Journal
Taylor Glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park. Ski-able from the top!
I have to comment on this article about the “new” sport of uphill skiing. It’s a long article but in a nutshell it describes a growing trend of people who want access to groomed ski resort slopes and rather than ride the lift up, they climb under their own power and ski down.
How is this done? You buy specialized ski equipment called alpine touring gear, or AT gear. With normal downhill ski gear, your boots are securely locked flat onto your skis. With AT boots and bindings, you can release your heel while your toe remains attached. The hinge at the toe allows you to walk. You can then attach skins to the underside of your skis, a long sticky strip that grips your ski bottom on one side, and a felt side that has low forward friction and very high reverse friction, thus you can hike uphill and not slide backward.
We have been doing this for decades under the moniker ski mountaineering. However, mountaineering can be intimidating to many and so a new, safer activity was invented using the same techniques called uphill skiing. Uphill skiers want to avoid the inherent dangers of mountains. They want to avoid avalanches and the kind of spectacular accidents I wrote about in this article. But they do want to get outside for a fantastic workout that is not possible with downhill skiing.
The solution is to visit ski resorts where the environment is controlled and presumably safer, but not always, as this recent avalanche in Arapahoe Basin ski area proves. The skiers can attach skins to their skis, hike up the groomed ski slope to the top, remove the skins and get a great downhill run. They can’t get in as many downhill runs as the downhill skier, but the uphill skier gets the benefit of an aerobic workout.
This is exactly what ski mountaineers have been doing ever since skis were invented. But now we have a new, tamer version practiced in a resort. And this is the future, according to the companies that sell the equipment. Places like Steamboat saw the benefit and allow this activity on their slopes. Eldora, just above Boulder, does not.
Why is that? Eldora claims it is a safety/liability issue. Perhaps so, but liability hasn’t stopped many of the much larger resorts like Steamboat from allowing it.
I think the safety/liability excuse is disingenuous and the actual reason is because they won’t be able to charge for their expensive lift tickets. Eldora, being close to the super-fit, outdoor crazy Boulder population is likely to see much larger numbers of uphill’ers than other resorts.
I can all but guarantee that Eldora will allow uphill skiing at some point because they won’t be able to stop the poachers. What they should do, like other resorts, come up with a use fee, something like what they charge for the Nordic center. The only question is how much money they want to lose in the meantime.
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It’s ironic that Boulder, one of the major centers of the outdoor recreation universe, severely restricts activities that other areas encourage. The lack of uphill skiing in Eldora is one example. Ice climbing is another. I wrote about the impediments to ice climbing in Boulder Canyon several years ago, and nothing has changed since then except that the sport has grown much larger and many of those ice climbers live in Boulder. Ice climbing festivals are popping up all over, including Lake City, Cody, WY, and of course Ouray. Same can be said for bike racing. There are an unbelievable number of bike racers and fans in Boulder yet putting on an international race here causes major heartburn to the city bureaucracy. Other cities embrace these races.
Of course none of those restrictions deter anyone from living here. You’ll never see skiers, ice climbers and bikers abandoning Boulder.
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My first posting this year mentioned that this may be the year of the comets. Well, one of them appeared a couple of weeks ago. It was very bright, easily visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately, most of Colorado was under cloud cover for many days and so most of us missed it. No worries, more to come.
Posted in Journal by Mark with comments disabled.