Review
"Who are you meant to be? How will you spend your days? What, above all, matters to you? Now, more than ever, these are the questions we ask ourselves. Heather Hansman found her answers in the mountains—from the lift lines to the back bowls to the dive bars—and among her tribe of fall-line aces who’ll sacrifice much for first tracks. Powder Days is a love letter to the freedom seekers, the fun hogs, the dirt bags—the ones our culture hasn’t yet managed to tame. This is a timely, sharply observed, and beautifully written story of wildness and obsession."—Susan Casey, New York Times bestselling author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
“An enchantingly lyrical ode to the peculiar allure of the cold, the steep, the remote, the hard, the fast, and the fallen. I was never a ski bum, but this book makes me wish I had been.”— Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
"From the moment Heather Hansman first ducks a rope and escapes with a cadre of outlaws into the stark backcountry of the dirtbag dream, you know you are in the hands of a great writer and a great subject. In their pursuit of that moment of transcendence where snow meets speed, at the expense of almost everything else, ski bums are iconic American figures, and Powder Days brings them to life with the details and surprising insights that come from one who has led the life in all its grace and grunge. Whether you’ve spent your life off-piste or only thinking about it, Powder Days is a heartfelt plunge into an age-old question: How to keep your wildness alive in a world that wants you tame."—Rowan Jacobsen, author of Fruitless Fall and Truffle Hound
"Powder Days is a bittersweet love letter to skiing, mountain towns, and the people that make them work. As the climate warms and the income gap widens, Heather Hansman is clear-eyed about the challenges and flaws of the ski industry. But she never loses sight of the magic."—Eva Holland, author of Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear
"What a joyous and original book this is! I’m telling you, Powder Days reads with the free-and-easy momentum of a mid-week, late-morning ski run in cold clear air down a wide-open bump-run dusted with just enough fresh powder to feel light and loose under your skis. In fact, for anyone who has ever floated down any bright white snowy slope anywhere at all, and glided between green trees and into the lift line for yet another go—from those of us who have watched beaming young women and men working the lift itself and wondered about their mountain-town lives, to those who have lived the mountain-town dream—this is your book. Because Powder Days is one of those rare memoirs that feels like it was just waiting for the right writer to come along and write it. Heather Hansman is absolutely that writer: she’s told a great story, her book positively oozes hard-earned authenticity, and she has also found and let sing her own strong and unique literary voice."—Daniel Duane, author of Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast
“A riveting plunge into ski culture... [Powder Days] is as exhilarating as the act of skiing itself.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED review
"An entertaining and eye-opening look at the history and economics of skiing and ski resorts in the United States."—Library Journal
"Superbly reported and lyrical."—Outside Magazine
"Entertaining...blade-sharp...[Hansman's] passion for the sport shimmers on every page, with prose as smooth as a turn in dry powder."—San Francisco Chronicle
An in-depth look at a fascinating sports culture from a respected ski journalist."—New York Post, Best Books of the Week
"Hansman's prose delivers the thrills of a good ski run."—Inside Hook
"A sparkling account of one woman’s passion and enduring love of powder."—Wall Street Journal
"Like a conversation you'd have at a bar après-ski...Great gift for any mountain enthusiast."—Addison Independent
"Heather Hansman, a former editor at both Ski and Powder magazines, takes a critical look at the sport and the industry, examining how skiing is affected by climate change, gender, race, economics, and psychology. While also serving partly as a memoir for Hansman, she traces the evolution of skiing’s popularity in the U.S., from casual weekends at family-owned lodges decades ago to luxury resorts catering to the private-jet crowd of today, nodding at the looming future for the industry as climate change escalates."—Fortune
"Powder Days is an absolutely rollicking, unfiltered account of American ski bum culture, from its post-WWII origins with the 10th Mountain Division cutting out mountain trails and building lifts, through the epoch-changing turmoil of 1960s counterculture, to its declining and decadent days in the late 80s and early 90s. But not only does Hansman offer an engaging history of the subculture and its evolution from eccentric pastime to leisure-time scene of the rich, she recounts in revealing detail her own ski-bum story, from the humble hills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains to the dizzying class divides of Colorado’s luxury resorts. A great read to get you excited about winter."—Lit Hub
About the Author
HEATHER HANSMAN is an award-winning freelance writer and a former editor at both Powder and Skiing magazines. She’s Outside magazine’s environmental columnist and a contributing editor at Backcountry Magazine. Her work has been included in The Best American Essays 2015. She once won a bag of pasta in an Italian big-mountain-skiing contest (tenth place out of eleven women). She lives in Seattle, Washington.
