To be honest, I never loved Powder Magazine. I imagine that comment might trigger defensive reactions in many a skier. How could someone not like the late, most core periodical in skiing, 'The Skier's Magazine' for God's sake? The statement is tantamount to sacrilege, especially now given the fall of Powder as a print entity, and with that, the current, desolate landscape in outdoor media.
Allow me to clarify that instead of disliking anything that Powder ever did, I disliked their coverage and tone during much of the time I subscribed to the magazine. In the fifteen-some years I subscribed - roughly from the rise of the tall-tee park rats to the recent-ish demise of Powder in print - I often found the magazine to be narrowly focused, that it relied too heavily on resort and gear advertising, and - most grating to me - that it was overly concentrated on what was cool. But, given recent events, I now strangely miss the magazine.
When I first began subscribing to Powder as a freshman at CU Boulder, I had undertaken the task of college almost entirely because I felt like I was supposed to. I had no grand visions of what classes to take, what internships to apply for, what career to aim at. I spent that energy dreaming of what ski town I'd move to after graduation. I knew for sure that once I completed that four year duty, I would return to the mountains, and that skiing would be a large part - if not the biggest part - of my life. Subscribing to Powder and letting it help me fantasize about the ski bum I was to become seemed like the natural thing to do given the chore at hand.
Powder didn't quite fit that neat little role for me. Instead of being an oasis where my own vision of what skiing meant could be reinforced, I found a scene where I didn't quite belong. In the pages of Powder I found gear guides that pushed expensive planks that were too wide for most any conditions and promoted snow-gangster chic outerwear I neither wanted to own nor could afford.
Most acutely, Powder's coverage of the newschooler scene was something I didn't relate to. As the consummate young, insecure if idealistic ski bum wannabe, the brash attitude of the park culture was something I just couldn't stomach. I remember rail-sliders my age who went to the local community college giving me shit because the one pair of boots I happened to own were the circa 2004 Atomics with the checkered flag on them. "What are you, a ski racer?" one bedreaded guy from Wisconsin once condescendingly asked me. Those same sanctimonious nineteen-year-olds were the one's yelling obscenities at little kids who ventured into the park; they were the same people calling aging ski bums 'beaters.' They were the ones who made it a crime worse than murder to be the most abhorrent of things in a ski town; a despicable beginner, an uncool scourge - a gaper.
Powder leaned into this vibe. And it made sense. In many ways the newschooler scene was the tip of the spear in skiing. By the mid/late-2000s Jonny Moseley's 360 mute at Nagano seemed like child's play with the rapid evolution of park and big air. And the brash vibe of Tanner Hall and his contemporaries marked a shift in attitude that spoke to many young men. Disseminated far and wide by the X Games, the park scene was the most aspirational avenue in the sport, inspiring many a young skier from the peaks of the Rockies to the hills of the Midwest. And it seemed to be pushing the envelope and reenergizing skiing and its culture.
But that came at a cost. The newschooler subculture was rife with a youthful revisionist arrogance that seemed to cast anything that came before as unworthy of respect. And uncool outsiders were given the same treatment time and time again. In 2009, right in the meat of the time I was struggling to relate to Powder, my home mountain of Steamboat was plagued with "ugly incidents on past April Fools’ Days [that had] prompted Steamboat Ski Area to launch a campaign to promote appropriate behavior." Speaking of Gaper Day, then director of ski patrol John Kohnke said "April 1 has always kind of been a day of celebration on the mountain, and from my understanding, it’s been kind of an evolution of a day of celebration that’s turned into mocking the guest."
In that time, Powder's editorial covered this subculture extensively, which dripped with an arrogant, often sarcastic bravado - humorous, thin mustaches and under-helmet goggles abounded, both styles adopted in the most ironic of ways. Newschoolers often took on a hipster bent, and many in their subculture took on a polarizing attitude, resorting to anti-gaper name-calling, purposefully using an us-vs-them ethos. Uninterested in that crossfire, it's little wonder that I became a telemark skier.
To Powder's credit, the magazine's tone shifted with the times as it had many times over; its mood matched the moment and eventually became something more accessible, even edging toward being big tent as the zeitgeist became more inclusionist. Articles on mom and pop ski areas sat next to bios of Lindsey Vonn. But it was a little too late (and probably not what many wanted to read). In 2019, American Media Inc., owner of (let's just say not exactly core outdoor) titles like Men’s Journal and National Enquirer purchased Powder's parent company TEN: Publishing. A year and a half after the purchase, American Media Inc. closed down Powder, ending it's nearly 50 year run as a print entity. The magazine's website sat mostly idle for years, with the occasional digital upload of vintage issues marking most of the action.
But in March of 2023, American Media Inc. quietly relaunched Powder online. And what they brought to the fold made me miss the print magazine that I had for years struggled to relate to.
Powder came back to life online. Being obsessed with the arc of ski culture, I had followed the magazine's trajectory, and had checked in on the site occasionally to see what if anything was happening on the site. One day in March, the home page was updated, and new articles abounded.
But what I found on the new site wasn't exactly the coverage of any scene; it wasn't the embodiment of an ethos, even one I didn't relate to it. Powder had succumbed to the fate that other once independent entities now conglomerate-owned and internet-bound had - it was a click-farm.
I was mostly able to let it slide until one article inspired me out of silence.
In early June of 2023, Powder ran a short piece by Jake Moe, who co-cofounded Powder with his brother Dave in 1971. In the article, Moe summarized the founding of the magazine, describing the original inspiration for Powder in a time where "the two dominant ski magazines in the market were Skiing and Ski...and quite frankly I didn't think they conveyed the true joy of the sport of skiing. They were mostly packed with car and cigarette ads without amazing photography and biting editorial."
The new Powder is certainly filled with photos (and videos), but the editorial doesn't seem biting - the crop of pieces typically are short winded affairs that puff up Instagram videos, often beginning with attention grabbing, click-baiting intro words like 'Look.' The piece "Look: Skier Pulls Off Flawless Recovery On Challenging Mogul Run" is an exemplar of Powder's new formula, featuring few words, little stance, and a social media bent. Another, "Skier Loses Control And Cartwheels Down The Mountain At High Speed" is a 125 word attempt at viralness posted under the misleadingly meaningful category 'Trending News.' Gone are the long form pieces devoted to all things skiing. Powder now acts more as a social media platform.
Moreover, the e-zine is full of ads - from mainstream sport ads for NFL Sunday Ticket, to the usual click-bait junk show at the bottom of each article. There's even car ads.
It doesn't get much more ironic than this.
It's difficult to see Moe's contribution outside of what it appears to be: an attempt by the new vanguard at Powder to use the magazine's past narrative as a reassurance for the path forward - a blatant attempt at creating the façade of a continuity between the publication's independent founding and its current, detached iteration.
While the new Powder does occasionally run feature articles on individuals and topics important to skiing, the quick-hit platform reigns supreme, with little resemblance to a thoughtful publication. Moreover, Powder is positioning itself as another in the growing stable of gear review-centric sites, ones that often make their revenue not from reader subscriptions, but affiliate link commissions. Cut from the Powder staff after AMI purchased the magazine in 2019, former editor Matt Hansen prophetically posted to Facebook “we are under attack, and if we are not careful, the only thing available to us will have a shady agenda attached.”
Powder could be better than this. Powder was better than this for decades, when it charted the rise of the skiing lifestyle, when it celebrated hard skiing and hard living, not a shell of it for entertainment or retail. It was a bastion of authenticity for years. And I am ready to concede that it was better than this, even during the time I struggled to relate to it. While I may not have agreed with the stance that Powder previously took during the particular era in skiing when I subscribed, at least the magazine captured a zeitgeist beyond making ad revenue. At least the magazine stood behind a subculture instead of a click-farm. While my distaste for how many in the newschooler scene behaved remains, my opinion on the Powder of old has mellowed, especially when faced with what it has become.
While the defense of independent outdoor media has become a refrain repeated ad nauseum - and unavoidably comes with a preachy bent - the message remains: unless readers use their subscription dollars as a testament to what they want out of outdoor media, the culture's written sources will wither into the vapidity that is the now pervasive click-for-ad-commission business model. Let's hope there are enough people in the outdoor world who care about written content to save the platform.
Even if it doesn't always live up to all of our expectations, long form writing is vastly superior for our culture compared to the current direction of social media, click-for-dollars outdoor media.
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