New West Network

My Page: Bob Berwyn

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AVY SAVVY

It may be a little outside New West’s geographical area, but still of note for Snowblog readers when a massive inbounds releases at a major ski resort — after the terrain has been controlled for slides and opened for skiing.

And that’s exactly what happened at Mammoth Mountain in early December, as reported by Mitch Weber, founder of the lively Telemark Tips web site. According to Weber’s story on the slide, he was skiing with several friends in an area known as the Paranoids, specifically in P3, when he looked uphill to take some pictures of one of his partners when he saw a “wall of snow 10 feet high and some 100 feet wide” rumbling toward him.

Two of the three skiers were swept up by the snow and left shaken but uninjured. Weber’s account of the incident on Telemark Tips is well worth reading, not only for the gripping description of the slide and rescue, but for the conclusions that he draws. Despite the best efforts by Mammoth Mountain’s pro patrol, the mountain remains wild and unpredictable, and Weber says his days of carefree romping on steep powder slopes at the ski area are over. His post also includes a photo of the slide area. [more]

WOLF CREEK VICTORY?

There may be some good news on the horizon for all those core skiers and riders who like Wolf Creek just the way it is — remote, rustic and mostly undeveloped.

The Durango Herald recently reported that the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado Wild are close to reaching a settlement that could dramatically change the prospects for a massive and controversial real estate development scheme at the powder haven in Colorado’s San Juans. [more]

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR?

All is well in Summit County — well, almost all. The dining room table is covered with holiday snow globes and mountains of Christmas confectionery, including enough chocolate-dipped pretzels to feed a small army. There’s a multi-hued gingerbread house with a Paul Bunyanesque-ski figurine and a Hawaiian Hula girl shaking her grass skirt beside a candy cane fire pit. Our somewhat whimsical and psychedelic ski chalet was the creative brainstorm of my nine-year-old son, Dylan, and my girlfriend, Leigh, who poured her heart and soul into making the season festive and bright. Along with instigating a three-day baking marathon, she put up with neighborhood kids dropping in for cookie-decorating visits and extreme nighttime sledding sessions — as long as I kept the Guinness flowing freely.

Outside, it’s a winter wonderland. The snow at our resorts is about as good as it gets this time of year, with base depths ranging around 30 inches and new terrain opening nearly every day. The backcountry is going off, too. The generous and surprisingly stable early season snowpack means powderhounds are happy. All in all, life is good.

So why complain about an ad in a ski magazine? I suppose I’d have to give the same answer George Leigh Mallory gave when he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: “Because it’s there.”
[more]

STORM STORY

Ullr smiled on Colorado the past few days, dropping copious snow across most of the state’s mountains. The December storm was a bit unusual in that it delivered powder across the board, from the San Juans in the Southwest, up to Steamboat and the Front Range mountains around Winter Park. Often the storm tracks vary just enough to leave one area high and dry while other areas get blasted. A southwest flow, for example, favors the San Juans, the Elk Mountains around Crested Butte and Aspen, and even the Steamboat area. Westerly flows bring generous amounts of snow to Vail and Beaver Creek, while other ski areas squeezed the most moisture out of a northwest flow.

But the wide band of subtropical moisture entrained in the recent blast blanketed the entire state. Wolf Creek reported 55 inches of snow in the 48 hours ending Sunday afternoon and now has a 92-inch base. A pair of large avalanches temporarily closed U.S. Highway 160 across the pass Saturday, the Durango Herald reported. [more]

FRESHIES FOR ALL

A burly winter storm continues to paste the Colorado mountains with snow. As of Friday morning (Dec. 7), ski resorts around the state reported anywhere from 12 to 20 inches of snow, with on-and-off snowfall expected to continue through the weekend and into early next week.

Some 48-hour storm totals include 24 inches at Crested Butte, 16 inches at Arapahoe Basin, 18 inches at Keystone, 19 inches at Loveland and 21 inches at Winter Park. Check the Colorado Ski Country USA snow report for updated totals. [more]

Giving Back

While skiing has often been deemed an elitist upper-class sport, there are several organizations around the West that have long worked to make the mountain sports scene more inclusive. One of the most remarkable is the Vail-based Snowboard Outreach Society (SOS).

The SOS will get some well-deserved kudos this weekend when U.S. Senator Ken Salazar honors the nonprofit on Vail Mountain. The SOS launch for the season will take place at the top of the Eagle Bahn Gondola Saturday, Dec. 8 at 10 a.m. The ceremony will be held on the snow east of the Eagle's Nest deck and Adventure Ridge. 125 participants from across three programs will join the festivities. [more]

KEEPING SCORE

The latest environmental ranking of ski areas by a watchdog group suggests that several resorts around the West have dramatically changed their environmental policies for the better. The latest Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition (SACC) environmental scorecard shows that Telluride, Mammoth, Park City and Squaw Valley all upped their grades considerably.

According to the scorecard, three resorts run by the Aspen Skiing Company are still the greenest by far, but Telluride, Wolf Creek and New Mexico’s Taos Ski Valley are not far behind. At the bottom end of the scale with failing grades are Breckenridge and Copper Mountain. Both were marked way down for seeking expansions into undisturbed National Forest roadless areas, and for pursuing large-scale base area development plans. [more]

Big Dump

Skiers in the southern Rockies are licking their chops, or at least waxing their boards this weekend, watching a storm that could drop several feet of snow in Colorado’s southwestern mountains before all is said and done. As of Saturday afternoon (Dec 1), Silverton Mountain and Wolf Creek were reporting 36 inches of new snow. Telluride, Aspen, Crested Butte and Sunlight all reported around a foot snow, while the resorts west of Denver along the I-70 corridor Summit County, Vail and Beaver Creek, Loveland and Arapahoe Basin reported between six and 10 inches, with snow still falling. Check the Colorado Ski Country USA snow report for updated totals. [more]

A Ski Song

I want to tell you about an old song by Austrian singer and songwriter Wofgang Ambros called Schifoan. Translated, the song title simply means skiing. But the lyrics to this three-minute ditty capture so much of the feeling of a good ski day that it became a sing-along anthem in the ski-crazy alpine nation, not to mention a karaoke favorite.

In the first verse, Ambros describes the joy of strapping his boards to the car roof on a Friday afternoon, the giddy anticipation of seeing snow-covered mountains on the horizon, and his determination to catch first chair in the morning.

The crux of the song is in the rousing chorus. Since Ambros sings in Austrian dialect, it’s not easy to translate. There are even a few words that just don’t have an English counterpart. But the gist of it is easy enough for any avid skier or snowboarder to understand. When you’re standing at the top of the hill with the sun shining on a spray of snow, you’ve got the whole world in your hands. It’s that universal, all-suffusing glow of a good powder day that he captures so well in the lyrics and rollicking melody. It’s a pity we don’t have an American equivalent for this song — maybe someday. [more]

SNOWBLOG

I spent the better part of three days last week putting together a two-part story for the Summit Daily News on a 1987 avalanche that killed four young skiers on Peak 7, at the time a backcountry powder stash just outside the Breckenridge Ski Area boundary.

The situation in 1987 was crystal-clear from the standpoint of ski patrollers and avalanche experts. The snowpack was typical for mid-winter in Colorado; layers of granular sugar snow totally without cohesion, sandwiched between brittle and tender windslabs, and loaded in the weeks preceding the slide by fresh snow. Patrollers discussed the consequences of a Peak 7 slide in terms of “when,” not “if.” In an intense one-on-one outreach effort, they stood near the backcountry access point and explained to skiers how unstable the snowpack was. Ultimately, they even put up a huge skull-and-crossbones sign at the ski area boundary, describing how several people had already been caught by smaller slides in the area. In short, they did pretty much everything humanly possible to prevent what they felt was the inevitable deadly avalanche. It was as if a lifeguard on a beach was telling people there was a hungry great white shark clearly visible, lurking in the shallows.

Still, drawn by the siren call of fresh snow and steep terrain, local and visiting skiers tempted fate day after day and headed out to Peak 7 all through January and early February, 1987. What does it take to prevent people from putting themselves — and others — into harm’s way? Here's what it took for me. [more]

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