In a somewhat shocking announcement on their egotistical website, Rich Mitch and his band of Kooky Cultists have dropped the ice-bomb that they will no longer be producing their longtime tree-killing KMC print magazine for vague reasons that could have been made a lot clearer in their overdramatic self-indulgent release. Not surprisingly, it seems to be a money thing, as that’s been the prime motivator over their twenty-five years of self-aggrandizing existence, and if they were raking in the cash they’d probably keep going no matter what else they say about their glorified intentions going forward.

To quote the prime Kooky Mountain Cultist himself, who does the worst impression of a German alpinist you’ll ever see, “if we could continue to print Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine, we would. But we’re now focused on an opportunity for something great to grow into something better. It might take some time to figure out. The economic snowpack of our times is a tricky one, and when we drop in, we want to be sure we’ve chosen the right line”. Despite their abundance of corporate advertisers who pretend everything is just peachy-keen within the mountain sports industry amid the harsh realities of climate change lessening snowpacks the world over, it’s murkily obvious that Rich Mitch and his Kootenay Kulture Klub aren’t making enough dough to keep the presses rolling. Just a short while ago, Dieter was talking about becoming more political within his patriarchal pages, and now he’s folding up shop at the first sign of trouble.

Because of their apparent cash crunch, KMC says that “we know that we need to evolve” in a partially-self-aware moment, and that “the world is changing, and it’s time we did too”, while crediting themselves as a cadre of upper-crust white volk who gave “this spectacularly unique region, our home, a voice”, as if Marilyn James and her fellow matriarchs within the Autonomous Sinixt and their allies had never spoken at all. So while the mountain cult’s dear leader is claiming that “in the interim, we’re open to feedback and ideas. In fact, we plan on engaging our readership more as we strap on the skins for another climb back up the mountain”, it’s important to note again how the tunnel-vision KMC gang has completely ignored the Autonomous Sinixt and their “ongoing genocide”, despite there being all sorts of reasons why the oligarchic bros should have been highlighting the Autonomous Sinixt’s struggle and stories above all other materialistic considerations.

But as we know, the privileged cabal of kookily cultured mountaineers prioritize the selling and marketing of expensive future trash above everything else, no matter how altruistic they purport to be, while refusing to address for decades and counting the obvious consequences of fossil-fuel fuelled climate extreming, which was always bound to sap their greedy industry of the priceless commodity it needs most: snow! As Richie Mitchy tells ‘feel-good’ stories about snowflakes landing on a glacier to wealthy yippies in the woods, he and his press outfit continue to act like there’s nothing wrong with their imperiled snow-sports industry, while the coastal mountain resorts close early yet again due to a lack of ice crystals. Even the business-friendly Vancougar Sun has recently addressed the dire consequences of warming weather on the sliding down the slopes scene, but in the world of the white-bred KMCers, all they have to do is reboot based on feedback from their fellow WASP-dominated crew of gnarly dudes, and everything will be just fine once again.

Skiing and its similar hobbies used to be about getting out into nature and moving your body to get through the winter months in fun style, but now it’s all become a mega-conglomerate brand of hero-worshipping that takes itself way too seriously to be taken seriously. When you’ve got lift lineups to the parking lot at Whistler, barren rock-strewn unskiiable runs & traffic jams with idling gas-guzzling steel beasts backed up to Squamish, all while there exists an unused train line from Vancougar to the warming peaks, one can only think about how much foresight is not being used to come up with industry-based solutions for where this is all going when hell doesn’t freeze over and melts. Instead, the white saviour types like the ignorant Kooky Mountain Cultists just want to expand their product lines and sell more stuff in an endless conga-line of hard-partying denial about the bleak future of their environmentally based economic racket.

When the Cult of Kooky Mountaineers tell us to “stay tuned” until “we’ll let you know when we’re back at the top,” what will they be staring down at from the summit of their oil-driven ski-lift, or SUV, or snowmobile? Will there be any snow left, or will it just be a human-caused drought wasteland as far as their eyes can see?