BOW VALLEY – The ski season is never ending.
At least that’s the case for Noah Jacobs, who has hunted for snow to ski every month for the past eight years.
Even in the summer, when it’s more than 30 Celsius, Jacobs is hiking up and skiing down small patches of snow, sometimes only a hundred feet long, multiple times to fulfill his hunger for turns.
The Canmore slopes-seeker is part of a small community of skiers and snowboarders who look to slide down snow at least one day, every month for as long as possible in a challenge called Turns All Year.
“When somebody sees somebody walking up a trail in the summer with skis in their back, pretty much the next question is, what month are you at?” said Jacobs.
“It’s a small group of silly people chasing snow all year.”
While the winters are easy to check off months, it’s the summers which send Jacobs on further missions to find snow. He would pack his ski gear on work trips, often to Argentina and Chile, where he could continue his streak while still paying the bills.
When the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down travel, he had to start looking for summer snow in the Alberta Rockies and closer to home.
For the past four years, Jacobs has been able to continue the challenge solely in the province in places along the Columbia Icefields, or Kananaskis Country at Old Goat Glacier and Rae Glacier.
Now with chairlifts starting to spin around the Rockies, Jacobs took to his home mountain of Lake Louise on Saturday (Nov. 16) to cruise laps down the busy early season slopes to mark off the month of November.
“A lot of our September, October turns are on the Columbia Icefield. That’s kind of like our saving grace for always having snow for some summer skiing,” he said.
The challenge is self-governed and has loose rules, open to one’s interpretation of what counts as a day on snow.
For Jacobs, he must make a minimum of 33 turns, which can be non-consecutive, and if it’s in a resort he needs to ski a minimum of three laps. Jacobs was even able to check off a couple of months in previous years in Scotland and Dubai where he skied indoors, which still counts toward the feat.
“You have to go out and earn your turns and try to get some exercise,” he said. “You can be on artificial snow, but basically what you can’t do is, water skiing, bristle skiing or a patch of snow behind a hockey rink.
“If you’re going out, you’re carrying your skis, you’re making an adventure out of it, you get your skis on snow, then that’s a good day.”
Skiing in summer means Jacobs is walking more than skiing, so he put together a lighter kit specifically for the hot months.
“The skis spend more time on the back than they do on the feet,” he said.
“It’s fun skiing in the summer because it’s a lot warmer – and nobody out there, typically just yourself – and you get to do laps and, it’s definitely a lot quieter in the summer.”
When he was 18 years old, Jacobs began working as a ski patroller at Jay Peak in Vermont, U.S., where he would spend the next 20 years on patrol. After leaving his post at the eastern ski hill, his passion for skiing was reignited when he began skiing for himself.
“In patrol, it was so much fun over the years, but it’s definitely fun to be able to just ski for yourself and really do what you want, go where you want, and have that and have that flexibility,” said Jacobs.
At the heart of the sport, the community is what stands out for Jacobs and “how it can bring so many people together.”
He even met his wife on a chairlift who marked off her 36 month of consecutive skiing alongside Jacobs at Lake Louise on Nov. 16.
“Skiing definitely is a great way to bring people together. I love being outdoors, and it's definitely a good way to pass our winters, and our winters turned into all year long,” Jacobs said with a laugh.