SnowsBest guest blogger, Tori Beattie, gets her mono back on and reveals why you should embrace the campness and Vive la Mono too.
I’m a passionate fan of skiing.
I love everything about this ridiculous sport, but in particular I have a soft-spot for skiing’s outrageous history. A history that I feel peaked somewhere between the mid 70’s and the early 90’s.
Just before skiing decided that it needed to be cool to show off to our newly arrived single-planked brethren, we were openly embracing of levels of campness that would make a MardiGras float blush. But the invention of twintips changed everything.
Skiing was suddenly cool again. Stretch pants, headbands, straight skis, and rear-entry boots were cast into the shadows of yesteryear, and people were openly shamed for doing daffy’s and twister spreads.
And with the newschool revolution came the virtual extinction of the mono from skiing’s richly textured landscape. With the exception of France, the monoski was fringe even at the peak of its popularity, but by the turn of the millennium this form of “glisse-as-art” was reduced to a few isolated pockets of resistance in the shadiest corners of the Chamonix valley and Les Arcs.
But I’ve always been fascinated by the things and the hip-swinging, soul-arching aesthetic of their riders.
So this season, with less than stellar early season conditions, I decided to suit up and take the Faction monoski up to Cardrona Alpine Resort, just to give it a whirl. This video is from my first day on the thing.
I have vowed to devote time and energy to mastering the art this season and hope to start a mono revolution. There’s an argument that it’s more environmentally friendly due to the 50% reduction in toxic sidewalls and edges, and I can avow that it is 112% as fun as 2 planked skiing.
Monoskiing needs to be brought back into the light. Because monoskis help make skiing even funner. Who’s with me? Vive le Mono!
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