Classic Colorado
Winter stiff arms spring for FREESKIER’s Backcountry Ski Test
WORDS • DONNY O’NEILL | PHOTOS • JEFF CRICCO
We stood atop a high-alpine ridgeline, the wind whipping snow horizontally into our faces. One by one, we descended into an untouched bowl of succulent snow and etched a group of 10 or so slithering tracks into the mountainside. When we reached the shelf below, one by one we lined up in two columns facing each other and clanked ski poles above with the person across from us, forming an arcade aptly called a “stoke tunnel.” We clanked poles and hooted and hollered in applause as the remaining skiers signed their names into the slope, then crossed the finish line under our archway.
This marked the end of two days of backcountry ski testing in Clear Creek County, Colorado; two consecutive days of breaking trail and descending virgin spring powder on the most innovative out-of-bounds planks hitting the market in fall 2018. Our moods had drastically improved since the morning prior, when an underwhelming weather forecast had stirred up modest expectations for our test.
We sat in the nondescript, elderly white church house in downtown Empire, CO, which served as the staging venue for our 2019 backcountry ski test. It was a small building with two blue entrance doors—you’d probably miss it if you weren’t looking for it. It was late March, and Colorado had been dry for about a week and temperatures were mild in town. We mingled in a circle on the building’s first floor—divine photos of deep powder skiing worthy of a snow-slider’s worship adorned walls once reserved for images of Christian adoration. While smaller segments of our group were familiar with each other, as a whole, we were mostly strangers with a communal passion for backcountry skiing. For the next 48 hours, we would all share the same goal of relentlessly testing each and every touring ski at our disposal in order to convey the results via the 2019 Buyer’s Guide.
Four guides from Powder Addiction snowcat skiing—the owners of the building—joined our backcountry testing collective and went over the forecast. Cloudy skies, a 50-percent chance of flurries and temperatures in the 36-degree range were predicted for our targeted zone. Nothing too special. The guides touched on our travel plan and described the location of our basecamp, a cozy outcropping of fir trees in a wide-open basin with 12,000-foot peaks in every direction.
After Eric Toolund, our lead guide, ran the gamut of obligatory pre-shred information and advisories, the group exited the church, hopped in various vehicles with ski racks and truck beds chock-full of skis and carpooled up to the trailhead, 15 minutes west of town. When we arrived, a snowcat awaited at the edge of the parking lot, ready to give us a bump to our zone, where we would tour and ski to our heart’s delight.
After our testers—and one eager dog—had filed into the vehicle’s cabin, our guide shut the door and the cat lurched forward, its tracks spinning along the snowy forest service road toward the high alpine. The cabin was packed to the brim with backcountry testers made up of mountain-town locals, former industry professionals, shop workers and more, causing the windows to fog and impede our view of the outside world. We got to know each other better with each minute spent crammed like sardines in the back of the growling snow machine.
The cat continued to rumble higher and higher, our gaggle of geared-up skiers swayed in the back with each bump in the road, increasingly unaware of the outside environment. After what felt like an eternity due to our cramped quarters, the cat came to an abrupt halt. We heard the cockpit door open and slam shut, followed by a brief pause, then the rear cabin door swung open, and we had our first glance outside since we had started uphill.
A frosty blast of wind shot into the cabin, accompanied by whirling snow. Our systems shocked, we raised our facemasks to cover our mouths, cinched our hoods tight and fought the howling wind to exit the cat. With our boots on the ground, we took in the surroundings, or tried to at least. We were smack dab in the middle of an intense snowstorm that yielded low visibility, piercing winds and what appeared to be knee-deep powder. Lucky us.
Jolted by the prospect of face shots, we clicked into a smattering of 2019’s finest backcountry-specific planks and ripped through the storm to set up our base of operations in the trees a few hundred feet below.
From the comfort of our basecamp, which featured a roaring fire built by photographer Jeff Cricco, we took off uphill, trading in thousands of steps and beads of sweat for billowing powder turns once we reached the apex of our climbs. Over the next two days, we took into account the weight and maneuverability of each ski on the skin track, then made notes regarding its ability to carve, float and play on the descent. The powder was plentiful, which made the testing experience that much greater, and we skied late into each afternoon, stopping only when our exhausted legs couldn’t bear another lap.
On our final run, Tollund was the last to thread our ski pole arch on the snowy bench at 11,000 feet. The team high-fived to a job well done after two days of nose to the grindstone touring and skiing. A group that had started as mostly strangers was now made up of close friends, brought together in the name of the out-of-bounds experience. We turned towards the fall line and descended as one mob, party shredding to the trailhead, powdery rooster tails kicking up behind us, in what was the perfect ending to an incredible two days.
