Looking through some old photos, I came across Emil's, Laure's, and my trip to Silverton back in March 2010.
Heli ride!
Planning
Emil had gotten hooked on going to Silverton after reading some trip reports describing its ungodly amounts of powder accessible via its single ski lift. We also came across this NY Times article with the provocative opening line, "Chances are you're not good enough to ski Silverton Mountain."
Looking back at it today, the inflated "you have to be bad ass to ski here" reputation of Silverton is admittedly overblown. But we still had a great time and I would probably go back again.
When Emil implanted the idea in my head back then, I got super excited and couldn't resist the call of powder. Laure was on the fence at first, especially since she was struggling with an ankle injury, but she eventually succumbed to join for two days.
On our way to Silverton!
Silverton: the town
Silverton is a super charming town straight out of an old western movie. Most of the action is on a single strip of shops and hotels.
Silverton preserves its mining town charm in the Rockies.
Is this place for real?
Emil and I in front of the bakery where I think we had dinner.
We all shared a room at a hotel that put us up on the top floor. As we lugged our stuff up the several flights of stairs, we realized the air isn't so thick above 9000 ft (3km) above sea level.
Breakfast at Mother Kluckers.
I'm saddened to learn they closed down. :'(
Off we go.
Silverton mountain first impressions
The first thing you do at arrival in Silverton is to check in at their make shift tent lodge. Even though Silverton had a limit of 80 guided customers (practically nothing compared to a regular ski resort), their tent comfortably fit only about half that many people. After adding the work crew into the mix, this is what you got:
Utter chaos checking in at the tent lodge.
After signing our lives away, we picked up our avalanche safety gear (this was before we owned our own) at their lustrous demo center:
The Demo Bus.
If you haven't noticed already, Silverton has an interesting no-frills vibe. The message is very clear: Silverton wants serious powder skiers and passive aggressively shuns upscale ski resorts with fancy amenities. Maybe they overdo it.
Laure wasn't so stoked about the outhouse.
I believe they have since replaced it with a more decent restroom.
Getting ready
At the beginning of each day, guides split up people into two big groups (fast and very fast), and then create subgroups up to 8 people each. Since we felt like noobs, we joined one of the fast groups, which usually worked out fine.
At this point, we realized that Laure was one out of maybe four women in all of the 80 clients. Respect!
Avalanche safety orientation.
After getting into groups, the guides went over a ridiculously fast forwarded crash course of avalanche safety, in which we basically learned that guides may be able to rescue clients, but probably not the other way around. This may sound like Silverton is reckless, but in reality, they are extremely serious about avalanche safety. They do more avalanche control (i.e. blasting bombs) than any other resort in Colorado. As far as I can tell, Silverton still has a spotless record to date.
Climbing up
Silverton has a double chair lift salvaged from Mammoth ski resort. It takes skiers and snowboarders up to a ridge from where we could access endless options for powder skiing within an hour radius worth of hiking.
We had a chuckle reading this.
Hiking up the ridge during nice weather is awesome.
Before our trip to Silverton, Laure and I had started doing a few hikes from chair lifts at ski resorts, which we enjoyed. We were pretty excited to push ourselves further in Silverton.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was the altitude: 10,000 to 13,500 ft (3,200 to 4,100 m) above sea level. It is technically the highest ski resort area (if you can call it that) in North America. It wasn't so bad once we got used to the altitude, though.
Each hike usually lasted between 15 to 30 minutes.
Coming down
The reason everyone goes to Silverton is to ski and ride powder. In order to stay safe and also maximize the powder for everyone, the guides constantly discussed options and spread out throughout the region. This allowed us to enjoy untouched powder without competing against belligerently aggressive skiers, as we had gotten used to at regular ski resorts. Spreading out was also safer: less pressure on the snowpack and less chance of multiple people getting caught in an avalanche.
Our group's tracks on the left.
As another way to conserve powder, guides often asked their groups to stay on one side of the guide's tracks so that later groups could still enjoy untracked powder on the other side of the tracks.
Laure at the end of a run.
Despite Silverton's reputation for extreme skiing, most often we didn't ski down steep slopes; usually only 20-30 degrees, which are like blue and black trails in the US. I'm not sure how much of this was because we were on a "fast" instead of a "very fast" group, though.
That being said, almost every lap had a few if not most sections of untouched powder. Sometimes we hit some steeper slopes too; 35+ degrees.
One fun area that we lapped multiple times was the 100 Acre Woods. It is a relatively steep area with lots of trees, boulders, and features to play with. The tree spacing is a bit tighter than most tree skiing we were used to in Tahoe, which made it extra fun.
100 Acre Woods.
Some of the most fun tree skiing I've done.
A lot of fun features @ 100 Acre Woods.
Shuttling back
Some of the runs end up a bit far away from the ski lift. When we came down on these, the guide called up the infamous UPS truck that Silverton repurposed as a shuttle to pick us up.
The infamous repurposed UPS truck shuttle.
There was a snow bunny inside.
Heli ride: Grande Couloir
Easily the highlight of our trip was the run down Grande Couloir.
View of the Grande Couloir from the heli pad.
Before describing the couloir itself, it's worth explaining how the heli skiing works. Generally speaking, heli skiing is very expensive for multiple reasons, including gasoline. But Silverton has a clever way of saving gas: they have a heli pad at the top of the ski lift, which saves the fuel required to go up and down.
Additionally, Silverton was required to perform extensive avalanche control to get its permit, which in practice forced them to get a helicopter anyway. As a result, they offer helicopter rides for a relatively affordable price -- each ride costed about than $80 in 2010, although costs went up to $179 as of 2019.
Heading to the helicopter.
Our group was lucky to get the opportunity to be the first ones to come down this epic couloir after the last snow storm. The avalanche experts had thrown a few bombs earlier that morning to secure the area and cleared us to go.
Our group was too large for a helicopter single ride, so they made two trips to drop us off.
Helicopter dropping off the second group on the saddle of the couloir.
I have been told this landing requires an impressive amount of skill.
The run down from the top of the couloir was about 1,300 ft (400 m) of uninterrupted fresh powder.. The very top section was 40+ degrees, which then mellowed out on the way down.
Emil coming down the lower section of Grande Couloir
You can see some of the spots where they dropped avalanche control bombs.
In order to minimize avalanche danger, each of us took turns to do the entire pitch without taking breaks. It was an awesome mixture of glee and exhaustion.
View from the bottom of the couloir.
On our way out, we were still stoked about the Grande Couloir.
Final thoughts
I have a lot of nostalgia about our trip to Silverton in 2010. It was an awesome adventure and we got some really great powder.
On the other hand, I believe their "you have to be bad ass to be here" reputation is a bit silly. Ironically, as much as Silverton tries to be anti-mainstream, they kind of follow the stereotype of American culture of exaggeration. To Silverton's defense, it may not be really their fault, but really the fault of magazine writers or bloggers (like myself) that exaggerate their stories in order to get the attention of readers.
Alternatively, Silverton may be just a victim of the inflation of exaggeration. Most skiers and snowboarders have learned that ski resorts warnings about "expert" terrain are usually exaggerating. Some resorts even have skull and crossbones signs near double black diamond runs. Maybe it's because ski resorts don't want to get sued when someone gets hurt. But now ski resorts have to exaggerate otherwise skiers and snowboarders don't take them seriously.
On our last day in Silverton, we had two people on our group that were completely out of their league. One guy did not want to hike at all and the other kept whining that he could not ski between trees. How the hell did these people get there? Inflation of exaggeration.
Writing this post, I learned that the Silverton mountain founders went through a lot of red tape to follow (and continuously adjust) their dream. The costs to adhere to environmental requirements and also protect against lawsuits were so high that the founders went almost a full decade without getting paid. Thinking back about the demo bus and outhouse: maybe they weren't entirely just for image. Maybe Silverton mountain didn't have enough money to invest in more permanent infrastructure.
I would like to one day go back to Silverton. Ideally, I would go back in a full group of eight friends (Emil, are you reading this?) to effectively get a private guide and avoid wildcard characters.
As the current ski season draws to a close, I should recap the ski touring that we did on the previous season. Since Laure was pregnant, we took things relatively laid back for the most part.
Oberiberg night tour with Stephen
Early in the season, I decided to go ski touring as much as possible as a form of training for the Japan ski trip later. I met a guy named Stephen through a Meet Up group on the internet that wanted to train at a local resort at night, so I said, why not?
It seemed kind of crazy but cool to go ski touring at night.
Stephen turned out to be a super cool guy that was starting to do Ski Mountaineering races. He had a bunch of super light ski gear that he could put on or take off in a matter of seconds. Since the avalanche danger was basically zero (we were practicing on the resort piste), Stephen and I split up and he did three laps during the time that I did two.
During the couple hours we were out, we came across a few other skiers. It felt like we were part of some cool club. On the other hand, I had this crazy fear that a Snow Cat would pop out of nowhere and run me over without noticing my headlamp.
Furgellen hut with Laure and Ralf
Last season, Ralf finally agreed to go on a tour with me and Laure despite the fact that we're splitboarders. We went up to cute little place called Furgellen hut located somewhere within an hour drive.
I love seeing ski touring and snowshoeing signs in Switzerland.
The sports are so approachable here compared to back in the States.
The tour was nice and mellow, which was a nice way for Laure to warm up her legs for the season while baking a bun in the oven.
Taking it easy.
The hut is a short 431 m climb from the trailhead.
As luck would have it, the ridge was pretty windy. So instead of summiting the peak, we decided to hang out at the hut and slurp down some hot soup while our jackets dried. At the hut, we saw many other skiers, some of whom were probably in their 60s. I love how ski touring is a national sport in Switzerland for all sexes and ages.
Laure and I attempted to climb a peak named Schafberg. Unfortunately most of the tour was under the clouds, which was cold and somewhat depressing. Since we started late and were running short on time, we decided to turn around early to ensure that we could make our way back without risking losing sunlight. We came to a mere 124 vertical meters and 1 km away from the hut, so it was a difficult decision to turn around. Times like these test our rationality and commitment to safety.
Laure's huge smile when we cleared the clouds.
Finally above the clouds.
On our way down, we were once again engulfed in the clouds. Our visibility was so terrible that we could barely see our own snowboards. We had to move very slowly to ensure we didn't go off a cliff. This made our descent painfully slow and cold. To make maters worse, Laure had a major equipment failure and one of her bindings broke just before we rode down. We improvised with a multi-use strap to hold her foot down to the board to get her down the mountain.
We always carry this orange strap with us. So many uses for just 5 dollars.
Crappy visibility once we were back under the clouds.
Despite our failed attempt at Schafberg, a 960 m climb over 12.7 km is still not too bad for a pregnant lady!
Stotzigen Firsten attempt with Luc, Mark, and Eleanor
Next day, I met up with other ski tourers to attempt climbing Stotzigen Firsten -- spoiler alert: we failed. I had known Luc through work and I had gone ski touring with Mark and Eleaner in a guided tour during the previous season. Laure decided to take the day off from skiing that day.
Eleanor had previously done this route and led us most of the way.
We were climbing some badly wind scoured stuff. The other side of the valley looked better.
We stopped at a hut shelter for a quick lunch as the clouds started kicking in.
From the hut shelter, it seemed that all the ski tracks above us had been hammered flat by the wind. We were uncertain about continuing the route on a very solid snowpack without any visual cues of previous skiers. We also saw an alternative route that had been protected from the wind south of the ridge. But it was on a roughly 28 degree bowl without any previous tracks, which seemed borderline risky for avalanches. A few of us (myself included) felt unsure about proceeding, so we all agreed to turn around and enjoy the snow below us.
In hindsight, we would have probably been okay to climb the original route with ski crampons, but it would have been purely just to summit. The snow on the ridge was likely scoured all the way to the summit with terrible snow for skiing.
Eleanor near the point where we turned around.
The clouds kept shifting in and out with the wind.
Arrrgh!
We actually got some great low angled snow as consolation prize.
My last tour last season was climbing Blüemberg with my friend Fernando, who was visiting from the States.
We start by taking a public "bus" to the gondola.
The tiny gondola looked like something preserved from the mining days of the nearby village.
Lidernenhütte is a popular hut located near the top of the gondola.
From the top of the gondola, we made a short ascent to a nearby peak named Blüemberg. The sun was out and the sky was clear, which was great weather for touring. Fernando was still getting over his jet lag, so he was hurting a little.
The last few meters to the peak are steep and require some scrambling with a steel cable.
We descended the north face of Blüemberg, which was surprisingly tracked out.
It's funny how you can sometimes find more ski tracks in the backcountry than at resorts in Switzerland.
The snowpack was very stable, which was great for us to descend a slope that usually has a non-trivial danger of avalanches. On the other hand, the snow was tracked out and heavy, which was not the best for skiing. I guess you can't have it all.
The snow thinned out at lower elevations and we hiked the rest of the way.
We climbed 786 meters to Blüemberg and descended 1,742 meters on its north face covering 14.2 km.
