“He’s literally burning his boots right now they smell so bad,” said filmer Taylor Walker of his friend Sean Mullins, who skied a three-story-high pile of “snow” and trash in Boston’s Seaport District on June 7, 2015.

After nine-plus feet of snow fell in Boston during the 2014-15 winter, snowplows gathered the snow, and tons of trash and random objects, clearing the streets of chaos, and dumped it in a gigantic parking lot near the Boston Harbor. Virgin white snow morphed into grimy brown garbage, with shopping carts, bikes, traffic cones, and even a Tom Brady jersey jumbled together.

Walker, Mullins, and photographer Jamie Walter drove down through the night from Maine to set out on an alpine start for the descent of their lives. But not even they knew what a harrowing, and smelly, pursuit it would be. —John Stifter

Cover image: Sean Mullins trudges on where no skier has gone before. PHOTO: Jamie Walter