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Unguided and Unhinged

Silverton Mountain Opens the First All-Extreme Ski Resort in North America

By Chris Bettin

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

- Henry David Thoreau

It was supposed to be my last day of skiing of my 30th ski season and a day I was to pay respect to the realization of another man's dream. Upon waking I listened to the birds of spring chattering outside and they were shortly thereafter accompanied by butterflies in my stomach.
These butterflies have their way with me when something physically intimidating is on the line, whether a running race or taking my shirt off in early April, they're there ostensibly to remind me of my impending humanity, or the fear of failure coupled with potential humiliation. They don't often visit me before a day skiing, but that's because most of my days skiing have been spent surrounded by miles of groomed trails, cushy high-speed lifts and gondolas, and the reasonable assurance that there is always a bar close by. Like most recreationally advanced skiers, I skied/groomed the soaring steeps of Arapahoe Basin from the Pavallacini lift once when I was eleven, and from then have wandered outside my "comfort zone" only when my preferred whiskey is out of stock.
Libations are limited and ill-advised at Silverton Mountain, a place far removed from the freshly groomed snow parks that are now typically high-priced amenities to lavish real estate developments. I mean far removed, like the distance between hunting for tiger sharks with a knife in your teeth and golf. No butterflies in golf either. March 31, 2006 was, for some, the most momentous day in North American skiing since the invention of the snowboard. Silverton was opening the first all-extreme ski resort in North America to unguided free-skiing. For the first time ever a lift would take skiers to 12,300 feet and allow them unfettered access to 3,000 vertical feet of Silverton's 35- to 55-degree slopes, cliffs, trees, chutes and other mountain features that most of us have only seen in ski films.
I arrived early with my snowboarder best buddy Russell and professional sports photographer Scott Smith, in an attempt to catch some shots of sleep encrusted campers emerging from their down cocoons hoping to make the first chair. We were there an hour before the lifts would run and, frankly, we were the last ones there. It had snowed some four feet in the days before we arrived and the parking area was packed to overflow. It wasn't that everyone was there to snag fresh tracks either. The thing about Silverton's 475 skier per day maximum (compare this to other areas that regularly greet 12,000 a day) and the mountain's propensity to open up new terrain successively over the course of a week, is that every run promises fresh tracks.
That's the idea. Aaron Brill, the mountain's founder, styled this resort after the New Zealand club fields and other small areas. He wanted to build a place that defied modern-day cynicism - an incomparable ski experience for a reasonable price that wasn't subsidized by other development. After all, ski resorts didn't turn to real estate just because of the profit motive. In the high-speed arms-race era of the 80's, resorts had to find new ways to afford the amenities consumers were demanding. In the wake of this expansion rush, hardcore and local skiers were left on the sidelines, unable or uninterested in spending a day's pay on a day of skiing. They headed to the backcountry to earn their turns. But you can only earn so many turns and, if you're like me, the prospect of spending a bunch of dough on backcountry gear for those day-long sweaty exploits at a single run is enough to keep your backcountry experience limited.

* * *

There was a long line to get a ticket outside of the Silverton Mountain guest lodge. Lodge is really a euphemism for what they have there. It's really a makeshift yurt, something temporary, maybe. When you get inside and are finally sheltered from the cold of the early morning, you realize that it may have been warmer outside. The wood stove in the center of the "building" may be ornamental for all the heat it puts off, but the car seats that look like they were yanked from the back of my Dad's 1973 Chevy Monza are inviting, and there are several colors of once-retired Barcaloungers for additional seating. If the idea is to strip skiing to its bare bones, well, Silverton has cornered that market from my perspective. The absent fluff of overpriced breakfast burritos and lattes don't do a damn thing to make anyone's ski day anyway, and the smiles plastered on the weather-worn faces in line were evidence that this day was more about skiing and boarding than $7 beers and ghetto-flavored terrain park jargon. My butterflies nearly settled in the wake of the crowd's buzz. Sure, the day promised bright, blue cloudless skies and deep snow, but there was something more. We all felt a little special being there.
I caught Jenny Brill, Aaron's partner and wife, getting a little misty-eyed when the call came over the radio that the lift was taking on skiers. It had been seven years of naysayers and lift-tower-high obstacles to get to that point. Sure, there's the dream, but then there's finding a suitable mountain, buying up the old mining claims, convincing a nearly dead development-wary town to support you, petitioning for access to BLM land, going through a full EIS process, putting in a lift up the most extreme skiable descent in North America, weathering a lawsuit from a disgruntled neighbor, and so on. To say nothing of trying to make a profit, or just breaking even as a business with what had been described by one BLM official as, "from an economic feasibility standpoint, well, it's unusual." For many outside observers the word "unusual" might have been a substitute for "daffy." Imagine building something because you love it and not caring so much about whether or not the money comes with it; something big, like a whole ski area.
One of Silverton's tag lines reads, "Got Balls?" below the logo. Yup, I'd say they do. And so, we had to pay homage to them for getting that far. C'mon, you can't help but think of the movie Field of Dreams and Kevin Costner here. You can almost hear James Earl Jones saying, "Aaron, people will come Aaron. They'll come to Silverton for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $45 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack."
Ray Liotta could play a deceased member of the 10th Mountain Division silhouetted on a high ridgeline.

* * *
We plopped down our $39 apiece, the local's discount. That's right. That's not a misprint. That is truly half the price of a day of skiing at many areas, another promise fulfilled. Even out-of-towners pay only $49. We took our place in line at the lift, a short line even though 235 skiers had come on that first day. And we rode what this writer once compared to Wonka's Magic Elevator to the top of the world. And then, when we got there, we gathered with a few other adventurous souls and somebody said, "Which way should we go first?" Just a simple question, yet an astounding one all the same. The answer could have been something perilous, a bottomless couloir, a knife-edge ridge line, a base-jumpable cliff band, a [insert your favorite over-used skiing clich�]. Thankfully, for me anyway, the answer was something more pedestrian, well, in a relative way. While I can't lay claim to any beautifully carved lines, or "sick air," I did make it down.
There were people at the bottom, back in the lift line, with snow all over them, people who had made asteroid craters into soft snow from high places. It mattered little that neither I nor my crew of variously talented skiing accomplices had been one of them. Like them, we were high, though sapped of some of our leg strength.

* * *

Our second run began as a hike. We climbed into the high alpine off a traverse to find ourselves at the top of a north-facing summit. I could have stayed up there all day, had a picnic or something. In fact, I felt like I had to stay there for a while. But my skiing buddies, none of whom were any less than ten years my senior, were raring to drop in. So we did, and for twenty or so lovely effortless turns I felt really good. I stopped and watched some young skiers launch a fairly intimidating cliff.
A year or so earlier I had been standing at that same spot watching a professional skier prepare a jump from the same cliff. It took him twenty minutes or so to prepare, check out the landing and make sure he was ready. These more recent jumpers had a different approach. One guy stood at the bottom and yelled up to the others, "Dude, its sick - launch it! And so they did, and to my knowledge no harm befell them.
It made me wonder though. Can you really trust people to take responsibility for themselves? How many goomers do I know who can be goaded into doing things they would rather not do, and are hardly prepared to do, by their more daring and capable jeering peers, me included? Silverton's logo is in the shape and spirit of a warning sign portraying a stick figure falling down an impossibly steep mountain head over skis. This turns out to be a literal warning, not the geeky boast of my old "No Guts No Glory" t-shirt.
As Aaron Brill said to me when I questioned him about the injury/fatality risk, "We feel like we've given every possible warning to would-be skiers. I mean, look at our logo." The first warning line on the lift ticket reads, "You could die here today." These are just two of the many signposts for Silverton's not-so-subtle attempt at a poser-free ski area. Brill contends that other areas try to downplay the inherent dangers in the sport, while Silverton Mountain is obligated to be explicit about the danger. Brill preaches personal responsibility. After all, he's counting on something recently foreign to the American litigious landscape, that people will take responsibility for their own actions if well-informed.
Silverton's crack crew of patrollers and their obsessive regard for snow safety are demonstrative of the mountain's commitment to mitigating the obvious dangers, but hell, that short guy who sang with Cher died at one of the grandpapas of groomer-gilded resorts while skiing on an intermediate run. Somebody is going to die at Silverton; the inevitability is so stark it's boorish to mention it. The Colorado Ski Safety Act indemnifies areas against any culpability in the event of a ski accident resultant in injury or death. In other words, skiers are already responsible for themselves.
One hopes the bridge the Brills and their investors are crossing is not viewed as something new entirely, and that the skiers will really consider their ability levels before venturing onto the mountain guideless. Guides, after all, are still available and the mountain is committed to providing educational programs on avalanche and backcountry skills.
I may need to attend one of those programs. I was the first to belly up to the cattle-trough that doubles as a keg cooler in the "lodge," near the end/middle of the day. I was soon joined by a couple of guys who looked like a couple of beer-swilling locals who might consider a carpet scrap for a mattress. One had a fancy helmet, the other an old Dynastar "rooster-comb" beanie. One was a professor at a medical school, the other a physician. They had both traveled long distances to be there. They lamented that Silverton would possibly enter "phase II" of the plan and build a small lodge at the base to replace the current facility. "This is the way we like it," one doctor said: "No frills." Silverton's new base lodge will still be a euphemism for a base lodge at any other area. It won't have a spa or anything, maybe ten simple overnight cabins, a less portable potty, a permanent bar and some reliable heat. Pretty basic. Still, I'll be able to feign sentimental lament at how the place has "changed" when it's done, like any good townie, and so will the doctors. We talked about golf, and I kept thinking, "Man, it's true, you build it and they will come."

* * *

That night I staggered back into my home and absent-mindedly turned on the tube. Warren Miller's Journey popped onto the screen, I kid you not. I sat with a beer on the edge of my couch and couldn't take my eye off the film. I hadn't watched a ski movie since I was in college. I remembered how inspired I was by those images back then. I had witnessed some people do some pretty comparable stuff live and in person that day. I have to admit, until that movie came on, I was thinking about never skiing at Silverton again. I was thinking, if thirty years of skiing haven't prepared me for that place, it might not be for me. And I was wondering how many others - people who had been there that is - would carve out a notch on their ski pole or put a sticker on their old Bronco, and never return.
In Warren Miller's film some clown dropped off a needle sharp peak into a parachute-worthy decent and outran a slide, and I was awestruck by the beauty of the feat, trying to imagine the feeling, the butterflies in the gut, after the helicopter pulled out and he was left standing on a pin above the clouds. I used to just stare at those scenes and make inspired observations like, "No way" and "Dude." But this time I realized that Silverton is a place a person can go to find out, in their own way, what that might be like. The edge just became more accessible and, for me, it's good to have a place to go and find out where the bullshit ends.
It wasn't my last day of skiing of my 30th season. I woke up the next day and needed to ski again.

Chris Bettin writes from Durango, Colorado and is a connoisseur of overly sentimental blockbusters. He considers himself a real Bodhizafa.