It hasn't been enough to post pics of my recent trip to Silverton Mountain in Colorado. Three years ago I drove to Southwest Colorado in the winter to get mileage on my station wagon, ice axes, crampons, and my newly acquired alpine touring ski setup. I ended up skiing more than ice climbing. Even though I first witnessed the San Juans in college on a family vacation, it wouldn't be until 2009 that I returned,
spurred by a New York Times article on Ouray a college friend e-mailed me and a desire to experience the Rockies. In 2010 I returned to ice park and for my third return for ice climbing, I intended to stay long than just a week. I discovered a friendly community of outdoor winter enthusiasts who accepted me despite my lack of hard-core mountaineering ski or ice climbing credentials. During one conversation at a weekly potluck, this mix of professional athletes, ski patrollers, and mountain guides were (maybe pretending to be) fascinated by my tales in a 'desk job' occupation, traveling long distances every day to sit inside with no windows except for a computer screen.
Some people get seasonal affective disorder. I may have had it until I discovered ice climbing. And then I discovered powder and big mountain skiing. And now I have post-big San Juan mountain disorder. I'm pining for Silverton. A week ago I returned to the base area of Silverton after my fourth run (this is an area where a person typically gets 3-6 runs a day), greeted by a bunch of bearded rugged mountain ski guides and my friend, who asked me how my second day on the mountain went.
Aaahhh!!!-May!!!-Zing!!!,
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I responded and they broke into guffaws and big smiles across the picnic table. The sun filtered through pines, cutting through their plastic cups of PBR. I was smiling ear-to-ear sitting outside, eating the rest of a barely eaten brown-bag lunch - feeling like a totally different person from two days ago - gripped, scared, about to pee in my pants, and too terrified to link turns or even make them on the steep scoured rocky sections of our runs, and even later in the powder or variable wind slab sections because I was so scared from the first part of the run. A day after remembering how to turn, make my legs work at altitude, a fatter shorter pair of skis while my other pair recovered from the rock inflicted wound to its wooden core - I was riding on Colorado Silverton stoke. Happy all I had sustained were some minor bruises, and even though my ego was ripped to shreds from the day before, the mountain had built me back up - humbled and with more humility - but a seed of something that would grow into a hunger to be back, longer, in better shape, and maybe even less temporarily.
More from New York Times
spurred by a New York Times article on Ouray a college friend e-mailed me and a desire to experience the Rockies. In 2010 I returned to ice park and for my third return for ice climbing, I intended to stay long than just a week. I discovered a friendly community of outdoor winter enthusiasts who accepted me despite my lack of hard-core mountaineering ski or ice climbing credentials. During one conversation at a weekly potluck, this mix of professional athletes, ski patrollers, and mountain guides were (maybe pretending to be) fascinated by my tales in a 'desk job' occupation, traveling long distances every day to sit inside with no windows except for a computer screen.
Some people get seasonal affective disorder. I may have had it until I discovered ice climbing. And then I discovered powder and big mountain skiing. And now I have post-big San Juan mountain disorder. I'm pining for Silverton. A week ago I returned to the base area of Silverton after my fourth run (this is an area where a person typically gets 3-6 runs a day), greeted by a bunch of bearded rugged mountain ski guides and my friend, who asked me how my second day on the mountain went.
Aaahhh!!!-May!!!-Zing!!!,
I responded and they broke into guffaws and big smiles across the picnic table. The sun filtered through pines, cutting through their plastic cups of PBR. I was smiling ear-to-ear sitting outside, eating the rest of a barely eaten brown-bag lunch - feeling like a totally different person from two days ago - gripped, scared, about to pee in my pants, and too terrified to link turns or even make them on the steep scoured rocky sections of our runs, and even later in the powder or variable wind slab sections because I was so scared from the first part of the run. A day after remembering how to turn, make my legs work at altitude, a fatter shorter pair of skis while my other pair recovered from the rock inflicted wound to its wooden core - I was riding on Colorado Silverton stoke. Happy all I had sustained were some minor bruises, and even though my ego was ripped to shreds from the day before, the mountain had built me back up - humbled and with more humility - but a seed of something that would grow into a hunger to be back, longer, in better shape, and maybe even less temporarily. More from New York Times
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