PEMBYSPHERE

DYNAMIC

Pemberton, British Columbia, doesn’t look like much of a ski destination. In fact, on a blustery March day, it doesn’t look like much of anything. Mount Currie, whose heavily serrated north face lords over the valley, has its head in the clouds. The enormous talus cones spilling from its 7,550-vertical-foot system of dendritic chutes streaked by avy debris is the only sign of alpine action. There’s no hint of ski heritage, no cars with ski racks, no ski shop, no quaint Swiss cabins.

A 30-minute asphalt roller-coaster ride north of Whistler, Pemberton has the look and feel of a small, industrial outpost. Like many mountain towns, the bricolage village is the tiny heart of a disseminate body, its main arteries flowing 15 miles in two directions before climbing vertiginous passes. Driving either—north through the area known as Pemberton Meadows, or east on Highway 99—reveals more of the town’s real character: vast potato fields, farms tucked behind cottonwood palisades, spindle-legged foals cavorting in pastures.

It’s a place that only adds up in bits and pieces, all of it, today at least, under a gray veil tacked to the sky by massive unseen peaks. And yet those mountains, one of North America’s most dynamic landscapes, define the lives of all who live here. Glacial waters not only fertilize and irrigate the valley, but also threaten it with flooding from a combination of sudden snowmelt and coastal rain. And there are further hazards: In 2010, a chunk of Mount Meager, a not-quite-dormant volcano, thundered down the upper Lillooet River in the largest landslide in Canadian history, triggered by climate-change-induced glacial destabilization. Joffre Peak collapsed for similar reasons last summer. Dusty plumes from constant slides echo off Mount Currie all summer. Wildfires have consumed parts of the Meadows. Despite its bucolic nature, Pemberton is a potential natural disaster theme park.

And yet the same names that portend catastrophe—Meager, Rutherford, Pemberton Icecap, the Hurley, the Duffey—carry another subtext: access and ingress to a ski scene like no other. It may not be a ski town, but its townspeople are skiers—inured to all the life, play, and tragedy the calling carries.

IT’S A PLACE THAT ONLY ADDS UP IN BITS AND PIECES. AND YET THE MOUNTAINS DEFINE THE LIVES OF ALL WHO