Step by step, I glide my Hok skis straight up the steep edge of the glade, using one long wooden stick, called a tiak, to stabilize. My skis are short and wide, perfect for maneuvering through the tight Appalachian understory. I duck under, climb over, and sidestep through the snowy forest, remembering the art of the triangle with my body and the pole.
I pause. I hear nothing but silence—not the silence of nighttime, ears humming with static, the echo of the day’s noise in your head, but the muted silence only found deep in a forest blanketed in snow. Every now and then, the silence is punctuated. The oaks creek, turning in their sleep. I am living in a Robert Frost poem, but instead of a horse, I ride on wood and fiberglass. I am fully present, carried forward by skis that echo the ancient arts of the past.
The route below is sparkling with fresh snow and uninterrupted vertical. The forest tells a story of succession with a couple of downed logs and a scattering of saplings and briars. The group—my dad, my partner Ryan, and our friend Kurt —catches up. My dad descends first, bracing on his tiak behind him as if he is captaining a raft. He expertly lifts the broad tips of his Hok skis, floating on pillows of powder. I drop in next, creating a braided pattern as I carve in and out of my dad’s tracks. On my way down the silence is broken once again, this time by my vocal eruptions of joy. It is beautiful to know this same joyous sound can be heard across space and time, winter after winter, on snowy mountains around the world.
A Brief History of Hok
Hok, pronounced “hawk,” is the Tuwa word for “ski. ” The Tuwas are Mongolian tribespeople that live a nomadic lifestyle on the banks of the Kanas Lake in the Altai Mountains, tucked away in a remote corner of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Here, the stunning Altai Mountains rise to heights of 14,000 feet in the center of the Eurasian continent, where China, Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan converge. The earliest written record of skiing in Chinese history refers to Indigenous people hunting on skis in these towering alpine mountains.
The Indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains, like those in Tubek and Kanas Lake, hand-craft skis from Siberian spruce. A pair of skis is carved from a single tree using only an ax and hand planer. Braces are applied to curve the front tips up as the skis cure. The foot bindings are made of rawhide; the climbing skins come from the legs of a horse. The skins were traditionally laced to the ski using rawhide, but now nails are used to affix the skin to the base. Instead of two ski poles, the tiak—the Tuwa word literally meaning “stick”— serves to stabilize and steer on descents while providing a third point of contact when climbing through technical terrain.
A Modern Design
The descendants of those original skiers in the Altai still use skis for transportation, hunting, and, not surprisingly, fun. Nils Larsen, one of the developers of the Altai Skis brand—the maker of the modern Hoks on which we ski today—traveled to the Altai Mountains to learn about the Indigenous skiing history and techniques. These modern Hok skis and tiaks honor the time-tested design and features of the original ancient skis. Altai’s Hok skis have steel edges and a permanent nylon climbing skin affixed to the underfoot portion of the ski base. This permanent skin is an ode to the horse skin on traditional skis. The bindings can be a three-pin, telemark-style binding that requires a specialized boot, or universal bindings that use ratchet straps to hug the tops of your everyday snow boots. The modern tiak is typically made from the straight wood of the lodgepole pine.
Because ancient skis were arduous to create and relied on limited resources, they were designed to be a do-it-all ski, ready for all tasks and conditions. The parallel features of the modern Hok follow that concept. The ski’s slow and steady nature works well in the varying conditions of the Appalachian snowpack—those thin and wishful December snows, deep January powder, and crusty March freeze-thaw crud. The modern Hok really shines in tight Appalachian tree skiing, an environment where speed is scary. But it’s more than just a toy for fun—Hoks can also function as utilitarian winter tools for watering livestock, gathering firewood, and hunting.
One Ski in the Past, One in the Present
For the Indigenous people of the Altai Mountains, who refer to their skis as “wooden horses,” survival depends largely on the use of both skis and horses for transportation. Ancient accounts tell of hunters running down prey in deep snow on skis. When their horses die, they use the skin on their skis, creating a cycle. In death, the horse becomes part of the ski, which is a tool that allows these mountain people to thrive. As the horse lives on through the ski, so too can the ancient Hok live on through its modern counterpart.
My dad still makes regular trips to British Columbia to ski with Larsen, who introduced him to Hoks and the mission of the Altai Project. My dad instantly fell in love and soon gifted me a pair of Hoks. The skis translate beautifully from the big mountains of British Columbia to the ancient hills of West Virginia.
The Hok has provided a fresh experience on slopes I’ve skied hundreds of times. I love meandering through the familiar forests of my childhood at a slower pace, able to take it all in and see them from a new perspective. My connection to these hills has deepened as I use the patient pace to identify trees, study wind patterns on the snow, and teach my friends the art of Hok skiing. I still hunt for north-facing powder, able to go even steeper and connect even deeper.
The experience of Hok skiing transcends functionality, venturing deeper into the philosophical realm and strengthening the soul of skiing. It serves as a bridge to the skiers of the past and those of the future, connecting us across generations and cultures through the universal language of sliding on snow.
For a deeper look at Hok skiing, check out Nils Larsen’s documentary Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan – Timeless Skiers of the Altai.
Ellie Bell (aka Tele Bell) is a science educator, a community organizer, and a live music lover. She hopes to one day recover from her chronic snow FOMO.
