Outdoor Research Tiny House Tour Season 2: Episode 1 Everybody wants to be the all-sacrificing powder hound, vagabonding from storm to storm, without any belongings, a bank lacking money, however filled with powder turns. In some places, we know true ski bums. People who do not have cars and trucks, tasks, friends on powder days, or houses (or a minimum of houses that don’t live in trees).
We know Ben Cost.
A true specimen, and possibly one of the last of his kind, Ben lives deep, deep in the Cascade Mountains, living out of his tree house, a map of the peaks engrained in his mind, and more of a commitment to making turns and finding adventure than anybody you’ll meet in the mountains these days. And he does it since of one factor … wait on it … because he wants to.
Before the days of the glory and fame of the lively, mowhaked expert skier of the 90’s to the energy drinking XGames youth of today, there were local heroes, individuals who skied since of the flexibility and counter-culture discovered in the mountains. There was some threat associated with this– quiting whatever to find solace in the powder. Conveniences were gone, but enlightenment was discovered by the skiers living in the parking lot on the periphery of what was normal.
As a snow loving neighborhood we have actually come cycle and today we’re all looking for that kind of hero. We need to draw motivation from something unknown, somebody not built in the minds of a marketing group, but from a real icon– a legendary ski bottom. We’re searching for Ben Cost.
We found him in Washington this December and parked our tiny house in his kingdom, following this splitboarding cowboy to the last frontier. Uncharted mountains and unknown pillow lines were found. And we also found that on the planet of ski bottoms there’s everybody else and after that there’s Ben Price (a real snow caring freak who would dislike us if he understood we put him on the Internet).
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