Ruth Kimata
rkimata@uwyo.edu
It is hard to believe there are still communities surviving on skies. However, last night, Mark Jenkins provided the evidence. Deep in the Altai Mountains of Central Asia there is a ski culture which has managed to survive unchanged for thousands of years.
National Geographic field staff writer Mark Jenkins shared his life changing experience with one of the World’s oldest skiing cultures.
Jenkins lived with tribal members in Central Asia’s Altai Mountains. In these mountains, there is a ski culture that has survived unchanged for at least 5,000 years. A ski culture/community is a group of people who live or survive on skies, skiing is how they get around.
Jenkins said his plan was to, “enclave of prehistoric skiing, its links to the modern global ski culture, and the profound adaptability of humankind in an increasingly globalized world.”
According to Jenkins, skies are the oldest form of transportation. He believes that they are even older than the wheel. These ancient ski communities travel long distances on hand made wide, long, curve-tipped skis. The skies are chopped by axe from red spruce and secured by silky horsehair on the base. These skis not only glide smoothly over powder; they can also easily climb straight up.
Describing the experience, Jenkins said, “The Kazakh and Tuvan tribesmen of the region use the skis to hunt elk. Guns are illegal, so they lasso the beasts from their skis — a primordial tableau that is depicted in local petroglyphs dating from 8,000 B.C.,” he says.
Jenkins was born, raised and still resides in Laramie. He also attended the University of Wyoming for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees and is currently a Writer-in-Residence here at the University of Wyoming.
He is a critically acclaimed author and internationally recognized journalist. He focuses on geopolitics and adventure. Among hundreds of stories, he has written about the land mines in Cambodia and the war in Eastern Congo. He has also covered the loss of koalas in Australia, global warming in Greenland, ethnic cleansing in Burma, and the difficulty of climbing Mount Everest in Nepal.
He has won numerous writing awards, some of which include the Overseas Press Club Ross Award for a project called “The Healing Fields” in 2013 and a National Magazine Award with colleague Brint Stirton for their project, “Who Murdered the Mountain Gorillas” in 2009.
Both of these projects were the basis for statewide presentations at several of Wyoming’s community colleges and as part of UW’s Global and Area Studies Program’s international speaker series.
