The Powder

The Powder is Jocko Weyland’s book of photographs and writing on American skiing in the 1970s and early 1980s, a period he argues was more inventive than the sport is now.

Weyland curated and wrote the book, which Dashwood Books published in 2011. In an excerpt he supplied to Vice that November, he calls skiing of the era a new and even revolutionary activity, later dulled by corporate polish, high prices and marketing to families. His skiers are a loose bohemian crowd who had much in common with the skate and surf punks of the same years. They chased untracked snow, and built their own jumps out of borrowed shovels for backflips and daffys. He names a few notables, among them Scott Brooksbank, Wayne Wong and Patrick Vallencant, but says most of the people pictured are anonymous. He also notes the shift from 1960s leather boots and cable bindings to lighter skis and better equipment.

Weyland was born in Helsinki in 1967. He wrote The Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder’s History of the World (Grove Press, 2002), and Dashwood also published his Danny’s Lot (2015), Geomancy (2017) and Egg Strike on Orchard (2021). He started the serial publication Elk in 2003 and was Chief Curator at MOCA Tucson from 2013 to 2017.