Reilly Anderson. In his head I'm sure he's singing, "Powder you're all that I want, when I'm skiing down in your arms, I'm finding it hard to believe, we're in heaven."
We’ve got some classic early Colorado spring happening on the Western Slope these days. I spent most of the week hanging out in shorts and T-shirts in Glenwood Springs, but on Wednesday my friend Reilly and I made a 40 minute drive past Redstone, up to McClure Pass and back into the heart of winter. Our reward: face shots, blizzard conditions and a new take on a long-time favorite place.
From McClure pass we toured north on a snow-covered Forest Service road through spacious aspen glens to the top of Huntsman Ridge, which crests a series of east-facing bowls. Last time I’d been to Huntsman, which runs north off of McClure pass, was last October. For six days straight I had slogged up the same road Reilly and I were skiing five months later. And for six days straight I walked back down empty handed, destined for a vegetarian year (for me, the bumper sticker’s true: “Vegetarian” really does mean “poor hunter”).
Huntsman Ridge and the bowls below it – Bear Gulch and Hays Creek – comprise the part of this earth that I know better than any other. I’ve been bow hunting and rifle hunting for elk in that area with my Dad since before I was old enough to drive. Last September I lived in a camper trailer all month so I could bow hunt every day. I’ve named dozens of landmarks on my topo maps throughout the years – Bull Bench, Lion Bench (where I crossed paths with a Mountain Lion and felt more like prey than predator), Solar Bowl, and so on. But I had never been to Huntsman in the winter, with a blanket of snow on the ground. Nor had I experienced this place without the distraction of elk. So, as I skinned up the trail I thought I knew so well, I began to notice details I’d never seen those fall mornings in my hybrid state of adrenaline-fused excitement and predawn lethargy. We saw engravings in aspen trees dating back to the early 1900s: elegant, italic names, curvaceous outlines of busty women, profiles of men’s faces, and I-was-here dates. We even saw some non-human graffiti: series of five black pockmarks up white bark where a bear had climbed high into the tree many years ago.
Reilly and I gained the ridge after about an hour of skinning. Snow began to fall peacefully at first, drifting stellar flakes, then the winds picked up, the temps dropped and the snow became more like grapple. We could see semi-covered tracks from the week below us, but plenty of fresh remained. I was nervous about skiing in the open bowls because, in the fall when I hike in this area, the slopes seem so steep. But with my inclinometer I made some measurements and found nothing to exceed 33-35 degrees, and most of the area was below 30. Perfect for Colorado pow. We dropped into skier heaven one at a time and found fluffy but consolidating powder on top of a pretty dense midpack, which made for fast skiing and plenty of float . We high-fived over the beautiful turns at the bottom. Then we found a skin track through steep evergreens that Reilly had set a couple days ago. Again, as we skinned back up, I began to notice familiar spots that seemed foreign in a winter setting: the Aspen stand where a black bear cub and I had startled each other last fall; the gully where I almost stepped on a herd of napping wapiti one Indian Summer afternoon two years ago. They charged away from me like a freight train snapping trees and crushing bushes.
We made four laps on the Bears Gulch bowl on Wednesday. Throughout the day the snow fell hard then light, straight down, then sidesways. Each lap I noticed that being on Huntsman Ridge in such a new context created a certain tension – like seeing an old friend after many years and struggling to reconcile volumes of common history with an immediate sense of strangeness. I realized that seeing this space as a place of play rather than the theater of the predator/prey eco-drama changed the tone of this particular piece of earth. No stress, no pursuit of death, just the elegance of play on skis on snow.
On our third lap, the clouds parted to our northeast, and a patch of blue sky revealed a vast, sparkling view of Mt. Sopris’s alpine slopes. No matter the season, no matter the pursuit, this land is rich with magic. Next fall I’ll return to Huntsman Ridge with a deeper knowledge of its many natures.
Lonely sheep herder art from sometime last century.
