(Or: “Epic Storm, Day Four”)
“Leigh! Cheryl!” My sister and wife were standing, fussing, at the entrance to the final loading chute of the Elk Camp lift. I’d called earlier, while riding the gondola up the hill. We’d planned to meet somewhere there, but getting to ride up with them was fortuitous, gave us a chance to plan the final assault on Snowmass epic snowfall before rolling home to our Super Bowl party.
“I want to go hit Longshot, then meet you at the Two Creeks restaurant,” I ventured.
“We wanted to take two more runs before we went in …” Cheryl replied.
“Uh, maybe just one?”
“What, don’t you think it will take you longer? You have to climb up that hill, take your skis off and on, that’s at least 10 minutes. Then there’s the long route out back to the run. No, you should be the one to wait for us; I waited an hour for you yesterday, at Cafe Suzanne.”
So that was the plan. Longshot is the ideal end-of-storm run. It had been closed until the morning. It’s not very steep, meaning all the meanest powder hounds had been churning up the Wall the day before, and the Cirque today. It’s a steep, long climb from the top of Elk Camp, and it only had a narrow single grooming cat path down its 3.5 miles (3300 feet of vertical), meaning random intermediates would not have ventured up there to slice up the slopes.
What it had was 300 acres of slightly gladed terrain, dropping along the eastern edge of Burnt Mountain. As the name implies, Elk spend their summers there, then migrate across Brush Creek valley to the slopes above Horse Ranch, hard by the homestead my parents retired to in the early 70’s. My father had documented their migration patterns, and may have been instrumental in getting the Town of Snowmass, the Forest Service, and the Ski Corp to protect the lands they used, blocking access to trails, keeping lifts and chain saws away.
I had spent the morning waiting for the Cirque to open. I’d arrived a bit late for absolute first tracks, but there was still a broad expanse of untracked bottomless left for me. Most of the skiers and boarders who’d ventured in probably had little experience with snow this deep. One little swerve, one weight shift a few inches too far forward or aft, to much swing right or left, and you find yourself buried in the stuff, sometimes chocking on it, and certainly in a bad way when it comes to getting upright again.
I spent a year skiing in snow this deep, in Little Cottonwood canyon, and had both lost any fear or anxiety, and learned the subtleties of deep powder mastery. Powder skiing is at the apex of our sport, both supremely hard and sublimely fulfilling. It must be the closest thing to weightless we can feel short of outer space.
Anyway, I found myself flying down and away from folks who’d shot off before me, who had aimed left instead of right, and thus found themselves slowing down, stopping, smack in the middle of a field of hidden rocks. Oh well, more fresh snow for me.
It was such a good trip down, I rode back up again, first Sheer Bliss, the the Cirque lift. That poma had a good 12-15 minute line, snaking up the Rocky Mountain High run. But the snow was that good, and on my second trip down, I found even more of it. I assumed my day was over, that Longshot would be just a slow trip through molasses.
The Burnt Mtn Glades, however, have some pretty steep pitches hidden near the top, and again half way down. And no one had skied them. Each had about 8-10 good turns, strong and smooth, and I marveled at my ability to not only stay upright, but turn wherever and however I wanted. I feel at this point in my skiing life a lot like I did at the end of my medical career – like I’d finally figured out how to do it well, I was done practicing, and could just enjoy and savor a hard earned skill.
I’ve written before about Perfect Moments, those ruptures in life’s flow when all that’s come before suddenly narrows done to an infinitely small and endlessly expansive point of time. I’ve gained that experience through sports, through music, and through writing. It is, I believe, the essence of art, and happiness.
So those turns fell into my personal pantheon of skiing Perfect Moments. The sky all day had been the iridescent violet blue only possible in the winter, high in the mountains, on the coldest days, as the sun is fading. The trees, even the highest crowns, were chocked with snow, more white than green. At times the wind, or maybe just the random pull of gravity, would shower down a veil of snow from those trees. A quiet snowfall, intimate and serene
(To be cont’d)