Email this article

A Lesson In Snow

A ski traverse in the Weminuche offers up varieties of snow, mud, dust and good times

By Anna Lauer Roy

Snow, much as I love it, can be a fickle natural element. Spending quality time with it, however, always helps me to remember that snow's capriciousness is part of its charm.

My husband, Rohan, and I along with our two friends, Ron and Ben, got to better know and love snow in all its inconsistencies last March on a seven-day, 50-mile ski traverse from Pagosa Springs to Silverton. The trek took us through Colorado's largest wilderness area - the Weminuche Wilderness. In traveling in and out of various drainages and valleys and up to and along the Continental Divide, we gained and lost about 12,000 feet of elevation throughout the trip. All that variance in altitude and terrain offered the chance to experience snow in a good many of its changeable faces - from crusty to wet to fluffy; from no snow at all, to avalanches of it.
The first day was an auspicious start, with lots of snow on the ground and sun in the sky. We began at the end of a road into the Weminuche Creek area and it was an easy glide all day. But, as we traveled into the upper Pine River Valley on our second day, we got an annoying reminder that variations in elevation and aspect can really do a number on the snow-pack. As we traveled along the steep, virtually snowless banks of the Pine, not wanting to muddy our climbing skins, we were doing our best to ski on tiptoe, which, of course, doesn't really work. A combination of skiing, walking and cursing brought us to a part-dirt/part-snow area to set up camp just beyond the Pope's Nose (a thousand-foot granite dome that looks like a little piece of Yosemite).
But after that day, lack of snow was not a problem. There was a whole lot of it. And a good thing, too, because I'm always amazed at how many pots full of snow it takes to melt enough water to fill up a Nalgene. Happily, though, the hours spent around our compact stoves in Ben's and Ron's Mega Mid tent coaxing solid into liquid proved memorable, especially since each night we used snow to build excellent snow counters to cook upon and snow couches to lounge in. I concede, against my normal assertions, that when it comes to snow there are times when wetter is better. For skiing, of course, I want fluff, but for building dining room furniture, give me the sloppy, wet snow that San Juan spring storms can sometimes bring. It makes a better couch.
We were especially grateful for the snow-furnished Mega Mid tent on the day we got snowed into our camp at Nebo Creek. The night before, a foot of wet snow had fallen, and it was steadily falling when we awoke. Trying to break trail through the wet snow while navigating in a white-out to and then over Hunchback Pass would be a lot less fun than having a rest day. So, instead of moving on, we ate several extra meals - a move that was not only tasty but an excellent strategy to lighten our load. In the afternoon, as the storm let up, we got out for some turns. These would be our only backpack-free turns of the whole trip, so we made a point to enjoy them, even though the snow was the sort that Ben cheerfully calls "educational." He applies this term to any snow that is either kind of hard to ski on or extremely hard to ski on. With the storm at Nebo Creek, it was just a bit wet and heavy, better than the variety of "educational" crusty snow we'd encountered so far. And anyway, we, at least, felt light and fluffy without our packs on.
Snow gave us a different kind of education the next day in the Beartown area, below Nebo Pass. We had stopped for a break just across from a long, cornice-rimmed ridgeline. As we ate our lunch, we watched two coyotes hunt for lunch of their own in the hills surrounding the abandoned mine buildings where they had set up house. Then, skiing away from our picnic site, we remotely triggered an avalanche that broke off from just below the ridgeline. It was a huge slab that stopped like a train wreck not far at all from where we'd been sitting a few minutes before. When skiing in the backcountry, I think about avalanches and the consequences they pose all the time. What doesn't occur to me as often is the opportunity they afford to see snow at its most powerful. A mass of snow like that is as elegant as it is dangerous, and brazen though it may be to say, I loved watching it go. I am still grateful for that ultimately harmless and aesthetic, but still ominous reminder of snow's greatest inconsistency of all.
Snow came along with another decree for us as we neared Silverton. Making clear, in case we'd forgotten, that you can lay plans in the winter in the mountains, but ultimately it will be the weather that decides what you do. Another white-out storm impeded our preferred route into Silverton - up and over Kendall Mountain from Highland Mary Lakes, right into downtown. Instead, we skied down Cunningham Gulch and then walked and hitched down the road from Howardsville. My brother and his fianc�e had generously offered to pick us up in Silverton. As we waited for our pre-arranged ride in Silverton, we watched bemused as one of the biggest dust storms of last year blew in from the desert, laying a blanket of red dirt down on the snow pack throughout the San Juan Mountains we'd just come through. It was an end-of-the-trip trip lesson for us in snow's ability to imitate anything from wet cement to fine-grain sand paper. The snow in the San Juans for the rest of the ski season made for some more "educational" skiing - in a dusty, gritty kind of way. I guess it's all just part of snow's charm.

Anna Lauer Roy and her husband are getting their snow education these days in Leadville, Colo.