Like most of us, Mike and Andy Traslin would rather be skiing fresh powder. But when you’re fully, completely committed to skiing at least one day out of every calendar month, you’re going to be hitting sun cups, an odd metamorphosis of melting snow that persists in north-facing patches pretty much year round.
As of February 2021, the duo has successfully extended their streak to an impressive 172 months in a row. A move from Vancouver’s North Shore Mountains to the Okanagan Valley in 2017 made their “Turns All Year” quest more challenging, and the brothers would resort to long-distance hauls down to Mount Baker in Washington state. While COVID struck Baker off the list last summer, a sun-cupped pitch of snow near Big White kept the streak alive for another year. And now that they’re in the middle of winter, the boys have been scoring some sweet hike-to lines on Big White’s East Peak. The winter of 2021 has brought plenty of powder and vertigo-inducing fog. “It’s like mountain biking on the North Shore,” says Mike, “if you wait for when it’s perfect, you’ll hardly ever go.”
