Mountain Stats:
Peak elevation: 13,487’
Peak of Chair (singular): 12,300’
Base elevation: 10,400’
Annual snowfall: 400’+
Skiable acres: 1,819
Lift Serviced Vertical Drop: 1,900’
Trail Classifications: 0% Beginner & Intermediate, Advanced & Expert = 100%
Guided group size: 8 or less per guide. Private guides available. Guides can take you beyond the unguided boundaries.
Need: You will need your avalanche beacon, probe pole, and shovel (rentals available). YOU DO NOT NEED ANY AVALANCHE TRAINING.
Season: November through May? (Check for dates and times in April and May).
Easiest Run: 35 degrees; (30 degrees steepest run at your average ski area)
That pretty much sums up the numbers. But I’m not sure how to sum up the experience 6 of us had on Feb 19th, but I’ll try my best.
Silverton is a one-lift ski "resort" located 6 miles outside of Silverton, Colorado. Silverton is up and over Molas Pass north from Durango in Southwest Colorado. This area gets a ton of snow, for Colorado, because of southwest storms bringing up moisture from the gulf of Mexico. Silverton, the “resort,” is truly in the middle of nowhere. It’s up Cement Creek road – a dirt road that dead ends at an old mining town. The backcountry skiing in this area is unsurpassed. Red Mountain Pass and the surroundings link to hundreds of gulches that drop from over 13,000ft to around 10,000ft making for some of the longest (and steepest) backcountry ski runs in the state. There are places with as much relief in Colorado, but I’m not sure that there are many with such a consistent drop. Anyway, Silverton is a very unique ski resort. Not only because it has only ONE lift, but because most of the best terrain is accessible only if you bootpack up to another 1,000ft from the top of the lift. And as said above, the easiest slope is 35 degrees. Most of the runs are well over 35 degrees and in a typical Colorado winter, there are not many places in the backcountry that you can safely ski powder on 30-45 degree slopes. THIS was why we just had to make the pilgrimage down there. I set the course for the southwest with the Pilot, MK, and Dubba, and we were meeting the Frozelaps from the land of God and tacos, down there as well. We were going to spend a day at Silverton and then meet the others atop Red Mountain Pass to ski into the Mountain Belle Hut.
On the drive down, we saw that around 8" of snow has fallen on Vail Pass...so we got out and skied off the pass. Why not? We have all our gear and from the top of the pass it was only an hour and a half round trip for one run! Following what appeared to be Jesus' skin track, as it was simply perfect, we climbed up to the open tree'd hill we spotted from the parking lot. We ripped skins and flew down the mountain back to the highway in less than 20 minutes. So fleeting were those pow turns, but so worth it. Especially when you get back in the car and drive for another 4 hours!
Top of our run on Vail Pass
We got to Silverton Wednesday night after the 6 hour drive and checked into the Triangle Motel…purportedly THE place to stay for skiers going to Silverton Mountain. It’s actually one of the ONLY places to stay in Silverton. This town used to shut down in the winter, being merely a tourist stop in Summer for people on the Iron Horse train ride from Durango.
Having the ski mountain has been a bit of a revival for this tiny town. The old mining town’s shops have been converted into Coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels that now stay open all winter. The old architecture is unmatched - there are only a few places on earth that these types of buildings, in more or less their original form, still stand and lay testament to what once was. Since the mountain opened, Scotty Bob skis relocated from Golden to Silverton, and other small businesses now call Silverton home such as Venture snowboards (making “green” big mountain snowboards) and Mountain Boy Sledworks (making some of the nicest handmade sleds around). There's even a bike shop in town since the mountain now has bridges and stunts for freeriders. Enough of the commercial. On to the skiing.
This place is sick. There's really no other way to explain it.
Upon arriving, you boot up and grab your skis and head to the "tent." The tent is a canvas structure with no insulation stuck on the side of the hill just uphill from the base of the lift. It is a tiny operation. The parking lot fits maybe 40 cars, and the entire base area (lift area included) is smaller than big lodge at Eldora. In the tent is housed the operations center of Silverton along with a crappy wood stove that hardly puts out an ounce of heat, and an assortment of garage sale chairs and couches to sit on. You are asked by a guide/patroller to sign the release (I wish I had a copy of this because it is FUNNY to read) and proceed on to one of two lines - one for people that own their own beacon/shovel/probe and the other for those that don't (and need to rent). The latter line is the larger.
Being in a tent at 8am along a creek bottom at 10,000ft in February... well, it was cold. Really cold when you're waiting to get moving. It started out about zero so a bunch of us sat ourselves by the crappy wood stove with our feet outside our boots nearly touching the metal in a futile attempt to warm our toes. They make you get there early, but also make you wait an hour if you get there early. Music is blasting, people are everywhere, the outhouse is knarly and I didn't even go in it. I heard rumors that it was by far the worst outhouse ever constructed and kept. I didn't know something so cold could smell so BAD.
At 8:45am, we all headed out to the parking lot where we were asked to separate ourselves - the left side of the parking lot if we wanted to do more climbing and advanced skiing, or to the right if we wanted a more mellow day. Being the Dynafit/skinny ski crowd, we head to the left of course! We had a group of 6 and were hoping for 2 additional kindred spirits to join us. We also were asking for some dude named Michael for our guide but they sent us Travis instead. They also gave us two snowboarders to fill out our group. We were a bit curious why they'd stick two snowboarders with a bunch of AT geeks but hey, it all turned out OK. Turns out they were freelancers from Backcountry Magazine doing a story on Silverton - one the writer, the other the photographer.
Let me describe our guide, Travis. He was a more or less soft spoken dude that had the biggest reverse camber skis I've ever laid eyes on - the K2 Pontoons. They're something like 130mm underfoot. For perspective, my skis are 84mm underfoot. The widest skis in our group were 100mm underfoot...his were over an inch wider than the widest in our group...which is a shitload for skis! Travis didn't ask what we were up for, he straight up told us he was going to take us to HIS favorite places on the mountain. I'm not sure if this is just how he is or if he was trying to impress the Backcountry guys with what Silverton has to offer. Either way, we were taken to the knarliest places that were open. Not always the best snow, but always the nuttiest lines.
After a more than cursory check to see if we knew how to use our beacons ("how do you turn them on?" was the test), we got the chair. We got up the lift first, and were the first to hike to the Billboard (the top). The boot pack was awesome, if a bit overwhelming for our first run. It was no warm up run, it was a race for first tracks we'd realize later. Although we were the first skiers of the week (Thursday - they're not open Monday-Wed) and some new snow had fallen, we were competing with almost 100 other people for the same tracks. And being kind to those that came later on in the week, we were only allowed to stick to certain runs so stuff tracked out pretty quick. They also only had controlled certain areas in the previous days so didn't want us risking anything. But back to the boot pack. It started out normal enough, skis on back, hiking up a ridge line towards Storm Peak. First to a saddle, then to another ridgeline and on to a more narrow saddle, and then suddenly to a trail that went straight up. Travis said just before we entered this section, "You guys OK with this?" UM...as if we had a choice!? But yeah, we were loving it! The wind had blown the snow off this ridge and it was mostly off camber loose rocks that led into a 45 degree scramble with a fixed rope.
At the top, someone spied a hidden halfpipe and a yurt down in the valley to our south. It was Shawn White's personal halfpipe where he stays for a week at a time and trains. The surroundings of this halfpipe cannot be compared to anything other than what a snowboarder could dream up in their wildest dream.
After we had put our skis we got ready for the unknown. We couldn't see the run we were going to drop in from our hike up. We were heading to "the Pope to the Dope" as Travis called it. He went first. The top of Pope was an open snowfield that progressively got steeper until it funneled into a halfpipe shaped couloir of sorts. Once out of the wind affected area, it also got deeper snow and the steepness of the run mattered much less. At the bottom of the run we were to traverse over to the right where Dope started. Problem was, with this winter we're having, there was a rock band slightly covered in snow inbetween the bottom of Pope and the start of Dope. With speed, we all made it over, some with more gashes in our ski bases than others (i got some damn good ones). Pope was a "good" warm up as it was, but now we were dropping into something even steeper and unknown. Travis went first and disappeared but said for us to "meet me on the left." This was indeed Dope! We dropped into a narrower 40 degree couloir with knee deep powder that cushioned each turn so that it didn't feel all that steep. Looking back, I think this portion was the best of the day - snow, steepness, it had it all. I'll never forget those turns we made down Dope. It's rare (never?) that you get to safely make knee deep turns down a 40 degree couloir in Colorado. It was truly spectacular. And that was only the first of three thousand feet!
the Pilot starting down Pope
Down and more down we got 3K of fresh tracks until we were at the bottom groomed road that led us back to the "Mine" and the van that would take us back to the base area after each run. Imagine a 30 year old box van with no windows in the back, ski stickers plastered on every square inch of the inside, and 30 people stuffed inside all with their skis and poles. If you are claustaphobic, you would die in this van. I'm amazed it still ran. On the dashboard was written in a sharpie "check fluids before driving EVERY DAY!"
MK going down Pope
Back at the base area, we immediately headed up for another and hiked a bit less to get to some more steep powder turns and crazy steep and shelfy rocky terrain. It was sometimes survival just making it down to the bottom of each run. I was thankfully on my AT gear...i cannot even imagine making it 2 runs on my tele gear here.
The Champ at the bottom or run 1
I felt for the Champ. She was smiling the whole day, but i know her legs had to be just fried. We didn't stop for lunch, just snacked along the lift ride up and brought water in our packs. We were here to ski. We hiked at least for a half-hour on all but one of our runs and each run took us at least 2,000ft vertical down where we met up with some other groups and re-stuffed into the van for the 5 minute ride back to the base.
Rushing to get last lift at 3pm, we hiked nearly to the top of the Billboard again but this time jumped off on the west side of the resort, our first time on that side. We all kinda looked confused to where Travis was leading us. He had just got some sort of beta that "Horse Cock" was declared recently safe (and therefore open) by Mr. Brill himself, so we headed that way and ducked one of the few ropes on the mountain. We all shook our heads as we saw grass sticking up through the snow where Travis was about to drop in. "It'll be fine! There's only grass and no rocks right here!" Um....yeah. We all went left of his line to where it looked like there was more coverage. Well, we should've listened to the guide. I quickly veered right back over to Travis' line and didn't hit any more rocks. Being almost 4 now and well over 6 hours into skiing such crazy terrain, we were all starting to make mistakes, especially me. This year is my first year on alpine gear since I was 13 (23 years ago). I'm ok, but when i get tired i make mistakes and sit back too much. Well, after Horse Cock couloir, which was super sweet by the way, I flailed and bailed onto my face and lost my right ski. There it slid, straight down the hill towards the Pilot as he skied down, unbeknownst to him, as I yelled "SKI!" but no one heard. Luckily it took a dive into a deep part of snow and stopped about 100 feet down from where I lay covered in snow. I slid on my ass down to the ski, put it on and continued down to everyone. After two more bails and a 20ft wide north-facing fracture that went to the dirt (yes, i was following our guide on a little foray) we made it to the road completely COOKED! But safe and sound and all having never experienced a day like that before in our lives. We were so late compared to the other groups who didn't get a last run in, we had to make a special call for the van to pick us up. After returning to the tent, we were pretty damned thirsty but all they had was Red Bull and a keg of beer. Yep, there's no water at Silverton! Just locally brewed Silverton beer, and Red Bull...classic!
Upon planning for this day, and hearing that we'd only do 3-6 runs before the day was over, we all smirked and said, we'll do 7...at least. Yeah...well, maybe if we had just the skinny ski clan and more fresh powder, but we barely made 5 runs before 4pm. That may not sound like a ton, but we hiked more than any of the other groups and totaled almost 12,000ft of vertical descent that day. I've never even come close to that figure on a backcountry day or even a lift-served day! We were slightly hammered on the last run...and we still had to skin into our hut off Red Mountain Pass that night! Thankfully (not to my awesome navigation abilities as i almost got us lost AGAIN on a 1 mile approach) we made it to the hut by dark...but just barely.
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