As for Keystone: “These multimil-
lion-dollar ski areas like Vail desecrate
the wilderness more than one snowmo-
bile can. They chop down trees, use water
and electricity to make snow, and build
lodges, lifts, and parking lots. Here I
am—or supposedly me—with one mis-
demeanor, in a terrain park, and every-
one goes nuts. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
An associate named Michelle Ander-
son, a former college-basketball player
from Missouri, arrived and began work-
ing quietly on a laptop. Lesh said they’d
met on Bumble and had dated for a while,
and when that trailed off he’d hired her.
He told me that she was the best em-
ployee he’d ever had. He also accused her
of peeing too loudly in the bathroom off
the kitchen. “I have a strong vagina,” she
said. It had been eight months since I’d
been in an office. Was this how people
now spoke to one another at work?
T
hat afternoon, Lesh received an
anonymous package containing
what was supposed to look like dung
but was probably just mud with a little
straw—he threw it in the trash. He’d
been getting a lot of these.
“I don’t think Patagonia has to put
up with this,” Anderson said.
“The more hate I got, the more peo-
ple got behind me, from all over the
world,” Lesh said. “These people couldn’t
give two fucks about me walking on a
log in Hanging Lake. It was an oppor-
tunity to reach a whole new group of
people—while really solidifying the cus-
tomer base we already had.”
Lesh came over to me and, standing
close, said, “We’re going to post this
video next week.” On his phone, he
played a short sequence that purported
to show that the Hanging Lake and
Maroon Lake photos had been Photo-
shopped: the image of himself, and of
his reflection in the water, being scrubbed
into stock landscapes. If this video was
real—and who at this point could say—
he hadn’t stood on the log or crapped
in the lake after all. He’d hoaxed an en-
tire state, and the Feds.
“So I’ll release this and then we’ll see
how eager they are to take it to trial,”
Lesh said.
I asked if he’d told the judge or his
lawyer about the Photoshopping. He
said he’d been reluctant to tell his law-
yer: “I wanted them to charge me with
something. The only evidence they have
is the photos I posted on Instagram,
which I know are fake, because I faked
them. I was pissed off about them
charging me for the snowmobiling on
Independence Pass with zero evidence.
I realized they are quick to respond to
public outcry. I wanted to bait them into
charging me.”
He went on, “I want to be able to
post fake things to the Internet. That’s
my fucking right as an American.”F
or lunch, we drove to a food court
downtown, where Lesh said he liked
to take dates so that he doesn’t have to
pay for their meals. “I have to drive sane,
because of the warrant,” he said, and
then proceeded to surge and swerve ag-
gressively in and out of traffic in his
souped-up black BMW, which had no
rear license plate. Lesh declined to re-
veal Virtika’s annual sales, though he
claimed they were up thirty per cent
since he’d posted the photo at Hanging
Lake; he said he owns the company out-
right and carries very little debt. “Peo-
ple generally think we’re bigger than we
are,” he told me. “I wouldn’t sell it for
less than three or five million dollars.”
His life is a tax deduction: his airplane,
his cars, his snowmobiles. “Everything’s
a writeoff. I pay myself next to noth-
ing.” In the past, he has laid himself off
in the summer, in order to collect un-
employment. He said he received an
array of P.P.P. loans last spring. He man-
ufactures the gear in China, ships it bysea, and sells mostly direct to consum-
ers. It’s not as rigorously designed and
tested (or as expensive) as, say, the North
Face’s, or as uselessly fashionable as
Moncler’s. With its garish or industrial
color schemes, baggy fits, and heavy ma-
terials, it draws its inspiration and util-
ity from the terrain park, and targets
groms and Newschoolers more than he-
lipad dads or hang-dryers of reusable
bread wrappers.
People often run Lesh down as a trust-
fund brat spending Daddy’s money. In
the intermountain West, such suspicion
is justifiably pervasive. Lesh has never
had a trust fund, but he does have a kind
of twisted inheritance. His parents, who
are divorced, are artists. His father, Scott,
is the son and grandson of tool-and-die-
factory owners from Chicago. (His grand-
father lost both thumbs in the machines.)
Scott Lesh made sculptures out of dead
animals. He scavenged roadkill and what-
ever carcasses he could find and framed
them in animated postures. Lesh’s mother,
a cellist, also from Chicago, is of Nor-
wegian heritage.
After David was born, the family
moved to India, first to what is now
Mumbai and then to two outlying towns,
Palaspe and Panvel. Lesh’s mother, with
a guru and a couple of grants, pioneered
the adaptation of Indian music for the
cello. Lesh’s father scoured hills and riv-
erbanks for animal and human remains.
Both parents recall that David basically
did not stop crying for the first two years
of his life. He learned to speak Hindi“Don’t worry—my pet turtle Freddy is trained to get help in these
situations and I’m sure he’s halfway to the castle by now.”