On a snowy day in 1980, Chip Chase literally skied his way into a new life. He and a friend, Winslow Ayer, at the time two back-to-the-lander free spirits in their late twenties, were on a backcountry ski trip in the Allegheny Mountains of Tucker County, West Virginia, in search of a cabin on Cabin Mountain. Not having much luck (spoiler alert: there is no cabin on Cabin Mountain) and a little bit lost, they skied down the slope of the county’s highest peak, Weiss Knob, and came to a dead stop in front of an abandoned ski lodge.
“I said, I know exactly what this is—an old downhill ski area,” Chase, who’s now sixty-nine, tells me from his front porch near the base of that same mountain. “We saw the old towline, and there were even poles with pulleys and whatnot.”
Read more: