March 1st at Alpy - there can be no words, except Oh My God. It was truly a spiritual experience. People in the BC were keeping track of strangers and passing along good words, like some extended tribe of mountain men. The snowfall had filled in much of the dangerous terrain in the near BC. The closest thing i can compare it to is surfing the terrace pools in Dr.Seuss' Happy Birthday to Me, in half earth gravity.
But seriously - the more i experience the Alpy BC, the less i can tolerate powder chihuahuas complaining about late opening and dumping on the Ski for not starting to blast at 5 am. As other TAY posters have said, this is crazy terrain, and that craziness makes its own avy control schedule (
www.nwac.us/text_version/alpental_acci_01-30-01.htm
). It blows my mind that it gets control and coverage at all. What we enjoy at Alpy and Baker are holdouts from the old Northwest, and as such are different from the NoCal and Rockies hills where i suspect the pow chihuahuas learned to yip.
On the other hand, the local powder wolves are howling for different reasons, such as the new lifts coming to Alpy (
www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/info/winter/m...u=51002475&mid=12421
). I agree it's not the best idea to post openly on the web about deep powder on lift-served backcountry. People who don't understand the Alpine yet duck the ropes and create problems from the small and transitory to the large and enduring (statie involvement in bc control, anyone?). So to post about the spiritual experiences those who understand Alpy and watch the weather have is akin to the disaster-abetting Warren Miller's films perpetrate by not representing the amount of work that goes into preparing extreme skiing routes. Those films are technically extended adverts, not true documentaries, and surely partly complicit in many lift-served avy deaths and the rapidly heating-up bc access fustercluck.
But there's no turning back, especially with Alpy's development plans. But the bitterness is already so bad, i would not be surprised if surfing-style localism rears its stupid ugly head. There has to be a way forward that protects Alpy against what we might call 'sNocalifornization', and for my two kruges, it's this:
Alpy should do what Silverton Mountain does in Co. (
www.silvertonmountain.com
): in peak season, tickets sold are limited, and ticketholders are organized into small groups (Silverton's groups are 8 people per). Even though Silverton has a lift, you still have to ski in a guided group. Each group has a mountain guide. The guide gets a handle on the skill level of his group, and leads them on a true Alpine experience. Four or five lift rides a day, with ridge hikes, instead of yo yo vert maxing = the deepening of the personal experience and the preservation of the Real Thing.
At first glance, this way of managing the mountain looks like it would increase expense and further price people off of Alpy. But there are ways to tune this set-up so that it discourages powder chihuahuas and poaching yahoos alike. Groups can be group-priced, making BC experience more accessible to the good people who deserve to have their spirits elevat(or)ed and genes upgraded.
Think about it. The Silverton approach safeguards what is most worth safeguarding. For a singular gem like Alpy's BC, i believe it is the way forward.
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