Backyard Skiing

You don’t have to go far from home for adventure

I woke up thinking the storm was a dud.

The news had been abuzz all week with forecasts of a mega-storm. Feet of snow were supposed to hit the Front Range of Colorado, especially in the foothills of Boulder and the Indian Peaks wilderness. But the night before, it was still nearly 50 degrees and raining after 10PM. Not promising.

In the morning, peering from my window I saw maybe six or eight inches of snow—a decent dump, but far from the apocalyptic promises of OpenSnow. It continued steadily accumulating throughout the day, however, and I heard reports from friends who had ventured to the higher elevations that things were getting serious. The Eldora ski resort, a few thousand feet above Boulder’s elevation in Nederland, closed for the day because of avalanches blocking the access road. Friends living in Boulder Canyon and near Walker Ranch were reporting feet of snow. Finally, after hearing an encouraging report from Green Mountain, my buddy Jack and I decided that we had to investigate the conditions for ourselves. After all, how often can you ski ten minutes from your house in Boulder?

We met at 5pm at the base of Chautauqua Park, where the nuking snow still obscured the Flatirons from our view. Passing college kids building ramps in the meadow, we ascended Flagstaff road and were breaking trail up the Green Mountain West Ridge Trail by just after 5:30PM.

At the trailhead at 7700ft of elevation, I measured 125cm/49 inches of snow where the day before there was just grass. Testing depth for the rest of the skin, I consistently measured at least 35 inches of powder.

24 hours before was grass and dirt.

The going was slow, but the stoke was high. It seemed that no one else had ventured out from this trailhead; if they had, the continuous snow had already buried any evidence of their passing. Cutting out the skin track through knee and waist-deep snow, we remarked how much faster it usually goes as a running trail!

This was my first ever outing with Jack. We’ve known each other for a while, as we both work in clean energy and he works with my roommate, but we hadn’t ever made it out on an adventure together, or even hung out outside of parties around Boulder. We spent the time talking about mutual friends, sharing stories of other outdoor escapades, bantering, and generally getting to know each other. As I’ve written before, high-density days are the best way to get to know people. We had no idea how dense this day was set to become.

Just before sunset (thank goodness Daylight Savings happened the previous weekend, giving us an extra hour of light), we skinned up what is usually a rock slab to the metal plate marking the summit of Green Mountain. After a quick transition and a sip of water, we threw on our headlamps and began our descent in the nascent darkness.

The light of our headlamps accentuated the swirling snow—the weather still hadn’t let up. The few hundred meters from the summit were steep enough for us to get some good turns. Knee-deep turns with no bottom—not bad for being a few miles from home. There was better coverage here than on the second notch of the East Wall at Arapahoe Basin the previous weekend.

Although it skied relatively well, the falling snow was some of the wettest I’ve ever encountered; it looked like both of us had just completed the Arcteryx challenge:

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After plowing through an untracked meadow along a gentle slope, we transitioned back to our skins and began the hike out. Our previous skin track was already filling in from the relentless storm, but it was distinct enough to follow without much difficulty.

I can’t highlight enough the incredulity I felt about the quantity of snow. I had gone on a trail run in the foothills of Boulder the day before the storm without even seeing a trace of snow or ice, and here we were a day later not even close to scraping the grass and dirt underneath the fresh pillows. The snow was super reactive; on a small rollover, I was able to trigger a small slab to slide by traversing across the slope.

We made decent progress, exchanging leads breaking trail, and the vibes were still high. This was truly a ridiculous evening, and it still felt pretty Type I Fun. Until, that is, with me in the lead, Jack called out that he had a problem: he was missing a skin. I suggested he check his backpack to ensure he hadn’t just forgotten to put it on, and, when that yielded nothing, we backtracked. Nothing. Wherever the skin had fallen off, it was gone.

I regained the lead and continued breaking trail. Not long after, his second skin disappeared. Again we backtracked, but again we came up empty handed. Jack struggled against the natural slide of his skis while I struggle against the feet of fresh snow. Despite being soaking wet, neither of us were cold thanks to the exertion.

We reached the final pitch of trail, maybe a half-mile remaining, when I suddenly realized that both of my skins had somehow come off too. I took off a ski and, by slicing it through the snow, managed to recover one skin against all odds. It was totally buried, and totally soaked. After minutes of continued searching, I gave up, thankful for getting at least one skin back. Neither of us understand how or why our skins fell off, but I think the fact that we both somehow lost them made each of us feel a little better.

This point marked the nadir of our spirits. The remaining grade, gradual though it was, punished us. We had certainly been out longer than expected, and gear failure is frustrating even in the best of circumstances. We kept pace, though, and finally the welcome glow of a “no parking” sign reflecting the light from our headlamps marked us as having arrived. All night, whenever anything good had happened to us, we declared we were “so back.” Well, now we were SO back.

It had taken us four hours to go four miles. In that time, the storm had buried Jack’s car under impressive drifts of snow. I estimated at least six fresh inches had fallen during our tomfoolery on the mountain.

We busted out our avalanche shovels, dug out the car, and began a meticulous drive down the mountain, calling a few friends who had checked in on us and making plans to grab pizza with our friend Ellie when we got down—it was past 10PM and we still hadn’t had dinner. We felt happy to be finally drying out, jubilant at our foolishness for doing such an absurd thing after work on a Thursday, and stoked for developing a new friendship.

Despite our celebrations, though, Ullr’s mighty storm still had more in store for us.

At the turn of a switchback, a small pine tree covered roughly half of the road. A pickup truck was parked on the downhill side of the tree, seemingly turned off. Jack and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. After a beat, the truck flashed its lights at us. Jack and I got out of our car and walked over.

The door of the truck inched open. A frantic voice called out to us. A middle-aged woman, with a thick east Asian accent, a black puffy jacket, and wide eyes greeted us. She had been parked behind this tree for roughly three hours, she explained. I asked her where she was going; apparently, she lived seven miles up the road. Jack and I had just driven down about three miles, and the road only got worse the higher you went.

“I don’t like driving in the snow; I’m scared to drive around the tree,” she said. There was plenty of space to go around it, but she had parked on a steep slope midway through the curve in the road—she’d have to back up and get some speed further down the hill to make the turn, if she indeed did continue upward.

Jack looked at me as if to say, “There is absolutely no way she makes it.” As politely as I could, I told her that it seemed unsafe for her to continue and that my suggestion was for her to turn around.

The language barrier created some friction, as her English was only okay, but eventually she agreed to descend. The only issue was that she refused to turn around and asked if one of us would drive her car for her. I looked at her truck, the tree in the road, and our car.  Her car had to move somehow, so I volunteered. The Tacoma handled great in the snow, and I got her turned around no problem before she shared that there were more trees blocking the road down the mountain. She had seen the trees leaning ominously over the road, weighed down by the wet, heavy snow, hours before while she was making her initial ascent. We caravanned down until just above the Flagstaff House, where a mighty pine had fallen fully across the road. There was no way we were getting around this one.

We called the non-emergency line and got in touch with a deputy. She confirmed there were multiple trees blocking the road and said she’d call back with an estimate on timing. Jack floated a zany idea—we could ski down to the bottom, to my waiting car—but that would mean leaving the woman alone and leaving his car roadside. The deputy said that we could leave the car, but that they “might” tow it. After minutes of debate, our consciences got the better of us, and we decided to wait it out for an update. Jack called Ellie back, saying “that pizza might be a while.”

Soon, the deputy called us back: a team of dudes with chainsaws and heavy equipment was en route. We were SO BACK. A few minutes later, the welcome glow of headlights pierced the thick flakes of snow. After the crew performed a few surgical chainsaw cuts I again commandeered the lady’s truck and backed it up until the tractor could push the tree off the road. Once again, we were moving toward pizza, and home.

Jack and I stumbled into the pizza shop past midnight. Waiting for us, amongst a sea of wasted college students celebrating their first night of spring break, sat Ellie and a pizza. She had skinned from her house to the pizza joint; between Ellie in her ski boots and bibs and Jack and me wearing avalanche beacons and soaking-wet shells, we garnered more than a few strange looks. Finally victorious, safely off the mountain, and eradicating a pizza, we began devising the details of how to tell the story of our new legend.

Work the following morning was going to be interesting.

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Despite the silliness, and how I realize most people wouldn’t be stoked about this kind of evening, I never felt like we were taking too much risk. Jack and I both had our avalanche gear—beacon, shovel, probe—which proved useful in digging out his car and measuring the depth of the snow. The reactivity of the snow only reinforced its necessity, so I’m thankful we went with our better judgement to bring it. We had spare batteries for headlamps, plenty of food and water, first aid equipment, and extra layers. Jack had Strava Pro maps, and I had CalTopo; I always like having multiple kinds of maps to look at, especially when you’re in tough navigational conditions like the middle of the night. We also both let friends know our silly plan, and they checked in on us throughout the night, ready to provided support if needed—especially Ellie!

Skiing our local running trail during a century storm, at night, was an objectively dumb and absurd thing to do. Jack and I knew this reality from the start, which I think played a material role in keeping our spirits high throughout the evening.

This reinforced the importance of aligning your objectives with your backcountry partners. It made what could have been a miserable night into the ultimate bit and a lot of fun (other than the final half mile of skinning).