed for the better, but a reminder of values like hard work, intention, humility, and passion that folks like Kelly exemplified are important to remember when we find ourselves questioning whether or not skiing has lost its soul.