Retirement Goals

As we celebrate 30 years of magazines with Issue 161, editors, both past and present, offer personal reflections on their time at Backcountry Magazine. In this note, former Editorial Director Tyler Cohen contemplates some chairlift wisdom he recieved as an intern from tele icon Dickie Hall.

It was during my final semester of college when an icon of telemark skiing offered me some chairlift wisdom that I promptly ignored.

Dickie Hall and I were riding Mad River Glen’s Sunnyside Double during the latter years of one of his famed North American Telemark Organization (NATO) Festivals. I was an intern with Backcountry at the time, and he was rounding the home stretch of his 40-year run hosting the country’s largest telemark ski festival.

“Don’t go get a job,” he instructed me—or something to that effect. Instead, he suggested, I should take a year out of my retirement and use it after graduation to travel, to ski, to do anything but sit at a desk and work. Youth isn’t wasted on the young, he meant, but rather retirement is wasted on the old.

Not long after that chairlift ride, I eschewed his suggestion and became Backcountry’s associate editor.

Dickie’s advice was sound, but the opportunity came with skiing, travel and a paycheck. In my first or so year on the job, I winter camped with Glen Plake in the Sierra, rappelled into couloirs in Switzerland and skied my first of the Wasatch’s Chuting Gallery lines in belly-button-deep powder on my birthday. The pay put gas in my Outback, knocked down my student debt and allowed me to rent a room in a pretty nice house near the base of Smugglers’ Notch—turn left for work (on deadlines) and right for skiing (on powder days). I didn’t graduate into a cubicle or spend a year “finding myself” but instead discovered a dreamy balance between work and play.

I stayed for more than a decade, and today I’m two jobs removed from my time with Backcountry. Then, now and at each of my transitions, I consider Dickie’s advice and question where I’m at. Was jumping immediately into work the right call? Will I regret it 10 or 20 years from now? Is now the time I should take that year?

I doubt Dickie really intended to dissuade me from getting a job, though. Rather, I think he meant to stress the importance of going skiing. Or, more generally, the need to not put off certain things, like fun, health or family. As a lifelong backcountry skier, Dickie knew how fleeting perfect conditions can be: Wait an hour, and the corn might lock up. Wait a couple decades, and your knees might do the same. While mine work fine for now, and retirement is ages away, I’m happy I spent a dozen years making magazines, telling stories and learning lessons like this one along the way.

Dickie hosted four more NATO Telemark Festivals after our chairlift ride before shutting it down to focus on smaller events and instruction. “Why would I retire?” he wondered to the Mad River area’s Valley Reporter after his final festival. “What would I do, go skiing? I do that already.” —Tyler Cohen, Intern to Editorial Director, 2009-2021

In Issue 161, The 30^th Anniversary Issue, we highlight three decades of people who’ve made this publication what it is, both in editorial and art, and the backcountry skiing community that’s developed alongside us. We remember late telemark big mountain skier Kasha Rigby, dive into the heli-skiing pioneers who drove the development of avalanche safety and recognize Paul Parker’s lifetime of contributions to the sport. And we report on efforts to make avalanche education more accessible, the apps offering better tour planning, and the Italian splitboarder dedicated to uniting his backcountry community.

Get the issue »