IFMGA guide and Mountain Enabler Evan Stevens Digs in

Evan Steven is an IFMGA-certified mountain guide based out of British Columbia, where he works for half the year at his family-owned touring hut and guiding operation, Valhalla Mountain Touring. He and his wife, Jasmin Caton, guide human-powered adventures for months at a time, with thousands upon thousands of vertical feet logged over the course of a season.

Backcountry caught up with Stevens to learn more about why he has chosen this rigorous line of work and how he keeps himself going in the wintertime.

Backcountry Magazine: What motivated you to become a guide?

Evan Stevens: When I left school [Middlebury College], I went right into being an avalanche forecaster in Utah. I did five years there between Salt Lake City and Moab. That was great in the winter—I was just ski touring all the time, for my job, on my own or with a partner. It was a great way to travel around and see the mountains. In the summer, I needed something else to do, too, so I started alpine guiding in Washington, in the Cascades around 2001 or 2002. That is when I met Jasmin, and I was introduced to the whole backcountry ski lodge scene up here in B.C. that I didn’t know much about. I came up to Canada with Jasmin and decided to leave avalanche forecasting for a winter. We came up here [to Valhalla Mountain Touring] and we ran the business for a winter, took over for her parents while they went down to Mexico. We just dove right in, head first—trial by fire.

There were certified guides that were coming in to guide the handful of weeks, and I just started following them around. I had already been guiding and it was obvious to me that that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be leading all those days and I needed to get certified up here [in Canada] in order to do that. So, I got my certification and ever since then—winter of ’05 -’06 I would have been tailguiding with IFMGA-certified guides—by ’07 I was already finished with my certification so I pretty much took over all of the guiding up here.

Since then I have been pretty much full-time every single week that has been guided here. But I have also done a lot of work elsewhere in the winter. It’s my passion to ski new places all the time. Like this year, for example, I have spent weeks at other touring lodges in B.C. and last year and the year before I did a month in Chamonix at the end of the year, just because it is my passion to go and explore new mountains. And I love sharing that passion with people who want to be shown around these places too.

BCM: What do you find inspiring about primarily being a touring guide rather than a heli or cat skiing guide?

ES: It is the wilderness experience, the pace, the solitude, the reward. To me there is nothing more rewarding than earning it all under your own power, getting those runs on your own terms. Just being out there totally on your own I think is really empowering for people, too—to bring them to those places via those means. When we go touring, I’m not dragging you up this mountain, you are dragging yourself up this mountain. I told someone the other day that I am a mountain-fun enabler.

BCM: What are some of the challenges of guiding every winter?

ES: What’s going on here is extra special because I get to do it with Jasmin, running the business, but when I go to other lodges it is like vacation even though I am working because I don’t have to make sure that the power system is going and the wood is stacked and take care of all the little details of running a lodge in the wilderness. So that is probably the biggest challenge of owning and operating a lodge for guiding rather than just being a guide. Socially it is hard, too. I just pick up and move and live here in the interior [of British Columbia] for four months at a time. I have spent a lot of time on social media ’cause it is the only way I can keep in touch with friends and communities that I would be totally disassociated with otherwise for half the year. Ironically, that is a business asset, too.

BCM: What are some of the physical challenges you face?

ES: What has happened in the last 11 years is that we have doubled because we have poured our heart and soul into Valhalla Mountain Touring, and this is what we love to do. That also wears and tears on me because I want to be a part of every week that is here, but then all of a sudden I am guiding five weeks in a row and that is unsustainable. It’s unsustainable physically, it’s unsustainable mentally, it’s unsustainable socially. That is the lesson that is learned now, to try and balance that out. We take breaks—if I can take two weeks on and one or two weeks off it is just much more sustainable.

BCM: What do you have to eat to be able to do this every winter?

ES: Years ago I remember writing this article for Outdoor Research and the joke was how it is the most simple equation in the world. For every vertical foot that I ski every day, I eat a calorie. So if I ski 6,000 feet, I need 6,000 calories. I have never counted and I don’t know how to equate it, but it’s ridiculous. I’ll get up in the morning, have a bowl of fruit salad, I’ll have a bowl of granola, I’ll eat whatever the hot breakfast item is, two eggs beni or something, then I’ll have a brownie. Then we will get out skiing, and an hour into the day I’ll have my first cookie or brownie or sandwich. I’ll bring a two-to-three pound lunch and I’ll have two sandwiches, a few brownies, two or three cookies. I also have pockets full of Clif bars. When I get home, I eat an appetizer that would feed a family of four in Somalia. Then I am eating dinner, double portions of dinner and desserts. It gets a bit insane—it’s really hard.

BCM: Ultimately why do you keep doing what you do?

ES: The bottom line is that I have an absolute undying love for being in the mountains. I don’t guide for myself. Yes, it gives me the reward of being in the mountains all the time, but when I hear people talk about getting to ski some of the best lines of their life—if I can take someone to a place like that where they can have those experiences and walk away from that trip just high on life, to me that’s the bigger picture.

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Learn more about Evan Stevens and Valhalla Mountain Touring at www.vmt.ca.