With Spring Comes the Snow Unicorns
This post was originally written for Hyperlite Mountain Gear as part of a contributors and friends post. Enjoy!
By the time April arrives in southwest Colorado, the phrase, “I’m over it,” is the opening to nearly every conversation. The conversationalist is indicating that they are done with winter and all that it brings to the Rockies—frigid temperatures, icy roads, slow to start vehicles, weather delays, road closures, the landscape covered all in white. With the first sporadic warm days the exodus begins, and the green license plates of Colorado begin migrating to the deserts of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. Roof top ski racks are replaced with bike racks and long dormant rafting gear begins to appear in driveways. After several months of chasing the elusive “face shot” and seeking to visit the “white room,” the ski gear is abandoned to accumulate dust in a back corner of the garage until the first flakes reappear in late fall. These are the signs of a change in season in the mountain west and an indicator that the real skiing of the year is about to begin. Have fun in the desert, y’all! For us diehard aficionados in the snow tribe, springtime is when the skiing gets good.
Living in the intermountain west is a dangerous and complicated endeavor when it comes to the state of the snow. For most of the winter, we are dealing with a snowpack that is temperamental at best and outright scary most of the time. Comprised of a series of strong over weak layers, the avalanche dragon is always on the verge of being stirred from its uneasy rest with each ski turn through the sought-after light, blower powder. One miscalculation or poor terrain choice can have devastating consequences, bringing the entire mountain down. Hence, my search for face shots is on low angle terrain that is near and below tree line. You gotta love that pow!
With the arrival of warmer days and our grey world beginning to come to life with ever budding color, our white lurking dragon begins to transition into something tamer and more playful—perhaps unicorn like. With the sun climbing higher in the sky each day, the snowpack undergoes a constant freeze thaw cycle that overtime transforms the strong and weak layers into one homogenous layer of snow from its top to its bottom. When that happens, the “harvest” is on! Those of us who are early risers rejoice and take full advantage of our superpower to take in glorious sunrises from an icy skin track.
Moving early is the key, for no longer our we worried about the mid-winter sleeping dragon coming alive, but rather the unicorn getting rambunctious as it gets too warm and thus wet, under the hot afternoon sun. Our avalanche problems are no longer sneaky and hard to manage, but rather, are more identifiable and predictable. If you start sinking below your boot tops, then there is too much moisture traveling through the snowpack and stability is an issue. It is time to get back in town and join the masses mountain biking, rock climbing or boating the river. Spring easily allows for multi-sport days!
If one goes early and can remember not to dally as the day heats up, then the mountains will be one’s playground of solitude (remember, the I’m over it conversation from above). Gone will be the glory of skiing soft powder, but in its place will be the elation of standing on lofty summits followed by the inner butterflies of making those first turns down the steep, exposed couloir you looked at and dreamed about all season. The early morning frozen terrain will soften from the sun’s rays by late morning providing a surface of mashed potatoes or corn in which to descend your long-awaited prize—all without the fear of waking the dragon. The unicorn is ready to be ridden.
Every year the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Finland are deemed the “happiest” on the planet. After a recent visit with a dear Norwegian friend, I think I may have figured out their secret. While sitting in a Colorado backcountry hut after playing cat and mouse with the dragon for the day, Sjur looked at me and said, “You know in Norway, the best time to ski is in the spring. The days are warm, the snow is stable, and all our friends are in the mountains. We have no worries other than containing our joy enough to pick a line to ski.” Hmmm…
