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Saturday at last, and not just any weekend… We headed up to the Marble area here in central Colorado. The snowpack is amazingly solid, so we felt good about dancing through the intense avalanche terrain of this area. Nonetheless we opted to stay out of any starting zones, instead skiing beautiful untracked powder that seemed to be everywhere. The glisse reminded me of some of my better days in the Wasatch — true powder skiing, but not so much snow that it was scary. Blue sky, air cold enough to prevent the sun from damaging the snow, a solid snowpit, no natural avalanches — and that cold dry smoky powder that’s so rare in many other places. In Colorado, it just doesn’t get much better than this. (Better would be to have the avy danger rated as “Low” with the same kind of powder skiing, but that’s rare. Today’s rating was “Moderate with pockets of Considerable,” which to us means stay out of avalanche starting zones, read the terrain, and enjoy.)
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| Enjoying today’s pow on Marble Peak. |
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| Sneaking out of the trees on one of our laps. |
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
