Outdoor Retailer - December 2020 - 41

ily through a knee-length grid fleece and a
lightweight prayer rug in his touring pack,
to ensure he would be able to pray five times
a day on time, facing toward Mecca, regardless of where he was in the backcountry. Did he want to come and ski with us in
America? " Of course, it is always fun to ski
with friends, " he said, " but there are so many
mountains here too! "

A DAY LATER, WE BOARDED A COUPLE OF
small buses to head back to Bishkek and,
eventually, to our flights back home-we
were still blissfully unaware in January of
Top: Author Stacy Bare (the tall
guy) rides the lift at Karakol with
Maksat Aitkulov, the head of Ryce
Travel Kyrgyzstan. Bottom: The
Silk Road Freeride organizers
debrief at the Jyrgalan yurt camp.

2020 that a global pandemic was about to
swallow the world whole. We chatted eagerly about next year. We wanted each stop
on the grand tour we had planned to be first
and foremost for the locals with a formalized
skills-education component so they could
learn not just how to ski, but also to attend
clinics to learn about safe backcountry travel. The tour could then accommodate those
accomplished skiers and riders from these
nations who could travel along the circuit
and international tourists who could participate in the fun and help fund the overall tour.
We emailed back and forth with the

Ahmet Dadali

Afghan skiers, convinced we could work
through visa issues and ensure that anyone
who made it to the Afghan Ski Challenge
would also receive points for the Silk Road
Freeride Tour. Maybe the comp in Lebanon,
a full FWQ event that was held in 2018 and
2019, would be the season finale? There was
talk about how quickly we could add stops
in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Bosnia. Maybe
we needed an East and West division with
the champions skiing and riding it out in
Lebanon?
As we checked into a lounge/spa in the
capital city the evening before our departure, we decided as a group that rather than
simply building the Silk Road Freeride Tour
as a pipeline for the FWT, in a few years, it
could draw the riders and skiers on the FWT
to these mountains. Perhaps, with a bit of
luck, the Silk Road Freeride Tour would
become the preeminent freeride competition in the world. Or, to put it in the words of
the collected group, " Everyone will want to
come to Freeridestan! "

SIX WEEKS AFTER THE EVENT, THE COVID-19
pandemic shut down the world. But the
dream is still alive. Our hope is to release the
short film that Team 13, compromised of
filmmakers Matt Sheridan and Hennie Van
Jaarsveld, shot in partnership with Ahmet
Dadali and Völkl, sometime during the 2021
season and keep the momentum alive for a
reboot of the Silk Road Freeride Tour-hopefully with at least one more stop and a visa
for the Afghan skiers for the 2021-22 season.
For more information, to donate, or to follow
along, check out silkroad-freeride.com O.R.
December 2020 / OUTDOOR RETAILER 41

http://www.silkroad-freeride.com

Outdoor Retailer - December 2020

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