** If you want to read this whole piece from the beginning, check out previous post listings in May and start at Senior Project
The green and black comforter I brought is a little piece of home which, along with Spike, the stuffed dog Ashley gave me, is one of the few comforts I travel with. Dropping Ashley off at the airport was just twenty-four hours ago, but it feels like a distant memory. I’m still feeling the effects of little sleep on New Year’s, but yesterday, ski patrol told us that Tucker Mountain, Copper’s little outpost of backcountry hiking, would open today. Mark and I are determined to put our skis down first on its untracked face, so we’re up before the sun, frying eggs in darkness while the rest of the house sleeps.
We warm up by taking laps on the Mountain Chief lift, dutifully eyeing the area where the snowcat will pick up skiers and carry them where no lift is in place. We arrive in line behind only the Copper Mountain Pro Team. They’re going up to scan the best area’s and film for Copper’s website. The rest of our crew arrives, and we learn we’ll be the first of the public on Tucker Mountain this year. The locals eye us a little warily while we lounge on the snow, munching down some backpacked lunch with a portable Ipod stereo playing.
The snowcat gracefully carves out a groomed highway down a gap in the steeply tilted bowl of the mountain; ten of us pile into its small cab. Most of us have helmets locking our goggles over our eyes.
Detecting emotion was like trying to read a poker player, but the ski patrol didn’t soothe any nerves. If you make a wrong turn up on the Taco, we’re looking at a slide for life situation.
I tell Brad that after knowing him for so long, I don’t want to be the one making the phone call to his parents that their son died sliding down a trail named for a Mexican snack.
We’re dropped off almost a mile away from the avalanche blasted area safe for skiing. The hike is daunting. None of us are in peak physical form and ski boots don’t smooth the effort any. Phil, our group’s lone snowboarder, and I lead the pack with adrenaline urging us on. By the end, Phil is almost stripped to his boxers despite the frigid air above twelve thousand feet. Dripping with sweat and drooling at the steep glades, we impatiently wait for the rest of our friends.
The next forms to appear over the ridge, though, are unrecognizable. Some of the next snowcat’s passengers have passed our friends. For fear of losing out on the untouched path, we unapologetically drop into fresh snow up to our knees. The first couple turns are a feeling out process, switching from the typical style of groomed or thin snow to the task of clearing out our own path. We turn less, gathering the speed needed for pushing between tightly packed trees. Every so often I see a little blur to my right, when Phil and I come close enough to high five, but relishing the run won’t come until we’re at the bottom.
My legs are on fire as I chase Phil down the mountain and the finish is capped by a little hop over a running creek. We have to climb our way out of the woods before collapsing, exhausted, next to the lift and staring up at our freshly carved paths, grinning broadly at the art we’ve just created.
Between the hiking and marathon runs, I’m left spent for the day. In some down time waiting for the rest of the group, I decide to inspect the bottom of my skis where I felt some rocks under the snow. The damage is worse than I thought – I absolutely shredded my skis. In just two long runs my skis chocked up four core shots. They’ll need a patch up trip to the repair shop to fill the dime sized holes in the epoxy of my skis where the wooden base is exposed.
On the way around to the base side of the mountain, I ride up the lift with a kid with rainbow styled Armada skis. He looks about my age, and we talk about school for a while before I find out he’s a sixth year senior finance major from Littleton. We both smile knowingly after he stutters on sixth year. The battered skis he has on might be part of the reason for the delay and I silently wish that I had the guts to join him on his extended adventure.
This morning I was selfish and amassed excuses so I could take those first tracks of the year on Tucker Mountain. My roommate from school, Jeffries, wanted me to pick him and his friend up at the airport that morning but I had to tell him it just wasn’t going to happen. When I arrive at the base, quadriceps burning from the day of hiking and capped by the last draining trip down Glade 1, our last additional roommates were waiting outside.
They both get their first Western skiing experience on January 3. Jeffries is a soccer player with strong legs, stocky, and looks made for skiing fast, big arcing turns. He sports aging, neon green Scott goggles and takes to his new wide open surroundings with ease. Dave is the polar opposite and we lose him every fifteen minutes. While he has the thick beard associated with comfort in the wilderness, he’s nervous about skiing on a mountain this size and slips away, sometimes intentionally.
He picks at the snow with his poles and often slides slowly down the steep entry to runs. You guys just go ahead I’ll find you later. I don’t want to slow you down.
He’s not a bad skier, just extremely timid in an environment that doesn’t reward shyness. Skiing in the Rockies is an activity that often rewards a little audacity and courageousness. Some moments require disregarding the risks of injury or fear of falling if you want to look over your shoulder and see that you’ve conquered something that seemed impossible.
In the afternoon I get to make my triumphant return to the Dillon Dam Brewery. I point out the best pints and generally organize the operation – with that many people it really does turn into an operation. With Mark taking full advantage of the happy hour specials, we raise a ruckus and take an unceremonious leave among families arriving for a peaceful dinner.
When we arrive back at Copper, the party spills into a bar crawl around the village. We’ve been running around on a frozen pond in t-shirts before settling by a blazing campfire. Brad and Jeffries convince two of the girls that I’m training for a new Olympic sport called Ice Running. By the looks of it, I probably wouldn’t win the gold, as I retire next to a fire, bruised and shivering.
We all take a place around a bonfire formerly occupied by more reasonable vacationers that scurry away upon our noisy approach. We tilt our necks up in awe at the moon and, because of the shifting clouds, determine it’s moving at an amazing pace across the night sky. We scream our heads off in gleeful dismay; the world could end at any moment and we wouldn’t be disappointed.
With Natrisha’s impending departure in two days, I start to consider other places to sleep. Luckily the next couple of couches are lining themselves up without much of a fight – Breckenridge, Boulder, then Denver. I’m calling anyone I can get a number for: friends of friends.
Each day I’m waking up later as my body wears down a little bit, working on ten days of skiing in a row. When I’m on the lift, my vocabulary shifts towards “my” mountain or “us” as if I’m a local. I’ve convinced myself that this is where I belong. Even though the group in the condo hasn’t been together all that long, I’m already looking forward a little bit to the freedom from the familiar group and staying with some new faces. I feel again, that I need to move. Why cross the country and live nomadically for a month if I’m just going to fall into another routine?
Since my skis needed repair from yesterday, I got my older pair tuned and waxed. They feel great, and riding on them is like reacquainting with an old friend. Their now perfect edge, reborn from what used to be depraved and rusty, makes for a nice boost out of the halfpipe. The relatively new addition to mountain landscapes, carved out late at night by enormous machines called ‘pipe dragons’, is my challenge for the trip.
Few mountains in the East offer this type of imposing feature with eighteen foot vertical walls. When approached with enough speed it leaves you’re left floating out of the lip into the crystal blue, before turning and briefly planting your skis before again launching into a few glorious moments of zero gravity.
While most people at Copper are here on vacation and say it’s just for fun, I’m out here determined and sweating as I climb back up to the top of the pipe. I wonder what gives me the elation of conquering a new level of achievement, when I climb just a little higher into the air or land just a little smoother. And I realize it’s the sheer hazard of challenging the new. Even though I have a helmet on, I’m pushing myself beyond reasonable limits. The same reason I decided to drive instead of fly – because others said I was crazy to do it.
At some point in life we need some recklessness – as when people go skydiving or bungee jumping. At the onset this trip didn’t make a whole lot of sense; I’m broke and piecing together meals and beds. As much as people say that college is four years of learning and exposure to new, it ends up turning tedious towards the end – the same place, the same people.
So skiing becomes my little breath of fresh air that allows me to return refreshed and inspired regardless of any tedious day to day regularity. I’ll climb up the several hundred feet and drop into the halfpipe again, seeing if I can get more space between my skis and the top of the pipe than last time – maybe I’ll hear an ohhh from the lift – and hope that I don’t crash and ragdoll down the icy wall.
Our descent in the morning down Patrol Chute in Spaulding Bowl shows off some of Colorado’s best qualities and it takes some serious coaxing to get Dave into his first turn. Once we got him started on an easier route, we drop into a skinny route between to rock outcroppings. The top is steep and requires a couple quick jump turns in the thick snow. Powder punches us in the mouth after the sharp entry turn making for a refreshing wake up call.
Fresh tracks lasted late into the afternoon and we settle into a few beers, stretching our legs still heavy from the day’s workout. A man next door just gave us garlic and milk for some mashed potatoes making us feel a part of a shared community, working as a unit out of necessity. We’re working up a hearty dinner to refuel after this morning served up fresh snow that lasted all day long.
There’s no doubt I’m going to miss the people this condo brings together just feet from the lift. Emi and Phil are curled on the couch. Jeffries is headfirst in a book with Dave peering over his shoulder. Natrisha and Sarah are perched in the kitchen concocting a drink. Everyone seems perfectly content.
This is the last night we’ll all spend together and we talk about the future. We’re all studying in school – geology, business, physics, writing – and we all seem to want to push the near future away for enough time to “find ourselves” and what it is we really want to do. Maybe it’s the nature of the traveler, searching for what will make them stay put. Pico Iyer suggests when we travel to learn about other ways of life and see the beauty of the world, we often learn as much about ourselves.
About three-quarters of the way up the American Eagle lift I sneak into a couples conversation. I already recognized their accent as British and it turns out they’re on vacation from New Zealand.
So how long are you out here? Just for the week?
Hah, no no. We’ve already been here a week and are staying for three more. We drove up to Copper Mountain after a couple of weeks in Baja, Mexico. When you fly that far you don’t just stay for a week.
I’m moved by how easily they abandon home for long stretches. My family has never been away for more than what seems to me the typical week at a time. For me, that’s always been the prescribed vacation length; not too much time removed from reality but just enough time away to want back the conveniences and established social place of friends and occupation.
And when the lift crests at the top they’re gone from my life. People from those nationalities seem to be the happiest moving around – their own country is so beautiful it makes me wonder why. When I traveled through Europe last spring, sleeping in hostels of different shapes and sizes, I almost invariably ran into an Australian or New Zealander. Most were younger than twenty-five and not traveling, just living. When they left they didn’t have jobs lined up, only plane tickets.
The Australians obviously come for reasons other than the Jamaicans or Peruvians who mostly clean the rooms and load the lifts; it’s not adventure that drives them, it’s money. There are a whole range of privileges that define a person’s reason for traveling and movement from one place to another. Many try to find a role operating the mountain because that is where money can be made. You don’t need to speak perfect English to make more money here than you would at home.
One man I meet, Jeremy, came all the way from Kingston, Jamaica. He tells me he made the trip because work at home is very hard. He smiles after I introduce myself and says that his older brother is named Chris. We share our mutual thoughts about missing our families.
Leaving was very sad, but I talk to my family every day over the phone. I’m used to tourists because many people visit beaches of Negrad that are near my home, but I don’t know why people like this cold.
He works as a housekeeper, but after two months hasn’t yet tried skiing or snowboarding. Our talk makes me realize where I fit in this mountain society; I can afford not to work and still front as a so-called ski bum.
Skiing is one of the most luxurious sports in the world – apres-ski in fur coats, moving walkways at Beaver Creek to limit your physical exertion. The seduction of adventure is there if you want it. There are screaming turns in blistering wind, sex in the gondola, the romance of the hot tub, the thrill of a ski town night life under a dusting snow, where only the strong make it to last call and rise to ski in the morning. But someone still has to clean up the mess.
Throughout the trip I’ve been trying to plant seeds with anyone that might be worth a future contact. I make sure to ask locals what they do in hopes of a potential tip. What I find is that no matter what they do, almost all of them are happy.
One person from Denver works at a pizza shop and says I always take off Fridays and Saturdays for riding; one day for friends and the other day for my serious riding.
I’m deeply envious every time I hear this and wonder if it wouldn’t be such a bad deal. Then I consider the anxiety attack my mother would have upon hearing pizza delivery after four years of Ithaca College tuition.
While a cause of mine was what George Santayana describes as a traveler’s curiosity to discover new lands as inseparable from the desire to potentially appropriate them, I’m becoming blinded by the accumulating troubles of my transience. My clothes haven’t been washed in days and when I’m not on the slopes I’m bleary eyed from exhaustion. Talking to Ashley over the phone is getting old.
At least the wind died down today, except at the peak where the cold still pierces my jacket. On one lift ride I receive some much needed encouragement on my aspirations as a writer when a local assures me I’ll be fine after graduation because writing is such a valuable commodity.
Go where you want to be and you’ll find a place there. If it’s where you’re happy you can make a place for yourself.
He tells me he grew up in a military family moving every couple years. Now he’s found his own place, starting a business in Littleton about an hour away and shredding turns when the snow is good.
It’s easy to tell the locals apart from the outsiders just by their distinct dialect. Locals’ conversation is full of barely recognizable terms when they talk about the mountain – groms instead of young skiers or boarders, OB instead of out of bounds, or S-chair for the Sierra chair lift.
When I ride up with a group of three teenagers from Dillon, they speak at machine gun pace and I struggle to translate for myself. I mostly keep my mouth shut and listen. They jeer from the lift in between discussion about their new marijuana pipe that looks like an elephant. They don’t want to share their time with me.
After all, I’m in their space, intruding on the dream they’re living every day while I pretend, with a two hundred dollar ski jacket and an attempt at grace on the slopes. Maybe it’s just some ingrained competitive nature from a bustling suburban upbringing that whenever I do something, I need to compete with the next person. I notice many of the locals I meet aren’t even talented skiers, but for them that’s not necessarily what the mountain is about.
Most of the time I realize the experience is a mutual pleasure rather than a competition, and everyone loves a powder day. Two years ago, a friend got a ski pole jammed between his legs by a pleasant looking middle aged woman fending us off the first chair. No friends on a powder day she yelled over her shoulder.
After the day ends a light snow is dusting the entire town. It’s so beautiful it’s almost cheesy. Mark and Dave are out snapping photos but I stay inside next to the fire, considering myself above this touristy behavior even though I’m sure I’ll ask him for copies later. I’ve been the tourist before, but this time I hardly spectate at all, aside from the unavoidable gawking at the enormity of the mountains.
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