One of my all-time favorite videos about living true to yourself is “The Art of Defying Gravity“. Glen Plake is five years older than me, and I used to watch him in Greg Stump’s films at the State Theatre in Portland. He was a major influence on my obsession with chasing big mountain skiing.
When I was 23, I moved to Jackson Hole and worked as a breakfast waiter at the base just for the free pass. I didn’t make much, but I was off by 9AM and headed straight up the mountain. One morning, Greg Stump and the crew rolled in for breakfast — I served a table full of my heroes: Glen Plake, Greg Stump, Scott Schmidt, and others I am too old now to remember now.
They absolutely tore up the Hole that day — the footage lives on in ski legacy.
What were they riding? 205cm GS skis. That was what you rode. For speed!
I had a beat-up pair myself — no camber, stiff as hell. You newer skiers have no idea how hard it was to turn those things on steep terrain. This was before shaped skis, before sidecut, before reverse camber.
What were they underfoot? Skinny as hell. I think those purple 205 Atomic Arcs I rode are screwed to the wall at Cosmic Pizza in Belgrade, Montana now. Day-glo was a thing. I left them at a church thrift shop in the Hole, and now they hang as a tribute to anyone who had the guts to drop into Corbet’s or steeper.
Trust me-Glen went WAY faster and steeper than I did.
But it’s like playing guitar. You’ll never be as good as Jimmy Hendrix but at least you can buy a Fender Stratocaster and give it a go.
Backcountry at Jackson Hole? You had to have BALLS to ski it on gear like that. Real balls.
Those skis only turned if you could flex them right — what sidecut gives you today, we had to force with aggressively loading and unloading the ski, hammering the camber to create an inverse arc all with a “rails on edge” commitment to survive. You couldn’t just “roll the skis on edge” to turn like you can today.
For me it was purely survival. For Glen, transcendence. He did indeed defy gravity. BIG air was his signature move.
Me – I was always more earth bound.
Glen is a legend. A true OG. Both off-grid and on-slope. A pioneer of what we now call freeride. And Kim – his Easy Does it. She nails it with one word: Living.
Exactly right. That’s what it’s all about.
Kim is Glen’s Easy Does It and Glen is her Ride or Die.
Let me know if you agree. Either way, hit me up on Threads.
