Colorado – Tom's On The Move

March 29, 2016

The Right Exposure: A tentless ski adventure in Bear Canyon

_MG_8769 — The author takes a break from the wind before skiing to the top of an 11,000-foot ridge.

South Fork

Somewhere at the entrance of the canyon, an unseen coyote was howling, barking, howling, barking.

I skied toward it slowly, picking my way between stands of willow and alder shrub that grew in the gray flatland of the South Fork drainage. It was just after noontime. Fast moving clouds flew across the sky, allowing the sun to warm the land one instant — before they snatched the light away again. The sharp peaks in the Zirkel range to my east alternately gleamed glorious bright in full illumination or brooded in shadow like a vision out of Transylvania.

I tried not to let the weather psych me out, but it struck a harmony with my own brooding malaise.

Bear Canyon, where the coyote continued howling outrage, lay to the south in a somewhat rounder stand of mountains. It was a U-shaped gap between two ridge lines, maybe a quarter-mile across at the mouth. I couldn’t see too far up the way, but I knew that I would camp somewhere inside those walls — without a tent.

I’d sleep in a snow-shelter and rise the next morning to climb onto the ridge below The Dome. This 11,900-foot mountain, with its sheer walls, was probably out of my league, but there was an un-named sister peak, just above 11,000 feet, that had mellower topo lines on the map. I could climb it on skis, maybe.

_MG_8732 — Skis and coyote tracks above the South Fork

If the absent tent left an uneasy weight in my mind, I hoped the lessened weight on my back would make up for it. The pack was heavy enough with its winter sleeping bag, extra clothes, food, fuel, tarp and other miscellaneous and sundry camping items.

The abandoned tent gave me room to move a bit quicker and with less back strain (though plenty of that would come later.) There was also more responsibility when it came to setting up camp. I’m always relieved when I know I can snap a shelter together out of poles and nylon fabric in minutes. Building from nature required me to channel whatever MacGyver skills I might have. I knew that the shelter would take time, and I might make mistakes along the way. I’d have to pay attention to the elements, to work with and not in spite of them.

Not that the elements had any trouble finding challenges for me.

There was the river, for one.

I had been able to cross a couple of streams earlier in the trip by skiing over snow bridges. The South Fork offered no such convenience, just a channel of open water between me and Bear Canyon that I would have to get across somehow.

The only solution, I could see (other than taking off skis and boots and wading through barefoot) was a tree that had fallen across the current and had a layer of snow on top.

Fresh canine tracks had crossed here. The coyote was still howling outrage from somewhere in the trees, but I never saw it.

If I went too far off center, my skis would likely break the snow and drop me in the water. I set the skis at a slight angle against the log and slowly began to cross where the coyote had gone, obliterating its tracks with my own.

I reached the other side unscathed and continued toward the base of the canyon. This was north-facing territory, and thus, dominated by pines, spruce and fir. The canyon walls were scarcely visible through the thick boughs.

I stopped to eat some vegan pizza, then put the skins back on and started climbing through the forest.

The winding climb

The clouds hid the sun again, and I found myself looking at the sameness of the trees, feeling less than inspired.

I knew that this trip had me checking off a box before the end of the season. My head wasn’t entirely in the game; it was worrying about things like career path, the descent into adulthood, my need to put down roots and build more long-term relationships with places and people. There would be laundry to do when I got back, and I would be that much further behind in filling out paperwork, making plans.

Now, I incriminated myself. How unworthy it was to be in a wild place and stand there, uninspired. Hell, real suffering hadn’t even started yet.

I’d managed to ditch five pounds of tent, but still carried several tons worth of worldly bullshit into the mountains with me. But what was I supposed to do, just cut it all loose? Pretend that the real responsibilities and questions of the world had no right to exist because, “Oooh, the mountains are so beautiful!”?

I admit that escapism is one reason why I choose to go on adventures — it’s nice to stop worrying about things because the mountains are beautiful. But nature isn’t there just to be eye candy or to plaster us with child-like wonder. It is not separate from the world we live in every day, but permeates every inch of it, from the air we breathe to the bacteria in our guts and the primal hardware that governs our wants and needs. Human nature.

The real challenge is to see sameness between that moose browsing the willows and you, online shopping; between the chittering birds and the guys shouting at each other outside a bar on Friday night.

Natural instinct is one of the reasons why many of us find hiking and camping unappealing. We are designed not to enjoy cold, exposure, vulnerability. This is in conflict with the fact that we are also designed to crave the feeling of accomplishment that comes with summiting a mountain or traveling miles of backcountry.

Walls limit the scope of our experience, whether we put them between ourselves and nature or between ourselves and other people. Taking them down also means greater risks.

Lacking a tent gave me the opportunity to have a beautiful walls-free communion with the natural world outside that night, though this came with the slight downside that the wind was picking up and it was probably going to snow. Too much exposure would get me a nice case of hypothermia.

I’d limit the exposure with a sleeping bag, tarp, and whatever I could build out of the resources I’d have in the canyon.

The more I climbed, the more dead trees I saw, a legacy of the Rocky Mountains’ pine beetle scourge. Worse, many of the trees had toppled in a recent windstorm. I found myself weaving around, doubling or tripping any straight-line distance between two points. The trees made hill climbing a special pain in the ass, because they got in the way of diagonal traverses.

My priorities were to get shelter, water and a cook fire set up before darkness fell. Experience has taught me that it usually takes longer to do these things than I think. At around 3:15, I started the real-estate hunt.

I stopped at a couple of pines to strip away some dead red boughs (which seem to be more difficult to find at higher elevations) as fire starter. I strapped the lot of them to my pack as a home-warming present to myself.

But were there any places I wanted to settle down in this neighborhood?

Certainly, much of the west side was a no-go. I saw two places where small avalanches had left swaths of snow rubble on the bare slope. Falling snow was easy enough to avoid, but falling trees were another matter.

Almost all the trees in this part of the canyon were dead. I saw the burn marks around the trunks. I recalled that the mountains to the west of me were part of “Burn Ridge.” Yeah, there had been a burn here all right. Black skeletons of immolated pines creaked in the breeze.

The forecast called for high winds that night, leaving me none too comfortable with the idea of what thousands of pounds of falling tree trunk could do to a potential campsite. The thing was, I couldn’t find a single place outside the radius of one nasty widowmaker or another.

The sun was only a couple of degrees above the western wall. When it dropped, so would the temperature in the canyon, making camp construction that much more uncomfortable.

A time to build

The place where I threw my pack down was far from perfect as far as campsites go. There were still a couple of worrisome trees closer than what I liked. I positioned myself behind a massive burned trunk for protection.

The creek where I planned to get water was well buried in snow, requiring me to dig a five-foot hole before I could fill my cook pan with murky liquid.

_MG_8749 — Completed snow trench shelter with snow piled on the roof

O.K., there was one life-need taken care of. Now I needed a structure to protect me from the elements.

The several feet of snow beneath my feet made for a cheap and readily available construction material. Using a snow shovel, I was able to work my way though snow crust into the compact snow, piling the rubble up onto walls on either side of the pit. I ended up with a trench that was long enough to lie down in, and about four-feet deep. Looking up was like peering out of a fresh-dug grave.

Ideally, I’d be able to use the snow to build a roof above the trench, but this was not to be. Though the snow was compact and chunky, I found that it wasn’t quite consolidated enough to dig out decent-sized snow blocks (or the more frequent, irregular snow boogers.) I did have a reflective tarp that I could use instead.

I wanted support beams for this, so it was time to do some woodwork. Fortunately, I’d packed a miniature “chainsaw” — non-motorized, unless you count the operator. There’s a toothed chain with two nylon handles that I can work around a trunk or branch like a garrote, running it back and forth to make a cut. Almost as fast as a bow saw, it made quick work of a blackened tree post, that I cut into sections. The effort helped get me warm too.

I set two long logs in an X above my snow trench, then added reinforcing girders from lighter branches. I plunged two heavy log posts into the snow at either end of the trench so that I’d have a sturdy place to hitch the tarp.*

At first, I set the tarp lengthwise, but it didn’t look long enough. I realized that I wanted to set the tarp on a diagonal with the trench so that I could have the most coverage from head to toe. I also used pine boughs and snow boogers to expand my roof slightly.

A few remaining holes kept me busy trying to secure things. Then, I remembered a trick from a book on backcountry ski camping, and dug a mini snow-cave at the end of the trench. It was just enough room for my feet and knees, but it meant that I now had plenty of room for my head to fit beneath the tarp. If I’d thought of that earlier, it would have saved time and hassle.

I set my pad and sleeping bag inside, laying them over some fresh fir boughs. The wind didn’t blow inside my trench. It was plenty comfortable, even cozy, down there.

I’d just used the elements to MacGyver myself a shelter. It gave me more pride than any tent I’d pitched.

But now it was getting dim and I had to gather more firewood, because I’d used most of the sticks I’d gathered to build the roof above the snow trench.

I dug out a kitchen area near the entrance, set three stout logs down in the snow so I had a platform to build a fire. Though the wind was blowing above me, the pit protected me from most of it.

I arranged strips of dead pine bough above a cotton ball coated in Vaseline, used a flint and steel striker to start the fire.

The warmth was welcome; the choking smoke was not.

Soon, I had a hearty blaze that I used to cook a meal of pasta and red lentils. I dried my socks on sticks near the flames. I had to shift the pot several times so it wouldn’t collapse into the fire (note that it is much easier to do these things with a pot you can hang) and got rewarded with choking draughts of smoke into my lungs. By the time I slurped down the last of the lentils, my eyes were watering, my throat was raw and I had a dull headache.

According to my watch, it had taken about four hours from when I settled on my campsite to the time that I spooned the last dinner morsel into my mouth. Time to go to bed. I felt cold dots land on my forehead. The first snowflakes were whirling down from the dark sky.

Reluctant awakenings

The sleep was good, warm and dry. I woke up late to the sound of a mean wind roaring through the canyon. It was a world I was uninterested in joining. Too bad my bladder had other plans. I struggled out of my sleeping bag and trudged a couple feet outside my shelter in whirling snowflakes to take my morning pee.

Back within the shelter, I weighed my options. Though I had thought about climbing the mountain, the wind and flakes would make for unpleasant going, not to mention the fact that a whiteout could throw off navigation. Having spent one night in the canyon, I felt that I could call the trip a semi-success before heading home.

I made my breakfast on my camp stove inside. This was a wonderful luxury, considering I wouldn’t have risked using a stove inside a flammable nylon tent and that would have meant I’d have had to cook in the blowing snow.

The shelter had kept most of the heavy snowfall out, but I was glad that I had put my sleeping bag into a lightweight bivy sack to keep it dry. The outside of the bag was damp, but I’d had that on tenting trips too. and it was probably moisture from my own body.

Packing up was slow trying to corral various loose items within the cramped space. Pulling away the roof was the hardest part, because after that, I had no shelter to crawl back inside.

Must go up

Backpack fully loaded, I was ready to start the return journey. Of course, the snow chose that exact moment to relent so that I could feel like a total wimp. Because of this, I started skiing up-canyon instead of back. What the hell? Maybe I could go for an hour or so before turning back, just to look around.

Within five minutes, I came to the place where I should have camped. Live pine trees made a good wind break; a gap in the snow above the creek revealed clear running water.

There was no easy way down to the current without the risk of falling in, so I tied a bottle on a string and lowered it into the current off the end of a ski pole as if fishing for water.

_MG_8760 — Easier than fishing catfish I suppose

I put skins on the skis and started again. Soon the storm was back at full bore. The howling wind made me nervous about falling trees. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting to see a tree trunk flying down at me like a death angel.

Moving was slow and harder work then it had been skimming above the crust a day earlier. But the fresh snow was good news too, because it meant that there would be ample powder to carve on the decent.

The climb steepened, forcing me to make several switchbacks. Looking into the wind was coldest, but I preferred it to having the wind at my back, where I wouldn’t be able to see which way a falling tree was coming.

The western sky was a dark mass of snow and menace. I watched the darkness grow, felt the wind rise. Soon sharp flakes whipped all around and the world went over to fading grades of white. Maybe the top of that ridge was the place to turn around, I thought. By the time I got there, the snow had let up somewhat, though I could see another blast bearing down from the west.

Well exposed

There was another ridge higher up, and I decided that since I had come this far, I might as well go to the next one.

I skied toward an overlook above a 1,000-foot bowl. A lonely pillar of burnt pine gave me a place to put my back to the wind and chew a chocolate bar in relative shelter. Wind and flakes flew past me and over the gulf. The sharp columns and rock flutings of Big Agnes and the Zirkels stood jagged, half-visible on the other side. Snow streamers blew off the ridges like chimney smoke, leaving white imprints against the dark sky.

The storm showed a side of the mountains’ nature that’s harder to grasp on those perfect sunny days. The high peaks defied the winds ravaging their slopes, but also fed them, glorying in the chaos. It was a violent ritual, but nonetheless, necessary to affirm what the mountains were.

My stubborn ascent, the night in the snow trench, were another kind of affirmation ritual. I needed to prove that I was tough for evidence against the times when I was not tough. I needed to show that there was a place for me in these mountains, even when my instincts sought the routine and comforts of home life. Now, I saw that the blasted mountain range across the gulf, with its tough, unfeeling rock columns, was far more confident in its position than I could be.

I had sought exposure in nature as a means to enlighten myself. Now, the mountain ridge looked very exposed indeed. The light was treacherous.

More than once, I wandered into a snowbank, because I couldn’t distinguish it from the rest of the white snow. The mountains, practically lost in the white of whirling flakes, looked just like what happens when I set my camera’s shutter speed too slow. It was getting harder to tell things apart and set a course.

This overexposed world required a smaller aperture. I needed to close up, narrow my focus to the foreground elements and put one ski in front of the other.

I skied out from behind the tree trunk, intending to turn around. Instead, I found myself skiing along the ridge, then continuing up toward the unseen summit. Switchback after switchback, I climbed furiously.

2 p.m. was my hard turn around time. Get to the top of this damn thing, I thought. It would remain to be seen if there would be time to ski back home before evening. It was possible I might just hole up in a forest service outhouse for the night.

Finally, I topped out on a broad ridge, where I would have to go down before I went back up again. The dark bulk of The Dome rose out of the veils of snow. Forbidding rock faces frowned down at the land below. Even if there were time, it didn’t look like anything I wanted to try without technical equipment and more experience.

I had, however, climbed the topo lines to the unnamed black dot on the map that I had set out for. The whole trip had built up toward a couple of brief blasted visions of distant peaks. I could weigh whether I’d learned anything later. It was time to go back.

I peeled the skins off the ski bottoms and pointed the boards downhill.

The fresh snow was great for skiing. I weaved through the burned trees with a series of juicy telemark turns, covering distances that had taken me 20 minutes worth of climbing in two minutes. The wind had mostly obliterated my old tracks, so I navigated by going downhill and to the northwest, checking my compass periodically. The snow kicked up and washed out my view of mountains or any other landmarks I could have used to navigate.

At one ridge, I found myself looking down a gulf to my right and to my left, unsure which was the one I’d come up from because I didn’t know where I was standing.

By dumb luck, I saw a ghost imprint of my old tracks going toward the western valley and went that way.

I switched from bold telemark turns to slower, zigging kick turns as the terrain steepened. Wind had shaped the powder into unpredictable formations. One moment I’d be crawling through shin-deep snow, the next, I could be rocketing over bare crust. It was impossible to know what the snow ahead was like until I was already skiing over it.

As I went deeper into the canyon, the wind started to relent.

I noticed a familiar clearing, then saw the place where I had refilled my water bottles in the stream when I’d set out that morning.

I filled them once more. There were hours of skiing left before I got back home over tricky terrain and uneven snowmobile trails. It was a relief to know where I stood.

_MG_8774 — A near whiteout on the high ridge

*(Footnote regarding shelter construction)
I probably reinforced the tarp more than I needed to. Because I left it flat, that meant that I needed to bring more lumber than if I had built a pitched roof, which could have shed snow weight via gravity. One downside to the alternative method was that it would require me to settle for a smaller roof. The fact that I weighted the tarp made it less susceptible to the vagaries of wind.

March 7, 2016

My Farwell Mountain Ski

On crust and on slush

“To hell with it,” I announced, clicking out of my ski bindings so that I could kick up the icy slope in boots.

I had just started the trip, but was already fed up with the skis chittering every which way and the strain of setting the edges into snow crust so that they didn’t slip. The time and energy it took to fight the crust was taking away from the effort I’d need to spend in the miles ahead. So why not try to turn that crust to my advantage by just walking up it?

As soon as I put my boots on the snow, I found that I could get uphill easily. The crust held me above the snow as I beat a straight line up the ridge, skis cradled in my arms.

It’s a good thing I’m not a purist about staying in the bindings. Taking on the hill this way was much faster — even faster than when I was skiing with climbing skins.

The changing nature of the snow beneath my feet was a key player in deciding whether my all-day trip from doorstep (7,800 feet) to the top of Farwell Mountain (10,800 feet and about five miles of skiing distant) would be success or failure. Now that we were getting warm weather, the south slopes of the mountains were getting mushy beneath the afternoon sun, only to become tilted ice rinks at night when the cold temperatures refroze the snow. With the new day, the sun would work its magic again, and much like a tub of ice cream left outside the freezer, the crust would soften up, sometimes to the point of gloppification, whereupon it would stick to the ski bottoms.

Within this cycle was a theoretical sweet spot, a time when the snow would have perfect softness for skiing down, not too hard, not sticky mush. I hoped the time would be right when I started back down the mountain and that the snow would yield to the ski edges like ice cream to a spoon. If the window opened for a few hours in the afternoon, I’d have one chance to carve through softened snow without accelerating to terrifying speeds. The window would start to close even before the sun set. Once the sun was low enough in the sky, it would lose the power to hold back the cold below, and the cold would turn the surface back to ice.

Ski boots can walk too

_MG_8518 — The icy snow was very hard to carve in the morning

I gave myself a hard turn-around time: 2 p.m. If I didn’t start heading back by then, I figured, I would likely end up skiing on ice slopes.

I chastised myself for taking a 7:30 breakfast and not hitting the trail until 8. Probably, I wasn’t going to make it. The last time I’d tried a day trip to Farwell, I had started half an hour earlier and had been somewhere on the summit ridge when 2 p.m. rolled around, but it wasn’t the top.

Of course, white-out conditions had complicated navigation on that trip. The falling powder also made me slower going uphill, but it had also given me fairly good control going back down.

Now I puffed to the top of the ridge where I promptly fell through the crust to my knees.

I tried jogging a couple more steps and fell through a couple more times.

OK, time to put skis back on.

I skimmed up a more mild incline, along the rim of the col where I had my igloo, still standing nearly two months after I finished building it. The summit of Big Agnes glimmered in the far distance. Until we meet again, my friend.

_MG_8313 — Picture on summit ridge from my previous trip to Farwell

A heavy windstorm earlier in the month had knocked down several of the beetle-killed lodgepole pines, creating new obstacles for me to navigate. Detouring past one of these deadfalls took me down a wimpy slope that was still so icy that I almost fell face first. At a second ridge, I decided to try climbing in my boots again. Sure enough, the slope was rock-solid and easy to climb without post-holing. The extra-tilt had probably made the difference, since it meant that the winter sun would hit the snow at a right angle, creating more melt followed by more ice.

When I got to the top of this ridge, I put the skis back on and started going hard, following the ghost of my old tracks for a while, then cutting further west to try a new (I hoped) more gradual climb up the mountain.

I left my climbing skins on as I followed the ridge, to a third uphill section. This time, I climbed the hill in my skis. I could already feel the snow softening. It was getting warm out. When I got to a flat section, I went ahead and peeled off the skins along with a light jacket I’d been wearing.

Nordic rhythm

The backcountry Nordic skis on my feet were light and narrow enough so that I could maintain a decent stride and glide to eat up distance quickly. While not as light and delicate as track skis meant exclusively for groomed trail. These are not the skis most people would use on a mountain like Farwell. I knew good and well that if I would be hard-pressed to make them turn if I took them down an aggressive pitch.

Moreover, their free-heel bindings, connecting them to the boot via a single metal bar, are far more fragile than the clunky Tranformer-esque downhill ski boots and bindings designed to carve the gnar. The soft boots would not withstand the kind of torsion forces that a recreational downhill skier would put in on a lift-operated hill. There was higher risk of broken ski or broken skier.

With that in mind, a typical backcountry skier going out in short, heavy boards and monstro boots would have eaten my snow dust trying to catch me on the flats.

Daring downhill descents may get more GoPro coverage, but there is an equally worthy, if more subtle challenge for those who want to cover ground in cross country skis with efficiency and body awareness.

I concentrated on kicking hard off the back ski, letting it float into the air behind me, then bringing it back down to the snow tip to tail.The goal was to balance on one moving ski at a time— maximum thrust, minimum friction, minimum superfluous body movement. If I did well, my reward was a steady whooosh-click with poles and skis. I changed the rhythm to match the terrain, but there was always rhythm. If I got off kilter for a moment, or lost concentration, I felt my speed suffer and the rhythm disappear. It was jarring, like playing music off a scratched disk.

_MG_8539 — Aspens and sky on Farwell’s south slope

I hit pause as I came out of the trees to look at the mountain in my path. Farwell rose to the north, a 2,000-foot wall of snow, trees and rock. A massive bowl, ripe with avalanche potential lay dead center. On my earlier trip, I’d skinned up the trees on the east side of the bowl until the going had gotten steep enough for me to switch to snowshoes for the final push to the summit ridge. Here, I’d met fierce winds and whipping snow. Half an hour of snow globe climbing brought me to a rock outcrop, where I couldn’t see anything higher than I was (though I couldn’t really see more than 200 yards at this point.) I decided that though this probably wasn’t the summit, it was a great place to turn around.

Now, looking at the mountain again, I was convinced that my original plan, to go to the west of the bowl was the best way. This route would take me up through a steep aspen forest and to a ridge where I could (hopefully) skin up to the summit and then ski back down the same way. It was longer than my failed route, but I figured that I could make better time if I stayed in my skis. I didn’t even bring snowshoes this time.

Before I started climbing, I had to ski downhill into a basin. The slope here was north-facing, so it had powder instead of crust, but it was still fast snow.

I carved out a couple of telemark turns through a grove of pine saplings, and then realized that I was heading for a sunken log at high speed. I sailed over, picking up air, before landing in a lunge in a small drainage gully.

I pumped my fist in the air.

“Whooo! That’s what I’m talking about!” I shouted to the trees and squirrels.

Who knew if I would make the top today? I was glad I’d come out.

Skinning Farwell

_MG_8532 — Author taking a quick break to record what he looks like in new shades

Back on crusty snow in the drainage, I resumed skiing up a slight incline, following some fox tracks. The sky was deep blue, cut with pearl-white aspen boughs. A deep ravine loomed up in my path. Instead of losing elevation by going down it, I stayed patient and followed it uphill to the east until it receded into the mountain. I took a break to eat and drink, then put skins on my skis. I’d brought two pairs for the occasion so that I could cover almost the entire ski bottoms with the strips of synthetic hair. The hairs lie at an angle so that the ski slides going uphill, but resist sliding backward. This friction, would allow me to power up steep pitches that would have been impossible otherwise.

Even with skins, the climb would take a lot from me. I began making switchbacks that required wobbly kick turns with the skis. Soon my heart was pounding and a sweat zone was spreading between my pack and spine.

How easy to forget — even when there is a direct way up, even when there are no boulders to scale or avalanche zones to bisect — climbing the side of a mountain is hard.

Switchback after switchback, I watched the land drop away, revealing the Pearl Lake Reservoir, Hole In The Wall Canyon and the Colton Creek drainage. The tooth of Hahns Peak rose to the west. It had been too long since I’d climbed a real mountain. It is a fine way to take a new view of the world. Part of climbing’s thrill, is that it gives you the opportunity to imagine that you have transcended the paltry concerns of the world below. This isn’t true, but the perspective is refreshing and leaves the door open for other subversive thoughts. When I look out from high, it reminds me what a vast space we live in, and how much life and possibility exist to fill it.

_MG_8556 — Alpine scenery like this will keep me climbing mountains

The view up the mountain was less encouraging. The ridge I was aiming for seemed to get further back the more I climbed. I bargained with myself that it might be easier to take a more middle path up the mountain, closer to the bowl, even though this might mean steeper terrain, possibly greater avalanche risk (though unlikely in the old, compacted snow.)

The aspens thinned as I climbed, then gave way to dispersed evergreen groves. I noticed long stretches running down the slope, where nothing grew. That was where the avalanches had been, I thought, where they could happen again. A slip there on the hard-pan snow could mean a long, ugly fall. I did my best to avoid these places.

As in my earlier hike up Big Agnes, I stayed in trees as much as possible, or lined myself up beneath boulders as I climbed. Still, there were moments where I would ski out above one of these big empty corridors, anxiety welling in my gut, before I got back into the cover of some pines.

I found one area of disturbed snow, that I thought for sure had been the site of a slide. I looked closer and realized that I was looking at snowmobile tracks. The fact that noisy engines had barreled straight up the treeless pitch without triggering anything reassured me that the snow was stable, though I also wondered if the drivers had even considered the risk.

I got back into the cover of some pines, tackling trickier and tricker switchbacks with the skis. The snow up here had hardly softened a whit in the full sun, ski edges could barely scratch them.

Nearing the top of the ridge, I took the skis off again and started kicking up the slope.

_MG_8566 — A nice picnic spot that I found

Within a quarter mile, I was on the ridge, which was a quick ski away from the summit.

The exposure and the altitude gave the top of Farwell the grizzled alpine quality I love about mountain tops: gnarled trees, jagged boulders stripped bare by the elements. Hard winds had carved the snow into scale-like sastrugi, beautiful repeating shapes that were the music between the mountain and the wind — improvisational, yet rhythmic patterns riffing within some divine free jazz masterpiece.

Amidst this, stood an improbable wall of solar panels, antennae and a corrugated metal transmitter station, surrounded by snowmobile tracks. The panels, like the mountain face I had just climbed, were tilted at an extreme angle to maximize the sun’s input. Cell phone conversations and high definition television were no doubt passing through my body from the dish nearby. I wondered if there would be a place where I could eat lunch inside, or even grab a beer, but the lonely outpost offered no such accommodations.

_MG_8553 — View of mountains and snowmobile tracks on Farwell summit

Just as well. I skied over to a high ledge looking out over the valley I’d just climbed out of. The view was worth suffering a little wind. The stark plains of Wyoming lay to the north. I scanned east over the Zirkel Range, recognizing the snowfield that I’d taken (almost) to the top of Big Agnes. Was there any other way I could have climbed that mountain? None of the other routes I could see looked possible or free from serious avalanche risk and this made me feel a little better for not standing on the exact top of that mountain.

Going down slow, going down fast

_MG_8577 — This was the most badass line I carved on the trip. I was sliding down on my ass.

A more immediate concern was how I would get down off the mountain I was standing on now. It was about 12:45, well before my mandatory turnaround time. The hardpan snow that I had just climbed made me a little iffy about the ski down. If I went that way, I would take skis off and glissade (slide on my butt) over the steepest sections, then keep my skins on the skis so that I wouldn’t build up more momentum than I wanted.

If I took another tack, I could follow the summit ridge line east, and come down the way I’d gone on my last trip. If I could stay north of the ridge for a while, I would have a bit of powder to ski instead of hardpan. I scanned my surroundings for a while and double-checked my map, then decided that this was the way to go.

Leaving the skins on the skis for the descent felt awkward and jerky at times, but it did allow me to take on slopes that I wouldn’t have dared to try otherwise. Skiing in slo-mo, I cut bold lines down a small bowl, made a quick glissade down the steepest section, got back into my skis for a pretty fast set of turns through some trees.

The powder on the shadowed north face of the ridge was more enjoyable to ski than the ice snow and I felt good control in the skins. Unfortunately, the way back meant going south, and that meant I needed to take on the ice slopes at some point.

I followed the ridge through thick pine forest, then climbed back onto the south side where the aspens grew. Here, the snow had finally begun to soften. The pitch was still way too steep for me to ditch the skins in the skis that I had, so I contented myself with long traverses. In any case, I was making better time than I would if I were in snowshoes.

I swooped down to the top of a drainage and saw ghost tracks in the snow. A familiar-looking pine tree reminded me that this had been the exact spot where I had put my skis on when I’d been going down the mountain on my previous trip. This, I figured, was as good a place as any to ditch the skins and ski all out.

The crust was mostly melted now, which meant that I could carve, but I would still be moving above an icy layer, and moving fast — much faster than I had gone through the powder on the earlier trip.

I pointed the skis along the old tracks and started flying. Though I barely turned down the hill, it felt like I had rockets at the ends of my skis. I used the telemark position to absorb the shock of bumps, and to desperately turn into the hill to cut speed. I would come to a stop, adrenaline pumping, kick turn and fly down in the opposite direction.

I dropped into the drainage where the pitch began to get milder. I could see a couple of crisp turns in my old tracks and decided try and match them. Bad idea. I went ass over teakettle, landing hard. I felt a sharp pain in my hip and got up immediately before it could decide to be a serious injury. I was still miles from any help and it was a bad place to fuck up.

I started skiing again, more cautiously. I did get in a few turns I was proud of as the pitch mellowed. I also lost my balance a couple times. Finally, I spilled out at the base of a willow drainage at the base of the mountain.

There was a pine tree plantation to ski through, that afforded an impressive view of what I’d just climbed, the snow faces reflecting mid-afternoon sun.

I knew I hadn’t done anything too incredible in terms of skiing prowess, but the skis were a means to getting to the summit and getting back down. I was proud that I hadn’t felt the need to leave them on at all times. Nor was I ashamed that I had left the skins on the skis for the descent, because that had allowed me to use the light, narrow skis that minimized my approach time.

Now that I was heading back, I shed the downhill mentality and got back to thinking like a Nordic skier, searching for the rhythm that I needed to power over the flats. There would be the final set of ridges to come down before I got home and I wanted to get to them before the sun got low in the sky. I could feel the snow consolidate as the cold began to freeze the surface back to ice.

The window was closing. It looked like I’d make it through just in time.

February 1, 2016

The Snow Booger Hotel

_MG_8134 — Author at the entrance to his new home.

Going beyond the tent

Building shelter is one of those challenges that isn’t necessarily easy in the backcountry, but like starting a fire, gathering food or navigating off trail, it offers its own satisfaction.

We seek empty spaces as a way to commune with nature; what better communion than to sleep in a dwelling made from the elements of nature?

In the Routt Mountains in northern Colorado, the element I notice above all others is the several feet of snow on the ground, snow that an enterprising adventurer could stack, sculpt, or burrow into for warmth. The air trapped within creates insulating properties that my three-season tent doesn’t have. Plus, the snow is already there. I don’t have to haul it in on my back to make a home out of it — though a snow-shovel can be helpful.

So why have I bothered lugging my tent along when I go on a multi-day trip when I could build a better product out of snow? The fact that I can set the tent up in minutes rather than hours has something to do it. Then there is that fear that I could screw up at shelter building with no recourse except a night in the cold fury of the elements.

Therefore, when I decided to try my hand at igloo building, I chose to erect my first shelter up on a ridge, maybe a quarter mile away from the very solid, timber-built, central-heated structure where I actually sleep most nights. If I screwed up here, a warm bed would be just down the hill.

Champagne powder into snow boogers

_MG_8074 — Canoe paddle being used to quarry snow

I should make a note about what I’m talking about when I’m talking about igloo building.

When I tell locals that I’ve built an igloo in the woods, they will often ask if I have actually built a quinzee. In order to build this kind of structure, you build up a big mound of snow and dig it out. My dad and I built quinzees during some of Connecticut’s epic snow years.

To build an igloo, I planned to take blocks of snow and raise them up into a dome. Blocks of snow? This seemed impossible for this part of the Rockies where the snow has the consistency of baby powder.

Snow is a malleable medium, however.

I stumbled upon a eureka moment on my trip to Big Agnes in early January. While digging a pit for my tent, I could shovel snow out in large chunks if I went over it in snowshoes first and left some time for it to set up. The chunks weren’t blocks per say; they were more like irregular snow boogers. Still, I started thinking that these boogers might make a viable building material.

If I could build a shelter with this stuff, it would be a cheap alternative to an Icebox, which is an igloo making device that a Colorado company makes. I had pondered buying one of these so that I could leave my tent behind on trips. That said, many reviews I read online reported that it still took four hours or so for them to put the igloo together. Craig Connally, author of “The Mountaineering Handbook,” says it only took him two hours to build a decent structure. Connally, advises mountaineers to eschew four-season tents when there’s snow on the ground, and get an Icebox instead. He argues that there will not only be a weight savings, but also a time savings.

“Remember,” Connally writes. “…the people who spent the night in their tent will have the pleasure of digging out the frozen anchors, attempting to dry the frost and condensation in the tent, and packing the frosty tent away with a little extra weight to carry.”

This endorsement had me close to buying an Icebox, but then I started thinking that I might be able to build an Igloo without one if I compressed the powder with my snowshoes.

A week after I got down from Big Agnes, I went on a shorter trip up the ridge behind my living quarters. I scouted out a horseshoe-shaped ledge in the hillside where the snow was deep and the firs grew tall. This place would be in the shade most of the time, meaning colder nights, but also a longer lifespan for any structure that I built.

I started tromping circles in the fresh powder, pressing it down toward the earth. After I had compressed it to the max, I took my snowshoes off and started packing the snow in boots alone. I left to grab lunch, then came up a few hours later.

Working with the snow shovel, I dug out beachball-sized snow boogers and arranged them into a horseshoe about six feet in diameter. I kept building until the walls were about belly high. Then it was time to go in for dinner. I stomped out more powder so that there would be more building material for the time I came back.

Putting it together

_MG_8088 — View of ceiling under construction

I came back about a week later with my canoe paddle.

I’d just hauled the kayak to the top of the ridge and planned a to go for a fun-filled descent later on. In the meantime, I tried using the paddle to stab out snow blocks.

It turns out that the flat blade was able to extract a much better product than the curved head of the snow shovel. Most of the blocks were still irregular; a snow saw, the kind used by actual arctic natives, no doubt would have been the best tool for the job.

I compensated for my goofy building blocks by mortaring gaps with broken chunks of snow and loose powder. Snow is awesome to build with when you consider that you can squash different pieces together and make it one whole. It forgives plenty of mistakes.

The part that made me nervous was leaning the walls together. I had visions of myself cursing over the collapsed walls. Due to my reluctance to lean the blocks, the igloo was becoming more cone-shaped than dome. My early plan had been to leave one gap in the walls so that I could walk inside in order to lean the top blocks together to create the ceiling — but this wasn’t working. The gap made the whole structure unstable. I had to close the ring, and dig my way in later so I could put the top pieces on.

When the walls got above shoulder height, I started scooping snow around the base, creating a step ladder from the powder so I could put the top blocks in. This fresh snow (I hoped) would also reinforce the walls for the big hole I was about to cut in the side.

I planned to dig under the walls as much as possible to avoid compromising the structure. There was maybe three feet of snow between the bottom block and the dirt. I started my burrow a couple feet away in the already-packed snow, making a mini-quinzee for the igloo foyer.

It took me about half an hour to stab my way through and excavate the rubble. I crawled through the tunnel to the cold blue sanctuary within. There was a manhole-sized gap in the ceiling — the last part of the job. I dug some boogers out of the hardpack beneath my feet and then I was closed in.

There was just enough room to stand, and I could lay flat with my feet jutting out into the entrance tunnel with room for a guest (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.)

The insulated walls created a stillness. It was calming to sit in the soft blue light coming in through the cracks between the slabs. It is that same calmness that follows a face-plant skiing. For one cold moment, you look down into that cold, still world beneath the snow, a place which is devoid of the noise and motion outside.

“I could stay here, a while” you think.

I spent some time filling in cracks with snow mortar. Then I went outside and broke a mess of branches off from a nearby fir tree. The flat needles made a perfect floor for my new dwelling.

I decided to leave the structure up one night to make sure it wouldn’t fall down for no good reason. Assuming this wouldn’t happen, I planned to spend the next night in my very own snow booger hotel.

Sleepover

Pale moonlight filtered through the snow clouds as I tromped my way along the pathway up the ridge. Cold flakes melted on my brow as I climbed. A hush on the land. No wind.

From the top, the far flung points of orange light from different houses in the valley looked like ships on a dark sea. A leather slap beat of cowboy boots on hardwood echoed from a barn dance below, but I was in no mood to fumble through a botched set of promenades and dos-i-dos.

The noise faded as I retreated through the pines — the dark deep realm that seduced Robert Frost one snowy evening.

My igloo entrance beckoned out of the from gray snow. I got on hands and knees to crawl through to the womb I’d built for myself.

The scent of the fir boughs lent their crisp scent to the still air. Within minutes, my body warmth boosted the temperature inside my dwelling. I blocked the entrance with my backpack, zipped into the sleeping bag.

I kept the snow shovel close to my head just in case I needed to dig myself out of a collapse.

As my eyes adjusted in the dark, I could see the gray outlines of the blocks I’d built for myself. The ghostly, non-uniform shapes made good dream food.

I slept deep.

The next morning, I checked the water bottle I’d left next to the sleeping bag. No ice whatsoever, though the weather service had predicted the temperature would be 17 degrees that night. An inch of powder had fallen outside. I took a sled ride down the ridge and got to work on time.

Some notes on snow building

_MG_8143 — Snow boogers stuck together, as seen from within the shelter

I call it a snow booger hotel. Others might call it a rubble hut. I call it an igloo sometimes, but I know that I didn’t build it with the same craft as a true igloo. I guestimate that I spent about eight hours building the thing but I wasted time with a few mistakes that I wouldn’t repeat on a second go round.

Could I use something like this on a real trip and leave a tent behind? I’d be willing to try as long as I had a backup tarp, no bad weather was moving in and I got to camp by noonish.

One mistake I made in this project was that I spent way more time packing snow more than I needed to at first. I’ve found that tromping over the snow with snowshoes a few times with the snowshoes and waiting 10 minutes is a viable way to get snow chunks. I’ve also been able to dig up juicy chunks out of the half-melted snow near fire pits. Areas of wind-blown snow could also work (similar to what the arctic people would use to build) because wind will shatter snowflakes and create a denser medium. Snow that’s also been in the sun would also work. When I was camping at 10,000 feet the snow was deep enough that some of the bottom layers were naturally chunking up, but the base isn’t quite deep enough to get those benefits at my current elevation.

I dug some OK chunks out of a groomed snowmobile trail as an experiment. Building a snow shelter this way will make some snowmobilers unhappy, but in a survival situation…

I also built this snow shelter much larger than I needed to for strict survival purposes. If I did build something out on the trail, I would build a lower ceiling to save time and allow more room for warmth to accumulate. The shelter did sag a bit after a couple days, probably because my dome was sloppy, but I reinforced it with more snow and it seems OK so far.

Digging under the wall as opposed to leaving a gap in it throughout the building process worked well for my purposes.

I’d like to try using my stove or a candle inside to see just how well that works to warm the whole structure. Another challenge would be to see how well I could compress the snow for block making if I were using skis instead of snowshoes.

As for whether I will buy an Icebox, there is no question, that the product makes a better looking product, and I could probably build an igloo faster if I had one. I’m going to save my money though.

Considering how much snow is lying around northern Colorado, it might be fastest just to build a snow cave or a quinzee in order to make a shelter in a pinch. I’d like to try both before the winter is out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

_MG_8142 — My view looking out the front entrance

January 25, 2016

Experiments in Snow Kayaking

Wipeout in a whiteout

The kayak barely moved at first. I had to wriggle back and forth to inch it forward on the snow ledge I’d created. I saw the chunks of crust break away as gravity grabbed hold of the bow. Then the boat tilted over and we started tearing down the gully.

White powder sprayed up into my face. I could barely see what was happening, only that I was moving very fast. My efforts to steer with the paddle hardly mattered; down was the only direction my boat was interested in going — and it was going that way faster and faster. I squinted ahead to the fast approaching tree stand, wondering how the hell I was going to thread my way through.

Something bumped beneath my hull. The world instantly flipped upside-down and went white. My head was buried in the snow.

The ride was over.

I flipped myself right-side up, observed that my boat was almost completely buried in powder and that my paddle had flung out several yards down slope from me. To retrieve it, I had to take my sprayskirt off and wade through waist-deep snow. I’d need that paddle to get the rest of the way down the hill.

In the traditional model, I would wait to go kayaking until the snowmelt.

The powder on the mountains here in Routt County will begin feeding the rivers in a couple of months. Rivulets beneath the crust will merge, feed into drainage gullies, streams and willow fens, down to the Elk River in the Colorado River system. From the Yampa, to the Green River and eventually the Grand Canyon, the melting white stuff will build standing waves and hydraulics for whitewater kayaks and rafts to play in.

But just because the snow hasn’t melted, doesn’t mean that I can’t kayak over it. All it takes is a steep enough hill and a lot of powder.

Climbing with a paddle

Getting a kayak to that steep hill is the first challenge. My system involves snowshoes, a backpack, carabiner, rope, and a canoe paddle. I set the ascender bars on the snowshoes and start wallowing up the deep powder with the rope tied to the bow, clipped to the carabiner on my backpack. The first run is always the hardest because I’m breaking trail and pulling my kayak uphill through powder. I lean forward like some hobbled supplicant, praying that the kayak won’t yank me off my feet.

In some ways, the canoe paddle in my hands works even better than the hiking poles I typically use with snowshoes. Paddling the powder on flat sections gives me a decent momentum boost from my upper body. The paddle also balances me. I can brace the flat of the blade against the snow, much as I would use a high brace to prevent a kayak from capsizing in waves. When the going gets steeper, I use the paddle more like an ice axe, sinking it deep into the snow above me and using it to pull myself up.

I often fall when the snow gives out from under me or my snowshoes lose their grip. Here, I can get back on my feet, pushing off the flat of the snow, like I’m doing an Eskimo roll.

The paddle can even dig out steps for me when I get to the steepest sections of the slope.

Going up the hill this way is one of the most physically grueling workouts I’ve ever done — a full body punishment system. My heart pounds like an express train when I finally get to the top of the ridge, maybe 150 feet above my start point. It’s a lot quicker on the way down.

Set up

The climb was over. Finally.

I wiped sweat out of my eyes and surveyed the run. It was a south slope and the sun had just come out. Hence, a delicate crust was already forming on the powder.

I pulled my sprayskirt out from my jacket where I had stashed it in an attempt to keep it warm and stretchy.

There is something reassuring about this sprayskirt, a solid piece of neoprene that has stood up against the fury of waves and rivers. This pricey, “serious” piece of gear, helped me feel that, yes, I did know what I was doing up here, looking down a 35-degree snow slope through an aspen glen.

I used the paddle to dig out a notch in the slope where I could set the kayak down.

Getting the sprayskirt attached around the cockpit was a chore in the cold, even after I’d stashed it in my jacket to keep warm. The skirt wasn’t strictly necessary to go down the hill, but I did like how it kept the powder out of my lap. And I had that psychic comfort of knowing I was using a piece of gear that had served me well on past trips.

It did feel a little weird being in a kayak without a life vest however.

The backpack on my shoulders was another thing that was a little different from my standard kayak trip. I’d already given up trying to tie my snowshoes to the kayak for the way down. It was easier to put them into the nylon loops at the sides of my pack and fasten them together with a cam strap.

I put a ski helmet on and sunglasses. I wrapped a mesh t-shirt around my head like a burka to deflect all the powder that was about to come flying up at my face.

I looked at the canoe paddle, a cheap wood thing I’d bought in Minnesota. Having already busted up a couple kayak paddles last year, I decided that I wasn’t ready to invest in quality piece of equipment only to smash it in while jackassing in the snow.

Making it work

The mantra for this run was “Lean that mother!”

Just as I had leaned kayaks on edge to turn them in whitewater or waves, I planned to use the same principles to make the boat work on the snow. Adrenaline had helped me forget this principle on my earlier runs and I had tried turning by using the paddle alone. It wasn’t enough.

With that in mind, I planned to lean far enough to put my whole body against the snow if need be.

I pushed off and the kayak began grinding downhill at a slow crawl. I leaned the boat way to the left and dug the paddle in on that side. Sure enough, the boat began to turn that way. The sound of crust breaking beneath the bow accelerated at a slow grind to a faster swoosh. Snow began flying up into my face. Now, I was moving at a skier’s speed. I leaned right toward a gap in the scrub oak and the boat responded in a neat arc.

I was carving!

The boat responded to the powder exactly the way it was designed to turn on the river, the same way a skier would cut graceful curves into the alpine slope. I’d stumbled into a unified theory between snow and water.

I shot through the gap in the shrub and the powder started flying up in my face. The view throuh my sunglasses became dim, then obscure. Then I could see only see white. My hands clutched the paddle, unwilling to let go. The best I could do, while flying blind was to lean hard and hope to avoid hitting anything.

After a couple seconds the kayak stopped. I took the sunglasses off and saw that the lean had dug the kayak deep into the snow and basically thrown on the braking power that I’d needed — that along with the fact that I’d steered into some shrubs.

I put the sunglasses in a pocket and analyzed the route down the hill. I pushed off again and carved the rest of the way to where I’d started.

_MG_8157 — Buried kayak after a flip in snow

Can snow kayaking be the next hot sport?

Some witnesses have seen me going up and down the hill with my kayak and asked where I got the crazy idea.

No, I wasn’t the first person to think of it. There are some very entertaining online videos of others who have gone before me.

Nonetheless, this is hardly a popular sport yet. I’m enjoying something out which doesn’t necessarily have a large body of knowledge surrounding it and gives me the challenge of finding some things out on my own. Nor does snow kayaking (yet) have specialty products designed specifically for the job.

Note: If I were designing a kayak specifically for going down snow slopes, I would probably build metal edges into the sides for better carving. But that would subtract from the fun of doing something goofy in inadequate gear.

Snow kayaking is also a learning opportunity for boat technique

Many similarities between boating and snow sports became apparent after I started launching my down the hill.

Leaning for instance. I plan to steer with same aggressive edge that I used to carve the snow the next time I kayak in whitewater.

On the flip side, now that I have tried using a canoe paddle with snowshoes, I’m considering ditching poles on my next snowshoe trip with steep hills. Being able to brace against the powder without plunging deep into it (as with poles) is a huge advantage while climbing. So is being able to carve steps quickly.

The paddle also proved instrumental an igloo building project that I will describe in a future post.

Kayak vs. Skis

When the fresh snow falls on the hills and I have to decide whether I’d rather strap boards to my feet or go rambling in my yak, there are considerations to weigh:

Kayaks are slower to move uphill

When it comes to kayaking down a hill vs skiing, the former is obviously far more laborious to haul up to the top, at least if ski lifts aren’t a part of the equation. This is however, a killer workout that I’d would recommend to anyone who wants to get in shape for mountain climbing or trail running.

Kayak gear is tougher to work with in winter

Other changes that I had to make to kayak the snow vs. on water included moving the foot pedals way back so that I could fit inside the boat it wearing winter boots. A sprayskirt is nice for keeping the snow out, but getting it on and off in the cold is a bear.

Because snow kayaking only puts my head a couple feet above the slope, even more powder flies up in my face than what I’d encounter skiing. I’d probably do well to invest in some ski goggles before snow kayaking full time.

Kayaks are more forgiving when they hit stuff, but will hit more stuff

One advantage of the low body position is that I can’t get knocked off my feet like I can skiing, though a flip is definitely possible.

If I hit a tree in a kayak, it will go better than if I hit a tree on skis because I’ll have a bunch of plastic protecting me. The fact that the kayak doesn’t steer as well as skis means that collisions are harder to avoid.

Kayaks excel when terrain is deep and steep

The kayak’s extra volume means that it floats very well on snow. I got some decent runs on a powder day when some of my friends snowboarding friends could barely move. They ended up using the kayak tracks to pick up speed.

On groomed trails, snowboards or skis are definitely faster and more exciting than a kayak run. If I put glide wax on the bottom of my boat, it may change the equation.

Without deep powder, steering is possible, but sketchier. I took a run down a south slope that had crusted over and found myself going down the hill backwards with next to no control.

So far, deep powder and steep slopes have equaled the most fun for me, including one run where I went down slope in a chest-deep mass of churning snow.

While deep and steep snow has made for the best kayak runs for me, that stuff is also the hardest to drag a kayak through.

What I’d like to try next:

At some point I’d like to graduate to a double-bladed kayak paddle, though I doubt I’ll find anything cheap enough that I’d be willing to sacrifice anytime soon.

I’d also like to try setting a luge track in the hill and build banked turns with a shovel. It’d be fun to get up some speed without having to worry about steering so much.

I’m both excited and terrified to see what happens when I finally melt some glide wax onto the bottom of the kayak. I have a feeling that it will be a wild ride.

December 31, 2015

Lessons in Snow Travel for Moose and Humans

_MG_7785

The moose moved through the deep powder in an awkward, bucking lurch.

There was nothing elegant in its stride, but it was movement, and that was what counted out here.

Stillness seemed to be the rule in this Rocky Mountain valley — its contoured architecture of snowdrifts, the pendulous gobs of powder hanging like oversized Christmas ornaments off the branches of the pines, frost feathers creeping out of aspen bark in minute increments, the stolid cliff walls rising above it all, going up to where the distant white monuments of Big Agnes and Mt. Zirkel shone indifferent to the blue sky.

Even though it was hardly a speck in my field of vision, the thrashing moose was a distinctive element against the otherwise quiet tableaux. No, the moose was not charging at me; It was merely crossing from one side of a frozen lake to another. I have no way of knowing if it was aware of my presence, though when I consider that I have seen moose stare at me with blank indifference, I doubt that my arrival was scary enough to spook one this time. Some other business…

The animal’s long, spindly legs were meant for exactly the kind of deep snow that lay in the valley. The long legs allowed its hooves to sink down to solid purchase while keeping the bulk of its frame above the surface. Even with this engineering, it still rocked up and down like a boat in rough water. No doubt, the moose was burning many of its hard-earned winter calories to get anywhere.

The skis on my feet were another way to get around in the snow, one with respective advantages and disadvantages.

I had spent the last couple hours figuring them out as I made my way up a drainage coming off the Elk River.

My backcountry Nordic skis were chattery on the packed trail, and badly wanted to backslide. When I cruised out into the powder, however, the ride smoothed. It was a slow, steady progress through the foot or so of snow that lay above a stiff, crusty layer. Fallen trees that would have been no big deal on a summer hike became strategy problems that required me to take awkward, potentially compromising steps around sharp branches.

There was no elegant stride and glide here. I moved nothing like the way a track skier would tackle a groomed trail, more like a snow-shoer, taking big waffle-stomping steps. I got a little extra glide here and there when I got lucky.

I found a patch of sunlight in a clearing where I ate lunch, shed a jacket and attached climbing skins to the kick zones at the bottom of my skis.

The friction of these synthetic fibers gave my skis a better brake against gravity, allowing them to kick downward to glide upward. The skins not only helped with the inclines but added much needed purchase when I needed to get over dropped trees. The trade-off was that I had even less forward glide than before.

A band of willow shrubs marked the buried watercourse I was following. Here and there the moose and elk had gnawed at the young tips. I slid over their icy footprints as I climbed.

_MG_7762 — Elk or moose tracks wind through some willow shrubs in a drainage area

Hunters, sliding on skis with animal skins attached to the bottoms, have pursued big game this way for millennia, traditions that live on in places like northwest China. Mark Jenkins accompanied one group that still uses skis to pursue elk, and wrote about his experience in a fascinating article for National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/first-skiers/jenkins-text.

Because the skis gave the hunters the ability to float above the snow, they were able to chase an animal down to exhaustion, then attack at close quarters.

A 21st century vegan like me is unlikely to use such techniques anytime soon. I nonetheless respect the consideration and engineering that the ancient skiers used to conceive a tool that would enable them to master an environment that human bodies weren’t designed for. When human ingenuity took a seat in the designer’s chair, it came up with a myriad of different models, ways to make awkward bipeds as at home in the snow as an elk or snowshoe hare.

It may seem basic to modern skiers that their equipment consists of should use two skis of equal length, along with two poles, but there are old models where travelers used a long glide ski and a shorter kick ski covered with rough animal hide that enabled the skier to move around like a kid on a scooter. The hunters Jenkins travelled with used only one long wooden pole instead of two, and — going against everything I teach beginning skiers — they leaned backwards with it going downslope.

What matters most about technique is whether it works, and in the hunters’ case it did, refined through centuries of observation, practice and thought. Jenkins, an accomplished adventurer with a modern set of Telemark skis, had trouble keeping up.

As I went up the willow drainage, I wanted to approach my adventure with the hunters’ mindfulness of the environment, if not the horsehair skis and single wooden pole.

The snowy landscape forced me to consider questions: How I could get up a steep wooded slope without pointing the skis past the threshold where they would slide backward? Was it was worth the improved speed if I took the skins off in order to glide over a half-mile of flatlands before I came to the next incline? Would the skis catch slush beneath the snow if I travelled out onto the frozen lake? Would there be a slippery ice crust waiting on a south-facing slope?

_MG_7781 — Frost feathers grow out of the north side of an aspen tree

The mental acrobatics would have been even more rigorous if I’d gone out on waxable skis*, which require the skiers to match the wax they use with the properties of the snow crystals so that they can get the best grip and glide.

All of these considerations are part of reading the language of snow. Reading snow means being able to travel over where the moose plunges through. It makes it possible to get far into the backcountry and come back safely and knowing when to expect ice on the slopes or where an avalanche is brewing.

Learning this language may not have seemed important to me when I needed to scrape said snow off the windshield of my car and rely on the internal combustion engine for transportation. Indeed, the language may not seem so important to anyone when once reliable snow recedes (like the moose) from places like New England, Minnesota and all but the highest mountains and the northernmost reaches of the continent. Knowing kick waxes is already about as relevant to most people as knowing how to chase an elk down in the powder.

_MG_7798 — Contrail cuts across the sky. Who needs to know how to ride over snow when you can ride on air?

Given all the time and effort that human beings have put into perfecting skiing, it seems especially tragic to think that technology and climate change may someday render such knowledge irrelevant.

After the moose pond, I came to a steep ridge, impossible to ascend even in my climbing skins. Maybe, I could have pulled it off in snowshoes, the kind native tribes used for travel in North America. When I took my skis off, I found that I couldn’t climb the mountain; for each step I took up, I sank down exactly the same distance. It was time to get down from the hills.

I skied back inside my tracks. Only at the steepest sections did I veer into the unbroken powder to break speed. A couple days later, some friends were able to use the tracks I’d left on their own adventure. I hope we keep the trail broken all winter.

The term “waxless skis,” in reference to the type of skis I was using, is a bit of a misnomer. Skiers in waxless skis still put glide wax at that tips and tails of these skis to boost speed. What makes these skis different from traditional waxable ones is that the waxless skis have scales or other groove patterns in the kick zone, an area beneath and in front of the ski boot. When the skier kicks down and back, the grooves stick in the snow and provide the friction needed to push off and move forward. Waxable skis also use glide wax at the tips and tails, but the kick zone is smooth and there is a stickier kick wax that goes there, also designed to stick into the snow.
One advantage of waxable skis is that you can tweak the grip of the kick zone depending on how spiky or round the snow crystals are. A hard kick wax will work well on a cold day when the snow crystals have sharp points to drive into it. A softer wax becomes necessary not to slide backward as the temperature warms or the snow gets worn down — leading to rounder crystals that don’t like to stick into wax.
If this sounds easy to screw up, it is. But, it appeals to the wonk in people the way many still enjoy the control that manual transmissions have over automatics (with an equivalent risk of stalling and grinding gears.) I had a bunch of “fun” playing around with my new pair of waxable skis in Minnesota last winter. I learned the importance of bringing extra kick wax on trips after I stripped out the bottoms of my skis five miles out from home and had to learn how to skate ski in order to get back.

Snow along the south fork of the Elk River exhibits some of the funky contortions and graceful shapes within the winter landscape.