Smitten at Berthoud Pass
I remember my first day of backcountry skiing like it was yesterday. I had spent the last month scouring Craigslist for a deal on a touring set-up and finally had in my position a mostly shiny pair of Atomic Century Skis with pin bindings and some Dynafit demo boots that I would soon learn had a flex of about 50. I didn't have any close friends who toured, but after going on a hut trip with some classmates and watching them glide along as I suffered on my rented snowshoes, decided that after years of wistfully spectating from afar, it was finally time to enter this sport. And on this day, the stars had aligned and I had been given the perfect opportunity to go without any scheming. I was ecstatic.
It was a Sunday in mid-February. I was a mostly-broke grad student at the time, paying my rent and bar tabs through a part-time bartending job at a questionable restaurant in downtown Boulder. I had to work at four, but that didn't stop me from driving out to Berthoud Pass mid-morning to ski with a guy I barely knew who seemed psyched to take me out.
I arrived at the lot just before noon - it was busy with other skiers. I found my friend, who had been touring since about 6am this morning but was somehow still itching to ski more. I proudly pulled out my plastic shovel and 210cm probe from my high school Dakine heli-ski pack, souvenirs from my college aspirations to ski the Bridger Bowl Ridge. He wasn't impressed, and said he had expected as much and gave me an extra set of gear to borrow. My beacon, fortunately, was OK.
We crossed the road, and I clicked into my pin bindings for the first time and started up the skin track for the west side main line. It was a bluebird day and warm for mid-February - there was a few inches of glorious fresh powder, but the skin track was well traveled and we were soon in t-shirts. Within a few minutes, I figured out the glide and was passing people up the skin track. My heart rate was probably around 180, but it was absolute bliss. It felt most like the first time I ever skied powder - so different from anything I'd ever done, and just so fun. I couldn't stop grinning.
At the top of the run, I learned how to transition my skis to head downhill. My legs felt wobbly from sprinting up the hill - though the way down was basically a blue powder run, I definitely ate it a time or two. Maybe it was the demo boots anyway. It didn't matter - it was all glorious to me. As soon as we got to the bottom, and after a 5-minute battle with my bindings to get my boots clicked back in, I was ready to go up again for a second round.
After two laps, I was exhausted and had to head back to Boulder for my bar shift. I was absolutely glowing from the day, it didn't matter that I drove two hours each way for this tiny bit of ski touring - every moment had been worth it. I didn't know that the very person who introduced me to this magical sport would also be the one, who over the next several months, would complicate my relationship with it for years after he was no longer around. Nor did I know how many days in the future ski touring wouldn't feel like bliss at all, and that I would forget about this day for a long time. Or how complicated risk and partnerships can make these things we call fun. Today, I didn't need to know that. It didn't matter. Today, I had fallen in love with a new sport in the mountains. And boy, was I smitten.
