Tag Archives: ski mountaineer

Golden, BC native Matt Ruta is a ski mountaineer, a skimo racer for Team Canada, a project manager for a woodworking business, and a blogger — and he has been playing in the mountains for most of his life. He says it started with his parents.

“I was very fortunate to grow up with outdoor-sy parents and I grew up hiking and scrambling and backpacking and that kind of thing, [and] they did take us out for a little bit of ski touring,” says Ruta, 26.

“When I was 16 or so, I took an avalanche course on my own.”

As eager a teenaged Ruta was to get out into the backcountry, he was also competing internationally in the sk cross circuit.

“I wasn’t the most talented or the fastest, but I got to travel to some really amazing places and kind of got the elite athlete experience even though I myself wasn’t necessarily elite,” said Ruta.

From 2011 to 2014, Ruta competed in 31 different International Ski Federation (FIS) events, his best result being a fourth-place finish in 2014.

After finishing up his ski cross racing career, Ruta found himself free to explore the mountains proper. 

“I would have been probably 17 or so when I first skied something that felt big to me. I think it was either the Kindergarten couloir on Boom Mountain or the Phantom couloir on Mt. Ogden.

“When you’re 17 years old, and you’re exploring the world outside of a racecourse it feels like you’re going to the moon.”

Couloirs are steep, narrow crevasses penetrating mountain faces; both the Kindergarten and the Phantom qualify as complex backcountry terrain. His aspirations would only grow from there.

A graduate of the Thompson Rivers University journalism program, Ruta chose to also chronicle his ski trips on an online blog. 

His website boasts trip reports detailing his adventures on impressive peaks with impressive names; the Silverhorn, the Skyladder, the Sickle, the Grand Daddy couloir, the South Twin. 

“[My most] memorable line was the Southeast Twins’ tower, which I skied in 2016,” said Ruta.

“That’s the first ski objective I did that really felt like it was more than just pushing myself, it was like something that was pushing what had been skied in the Rockies.”

On the writing side, Ruta says he takes inspirations from people like alpinist Barry Blanchard, a Calgarian who pushed the climbing boundaries in the Canadian Rockies. Blanchard also wrote a well-received biography.

“The Calling [A Life Rocked by Mountains] is such a good book,” said Ruta.

“I love it, it’s just permanently sitting on my coffee table.”

To those looking to emulate him, Ruta suggests taking advantage of resources that weren’t readily available ten years prior; things like weather observations, avalanche forecasts, and trip reports shared online.

He also suggests hiring a guide.

“For a couple hundred bucks you can do a guided day with someone like Kevin Hjertaas, who’s one of the best steep skiers in rockies history and he’s now a guide,” said Ruta.

“He’ll teach you stuff. It’s amazing.”