Living large with little Ry

By Luca Williams

When you are the smallest kid in junior high in Arlington, Texas, you are bound to get bullied, like head stuck in the toilet bullied. Ryan, or Little Ry as his friends have called him for years, was that kid until he found his best defense, and it wasn’t karate. “When I made the bullies laugh they stopped bullying me. They wanted to be my friend.”

But all that laughter didn’t make him any taller. By the time he got his driver’s license at sixteen years old, it read 4 feet 8 inches. He had to sit on a pillow to see over the steering wheel. That experience of being bullied for his height made Ryan realize that he wanted to help uplift people because he didn’t want others to feel the way he had when he had been bullied.

Ryan first discovered snowboarding back in Arlington, Texas when he watched a snowboarding video of Mike (Tex) Davenport. “I wanted to snowboard like Tex,” Ryan said. He had found someone to look up to and he found his passion. Besides, you don’t have to be tall to be a strong snowboarder. It may even be an advantage to have a lower center of gravity. After high school, he spent years chasing snow in Colorado until he moved to Washington. The cliffs and conditions of Mt. Baker humbled him. Not that he’s one to complain about conditions. He can often be found snowboarding in the rain in his waterproof Grunden gear with a big smile on his face.

In 2016, Ryan started his log home restoration business, Mtn. Acres Log Home Restoration, inspired by all the folks that have found a way to make life work at the end of a dead end highway. Employing local residents (friends who love to snowboard as much as him), the company does energy sealing and chinking in the winter 2-6 p.m.

“It’s in my contract that I don’t work before 2 p.m. in the winter so I can ride every morning,” Ryan said.

In the summers, they pressure wash, sandblast and stain log homes, as well as repair and replace logs, working overtime to make up for their mellower winter schedule. He’s created a lifestyle where he loves surround- ing himself with people who want to work and play as hard as he does.

Ryan isn’t that little anymore, but he never lost his nickname and what he doesn’t have in height he makes up for with personality. People just want to be friends with him because he’s always got a smile on his face. He makes time to say hello and listen — really listen — and connect with you and your kids. He’s a positive role model for his friends’ kids, and he shows them what his role models showed him: “Work hard to play hard.” x

Luca Williams is a certified rolfer in Glacier. She helps snowboarders, skiers and other outdoor enthusiasts get aligned and out of pain.

The secret’s out, folks. Or has been out. Or was never a secret in the first place — depending on who you talk to. If you’ve noticed more skin-track traffic or jockeyed a little harder for trailhead parking this winter, you aren’t alone. No — you likely aren’t alone at all.

Winter recreation across Washington, and indeed the West, is exploding. Jolted by an influx of pandemic-addled folk who probably honestly needed the vitamin D, the number of people taking part in backcountry activities like ski touring and snowshoeing has taken off like a shot, and shows little sign of waning. That’s an issue in a state where while terrain is in no short supply, access is.

The full parking lot, the locked gate, the unplowed forest service road — all magnified by the number of shoulders one need jostle amongst to navigate them — stand as chokepoints to an otherwise underburdened carrying capacity. It’s something you chew on in between the shush of a ski, or the padding of a snowshoe. It was something that was really eating Kyle McCrohan.

“There’s more pressure on a limited number of spaces. Everyone wants more. Nordic skiers want more, ski areas want to expand … The writing on the wall is not looking good for backcountry users,” the active skier and climber said. And while these are the thoughts that cross the minds of many, what got McCrohan really thinking: Why am I worried about access? And who is looking out for us?

The trails of Washington state enjoy proud advocacy by the Washington Trails Association (WTA). Mountain bikers know that the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance has their back. And if you want to mess with snowmobilers? You’ll have to go through the Washington State Snowmobile Association (WSSA) first. But the ever-burgeoning sector of backcountry skiers, splitboarders and snowshoers, McCrohan felt, ran risk of slipping through the cracks.