Silverton Trip Report

So I wrangled up seven other guys from Aspen to make the five hour trek to Southwest Colorado in order to ski the lift-accessed backcountry terrain of Silverton Mountain. Skiing Silverton is as close as most of us will ever get to skiing the big lines of Alaska, and it's always worth the trip.

We shot down on Saturday after work and pulled into town soon after six. When I tell you that this photo captures all of downtown Silverton, I'm not kidding. The town is literally five blocks long. Five blocks of stunning beauty, but five blocks nevertheless. That is NOT the ski resort in the background.

The architecture on Main Street has remained untouched for about a century or so. The main bar in town still has bullet holes in the walls.

Sunday morning, it was up at seven and at the "resort" by eight. This is the base village. Seriously. It's a yurt where you sign in, prove you have avalanche gear, and sign numerous release forms absolving the resort from blame should you go out and get yourself killed.

There is one lift at Silverton, and really all that does is save you a two hour hike. There really is no skiing under the lift. Instead, the lift grants you access to a ridge, which grants you access to acre after acre of unbelievable hike-to skiing. There really is no other place like it in the U.S. This time of year, all skiing at Silverton is guided, so you basically go where the guide recommends. On this day, our goal was this large couloir in the middle of this photo, aptly named the "Grande."

In order to gain access to the Grande, we had to hike to the high point along the ridge, to an elevation of roughly 13,000 feet. Here is just one of the dozens of breath-taking photos I shot from the top on a typical bluebird Colorado morning.

From the top of the ridge, we had to ski down about 1,000 feet, then traverse over to the bottom of the Grande, before beginning the long and arduous boot up the couloir. This was the line we dropped into to access the traverse. Snow was nice but variable. If you loook in the middle-left of the photo, you'll see the precipice of a cliff band. The other side of that cliff drops over 100 feet straight down. Don't want to catch an edge up here!

Once beyond the cliff, we traversed over to the start of the 2,000 foot climb up the Grande, strapped our skis to our packs, and started the long, slow boot up the shin-deep snow. About 500 yards from the top, I turned around to shoot this pic of the guys behind me. Sorry about the quality, but my camera was in my chest pocket and the lens got some condensation build up.

From the top of the Grande, at roughly 12,700 feet, the view down the line we would be skiing. Relatively steep at 42-45 degrees, but not as steep as some of the bigger lines we skied locally here in Aspen last spring and will be skiing again soon in a couple of months.

Finished up around 2:30. Looking back at the Grande. Green line is our ascent route, red line the descent. Snow was a mix of powder and breakable crust, not the greatest skiing in the world.
At the end of the day, though, a trip to Silverton is usually more about the experience than the snow qualify, and this one was no different. Good buddies, great skiing, amazing views. I'm already looking forward to next year!