F4
Intense slopes beckon experts
silverton from F1
verton’s gentlest slope, at a 35- degree pitch, is steeper than many resorts’ most aggressive run; average annual snowfall is more than 400 inches. A good start. But Brill wanted
to ensure that guests could ski powder weeks after a storm — something unheard of at most resorts — so he put in just one chairlift. Yep, one. The double chair covers 1,900 vertical feet, unloading at 12,300 feet above sea level, from which point guests can either ski down or hike along stunningly dramatic ridges to reach 1,819 acres of terrain, none of it
groomed.Nope, none. The hikes vary in intensity,
from a 10-minute punch to a two-hour-plus boot pack that crestsat 13,487 feet, thesummitof Storm Peak. To summarize: One lift + am-
ple, vertiginous terrain + effort required + zero grooming = ex- tendedshelf life for
thesnow.This consistently earns Silverton top ranking among U.S. resorts for steeps and powder. Two other oddities that also help preserve the snow: Silverton is open Thursday through Sunday only, and for much of its season offers only guided skiing and snow- boarding. The first thing I notice upon
arriving at SilvertonMountain is, frankly, not much. The parking lot is the shoulder of State High- way 110, a dirt road that follows a scenic creek six miles up from the town of Silverton. I don’t see a lodge, just the shell of an old school bus, into which a handful of people appear to be rolling kegs. The only permanent infra- structure is the chairlift, which disappears up a long pitch bor- dered by pine forest. It is Easter weekend and it is snowing.Hard. I change at the car and follow hand-scrawled signs to the check- in area. Turns out that there is a base lodge of sorts: an industrial- strength nylon tent, 30 by 40 feet and warmed by a wood-burning stove, tucked into a pine grove. The scene inside is charged with anticipation and people stomp- ing about in ski and snowboard gear, buying energy bars and bot- tled water. After checking in, I’m directed
to the equipment shack (another converted school bus) to pick up
my avalanche safety gear: the shovel, probe and transceiver re- quired for skiing at Silverton. Concerned spouse and parent alert: Those are standard items for skiing and riding in largely uncontrolled environs; Silverton has an excellent safety record. Guests are divided into groups
of eight based on self-assessed appetite for extreme terrain and hiking. The scene on this morn- ing is mildly chaotic because, for the first time in two months, Silverton is open to unguided skiing and snowboarding, and powder hounds have piled in from around the state. Guided guests pay $99 to $139
a day, which, aside from the obvi- ous benefit of the expert guide, affords rights to more terrain than is open to unguided skiers ($49 a day); high rollers can pay an added $159 per run, which buys them access, via helicopter, to an additional 23,000 acres: an area that’s technically open to guided groups but is, formost, too longawalkfromthe top of the lift. My group comprises mostly
Coloradans, a worrisome devel- opment. I’ma strong skier and fit, but — reality check! — I live at elevation 350 and have no genetic link to the mountain goat. So I fear that I’ll be trounced by my co-groupies. Brad Garrett, a hale, affable
marketing manager from Denver, says that he’s an enthusiastic al- pine skier but today will be work- ingonhis nascent telemark skills, which will
slowhimdown.That is welcome news: I’ll have company at the back of the group, which also includes John and Leslie — who spend most of their winter weekends back-country skiing — and a diminutive, bearded, 40ish snowboarder whom I dub Eric the Shred. The fruits of the continuing
storm — a fresh foot of snow — mean that we needn’t hike just yet. Our first three runs are bombs straight off the lift, fresh tracks on every turn. It is instantly clear what sets
Silverton apart. Top to bottom, it is consistently steeper than any resort I’ve skied, including Jack- son Hole, Snowbird, Taos and Whistler. Tackling ungroomed slopesonevery run requiresmore muscle engagement, anticipation and hazard awareness than does in-bounds schussing. Lunch?
Brown bag (BYO or buy cold sandwiches in the tent-lodge). Bathrooms? Unheated, no run- ning water, composting toilets. Apres scene?We’ll get to that in a minute. Brill says that the absence of amenities was initially due to a lack of money but now is a point of pride. “We have all we need here,” he says. “Although I would like to add running water soon.” When the hiking starts, we get
an immediate sense of Silverton’s grandeur. Pausing on a cornice above an untracked bowl, we see no other skiers, just the pyramid peaks of the San Juans crowding the horizon. Trudging up a ridge, passing a run aptly named Man- datory Air,wearriveonaparcel of wind-hardened snow so narrow that I have trouble finding space to put onmy skis. It’s a daunting, black-and-white world up here, all snow and rock, the earth drop-
tail, a tomato juice-Pabst Blue Ribbon beer combo that isn’t nearly as nauseating as it sounds. (The full bar also includes beer brands that are palatable on their own.) An occasional roar goes up
when a 20-something employee —often one of the Silvertonwom- en — muscles through the room lugging a replacement keg. The scene down in town is
more subdued, which is a shame, because Silverton’s Victorian ho- tels and OldWest saloons hosted some wild times in the town’s mining heyday. (The Sunnyside Mine andMayflowerMill—gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper — closed in 1991.) I manage to find live music — a duo of guitar pickers—at the Pickle Barrel, one of eight restaurants open in win- ter (vs. 19 during Silverton’s busy summer tourism season). But colorful nuggets still shine
BILL STEVENSON PHOTOGRAPHY/AURORA PHOTOS
Silverton has vertiginous terrain and consistent snowfall. Its gentlest slope is steeper than many resorts’ most aggressive run.
ping away abruptly on both sides. A fall would not end pleasantly. Beforewedropa hairpin chute,
ski a massive face of downy snow, hop a ridge and dance through sun-kissed glades, we look across the valley to see the chopper drop off a group atop one of Silverton’s marquee runs. The valley itself is perhaps
more famous: It was here in win- ter 2008-09 that snowboard world champion Shaun White had his sponsor, Red Bull, build a halfpipe so he could train in rela- tive privacy for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The Flying To- mato was often spotted riding Silverton when he wasn’t train- ing, just another ripper out for thrills. As the day winds down, a rau-
cous apres party kicks up in the tent, fueled by the camaraderie of collective accomplishment and rapid rounds of the house cock-
among the town’s 527 residents. One night as I chat with the grizzled clerk at the elegantly Victorian Grand Imperial Hotel, talk turns to the summer crowds. “Oh, yeah, it gets packed,” he
says, “but I won’t be around for it this year.”Hedrumshis fingerson the counter, waiting, until I ask why. “Found gold.” Excuse me? “Yep,”hesays, “I ain’tgonnatell
you where, but it’s up in the high country, and it’s a lot. Fifty years I been working. Now it’s time for me to kick back with some liquor and some ladies.” I head into the brittle dusk air
hoping, for his sake if not for the ladies’, that his tale is true. On Easter Sunday, I forgo Sil-
verton Mountain for a full back- country tour in the mountains west of town, just me and a guide climbing a mountain so that we can ski down the other side. We are in the high country, awash in white gold, and I find myself thinking of luxury: a chairlift, a tent and a cold PBR.
travel@washpost.com
Briley is a writer in Takoma Park.
EZ
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KLMNO
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010 DETAILS
GETTING THERE Frontier offers connecting flights from Reagan National to Durango, Colo., with fares starting at $390 round trip. Silverton is 48 miles north of Durango.
WHERE TO STAY Grand Imperial Hotel 1219 Greene St. 800-341-3340
www.grandimperialhotel.com Historic Victorian hotel, built in 1882, in the center of town, with funky decor and an on-site saloon. Doubles from $79.
Triangle Motel 848 Greene St. 970-387-5780
www.trianglemotel.com Simple, clean and modern, with suites, studios and two-bedroom units. Doubles from $65.
WHERE TO EAT Stellar Bakery and Pizzeria 1260 Blair St. 970-387-9940 The hand-tossed pizzas are large, hot and fresh. BLTs are a local fave. Pizzas from $12.
Pickle Barrel Restaurant 1304 Greene St. 970-387-5713
www.thepicklebarrel.com Serves up lots of meat and potatoes but also offers vegetarian fare. Burgers and sandwiches from $9.
WHAT TO DO Silverton Mountain Ski Area 970-387-5706
www.silvertonmountain.com Advanced and expert skiing and snowboarding. Open Thursday- Sunday from mid-December to mid-April. Guided skiing from $99 per day; unguided from $49. Gear rental available, including required avalanche safety equipment.
Kendall Mountain Recreation Area 1 Kendall Pl. 970-387-5228
www.skikendall.com Small beginners’ ski mountain that also offers sledding, tubing and ice skating. Open Fridays- Sundays and some holidays. Adult lift ticket $15. Skating, sledding and tubing are free.
FORMORE INFORMATION
www.silvertoncolorado.com
—J.B.
At Lassen, let it snowshoe lassen from F1
inches per season, which runs November through April in the lower elevations (6,700 feet) and until early July on the higher peaks. Towering snowbanks line the road to the park entrance, burying road signs and dwarfing the conifers. Inside the park, the volcanoes look as if they’ve been icedbyagenerous cake decorator. Only the hydrothermal areas, with their curlicues of steam and boiling bubbles, hint of a warm heart beneath the Earth’s frozen crust. “The park is snowbound and
cold. Solitude is abundant,” reads the park literature. The passage describes the stark conditions, but I note a hint of Robert Frost lyricism in the words. The sense of isolation and re-
moteness grows exponentially when officials close the 30-mile Main Park Road, the only motor- ized routethroughthe park’s inte- rior, for the season. (The road closed on Nov. 8 this year.) To get around during winter, you must drive around the park’s perimeter or think like an Arctic explorer. “There is no other ski place
where you have so much pristine snow,” said Nick Roll, a park interpreter and snowshoe guide. “If you want to make your own trails, you just see where the guy before you went and go the other way.” On 105,000 acres of protected
land, there’s no shortage of other ways. Just don’t rely on your tracks to lead you home. Foot- prints have a tendency to disap- pear quickly.
Established in 1916, Lassen is
the little national park that could — and does, but with subtlety. Fifty miles east of Redding, it receives about 45,000 guests in winter, and its annual visitor numbers (nearly 400,000) equal a summer month’s count in Yosemite. “It’s almost like having your
own national park,” said Russell Virgilio,aparkinterpreter. “It’s so quiet you can hear the snow
settling on your jacket.” That’s not all your ears will
pick up. In the geothermal areas, such as BumpassHell and Devil’s Kitchen, you can listen to Earth’s subterranean rumblings, includ- ing the burbles of mud pots and the whoosh of steam vents. All this ruckus means that Lassen Peak, which last erupted less than a century ago,may still havesome kick left in its lava dome. “Lassen is active but dormant,”
said Virgilio. “It may wake up, or it may never wake up.” The 10,457-foot volcano isn’t
the only erupter inside the federal boundaries. The park has the distinction of being the only place on the planet—yes, the planet— to contain all four types of volca- noes: shield, plug dome, cinder cone and composite. With some guidance from a park ranger, or a cheat sheet from the Kohm Yah- mah-nee Visitor Center at the southwest entrance, you can get to know them on a first-name basis:Mount Harkness and Pros- pect Peak (shield); Lassen Peak, Chaos Crags and BumpassMoun- tain (plug dome); Hat Mountain, Cinder Cone and Fairfield Peak (cinder cone); and Brokeoff Mountain, Mount Diller, Pilot Pinnacle and Mount Conard (remnants of the composite). In terms of major drama, Las-
sen Peak would be a shoo-in for an end-of-the-world Hollywood blockbuster. The volcano first erupted on May 30, 1914, and spent the remainder of the year burping steam more than 150 times.Ayear later,onMay 19, lava bubbled up and over, the hot molten rock cascading a thou- sand feetdownthe western slope. On the opposite flank, lava chunks combined forces with ash and snow, creating a mud flow that stretched 18 miles. Yet the volcano wasn’t quite finished. Its final cough occurred three days later, with a blast that shot ash five miles heavenward. Then, it slept—fitfully. Seismologists are constantly
tracking the volcano, which frees up snowshoers to concentrate on trudging through 20 feet of snow in alien footwear.
Every weekend from Decem-
ber through April (this season, Dec. 26-April 3), the park leads snowshoe hikes. The night before aMarch excursion, a storm swad- dled the park in a thick white blanket that would cushion any clumsy snowshoer. I did not want to be that fallen snow angel, so I sneaked in a practice run before the scheduled outing. On the two-mile round-trip
hike, I accompanied Virgilio, originally from thewarmclime of Atlanta and a newfather to twins. Adding up those two facts, I as- sumed that this would be an easy hike without risk. We left the visitor center and
headed toward a crescent trail wedged betweena steep hillanda sharp drop. At a midway point, Russell stopped to show me grooves in a slope overhead. I offered two wrong guesses: the marks of sledders or volcanic activity (my default answer to every question a park official asked). The correct response: the telltale signs of avalanche. I ques- tioned the wisdom of standing in the bull’s eye of a potentialdanger zone and adjusted my initial im- pression of Russell. Our next destination was Sul-
phurWorks, which first announc- es itself through the nasal cavity — eau de rotten oeufs. We stood on the boardwalk, which had been buried and partly crushed by the heavy snows, to take in the hydrothermal features. Below, a mud pot bubbled like chocolate fondue, while whirls of steam puffed from vents in the rocks. “Youcan cook dinner in it,” said
Russell, “but you’re not going to get any health benefits from bath- ing in it.” Alas, I had not discovered the
secret to immortality. But I was glad that the elixir to give you the body of a 20-year-old wasn’t a 195-degree cocktail of sulfuric acid and mud.
Our group of youngsters to women-of-a-certain-age rendez- voused outside the visitor center,
PHIL SCHERMEISTER/GETTY IMAGES/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LassenVolcanicNational Park has 105,000 acres of protected land. DETAILS
GETTING THERE Alaska Airlines offers one-stop service from Reagan National to Redding, Calif., for about $440 round trip. Lassen Volcanic National Park is about 50 miles east of Redding.
WHERE TO STAY Lassen Mineral Lodge Highway 36, Mineral 530-595-4422
www.minerallodge.com Nine miles from the park, with a restaurant and bar, a general store and snowshoe rentals. Rates from $75 a night.
St. Bernard Lodge Highway 36, Mill Creek 530-258-3382
www.stbernardlodge.com A B&B near the southeast entrance of the park and Lake Almanor. Restaurant and horse stables on the property. Rates from $95.
WHERE TO EAT Lassen Mineral Lodge Carbo- and protein-load with such home-cooked dishes as buffalo
some standing solidly on their snowshoes, others wobbly like baby giraffes. Our guide, Nick, boosted our confidence by prais- ing us for just showing up: “We have 400,000 visitors a year and 90 percent come in the summer.
burgers, salmon salad and grilled ham and cheese. Sandwiches and burgers under $9; dinner entrees in the $15 range.
Pizza Factory 197 Main St., Chester 530-258-3155
www.pizzafactory.com Cozy up by the fire with a slice of pizza or a bowl of pasta. Pies from $8.50; pasta from about $6.
WHERE TO SNOWSHOE Lassen Volcanic National Park Southeast entrance off Highway 36
530-595-4480
www.nps.gov/lavo Make some tracks around Sulphur Works near the Kohm Yah-mah- nee Visitor Center at the southwest entrance or Manzanito Lake in the northwest. Starting Dec. 26, park officials will lead guided snowshoe tours on weekends; $1 donation suggested for use of equipment. Admission to park: $5 per pedestrian, $10 per car.
—A.S.
Give yourself a round of applause for being the 10 percent who come out during this time of the year.” Before we ventured into the coniferous forest off the parking lot, Nick instructed us to walk up
and down a small slope, remind- ing us to dig the clawed toe into the snow for support. Ready to go,welinedupconga-
style. I trailed a teenager who could snowshoe and eat dried ramen noodles simultaneously. At certain junctures, Nick
would halt the group and lead a short discussiononthe surround- ing ecology. He warned us, for example, to avoid the pink snow, despite its mouthwatering water- melon hue. The color is caused by lichens, the snack of fools. Stand- ing beneath a red fir canopy that scissored the blue sky, he ex- plainedhowthe thick-furred pine marten survives Lassen’s winters by burrowing into thesnowas if it were a heated underground cave. He stuck a head shot of the weasel family member in the ground for verisimilitude. It was the best wildlife viewing of the day. For the final leg, we scaled a
steep incline that granted long, broad views of the valley and Lassen Peak, a blinding expanse of white. “These wilderness places are
harder and harder to find,” Nick said. “For a guy like John Muir, this was a spiritual place.” After we completed the 90-
minute loop, Nick reminded us to remove our equipment to protect the bottoms from the plowed as- phalt. Shorn of their snowshoes, my feet felt lighter, but lonely.
sachsa@washpost.com
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