I was digging through the archives (scanner practice!) and found a few photos you might find amusing.
Tim Lane and friends near Velocity (Storm) Peak, Silverton, Colorado. That’s Keith Daniels taking his skin off to the right. I was pretty amused by his getup, onesie Carhartts and surplus army goggles that were probably manufactured in 1942. He skied like a wildman, would easily have made the grade for a TGR straightline segment. Lois McKinsey right foreground. Weezie Chandler (Tim’s girlfriend) and Tim’s dog Cholo de Portillo in the background. Those are my Fischer alpine touring skis, mounted up with Ramer bindings. Click all images to enlarge.
I’ve hit the Silverton, Colorado area (see yesterday’s post) regularly over the years (though less now that we’ve got our WildSnow Field HQ so styled out). Back in 1983 not a whole lot of people were ski touring the San Juans, but the sport did exist for a hearty few. At the time, Tim Lane (known for his years of avalanche safety work down in Portillo) was working for the Colorado highway department doing avalanche evaluation on Red Mountain Pass. I was living in Crested Butte on and off, and would head over to the San Juans to meet up with Tim and others such as Jerry Roberts to partake in the abundant alpine ski touring the area is now famous for. I climbed Denali with Tim in 1972, and when I went back to ski Denali in 2010 thoughts of Tim kept popping up in my mind. Out of the nine guys on our 1973 trip he probably had the hardest time, eventually suffering serious frostbite on his feet that nowadays would have been a mandatory heli evac. But we didn’t have a radio or any other means of emergency communication, so Tim skied and walked out the Muldrow Glacier to Wonder Lake with the rest of us. He even kept his skis instead of tossing them into the bushes after we ran out of food and tried to lighten our packs. Hardcore.
I dug up this photo of Tim Lane, Denali Muldrow Glacier route, 1973. The shot was taken by the late Robert Pimental, one of the individuals (pilot) who died in the 1984 plane crash commemorated by the Friends Hut out of Crested Butte, Colorado.
To really make this a Throwback Thursday, I’ll throw in this B&W I made in 1988 while doing my ‘ski the fourteeners’ descent on Handies Peak out of American Basin in the San Juans. That’s Keith, still in the Carhartt one-piece. Click to enlarge.
1987, prolific author Jonathan Waterman grabbed this pic of me on a ridge traverse from Ski Hayden Peak to Electric Pass up in the Elk Mountains between Aspen and Crested Butte. I threw this in because it’s an amusing depiction of late 1980s alpine ski touring gear. Ramer Grand Tour skis (they were light but at least they skied terribly) and Ramer frame bindings, the inspiration for today’s tech bindings. I call this Roch Ridge after pioneer ski alpinist Andre Roch.
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.
