Words and Photos from HMG Friends and Contributors: Shaun Mittwollen, Taylor Bracher, Ian Provo, Brett Davis, and Kaitlyn Boyle
Spring just hits different on the slopes! We reached out to friends to get their take on what makes this time of year so special for backcountry skiing, and the following love fest spells out all their reasons why Spring just cannot be topped for one of their favorite pursuits.
SHAUN MITTWOLLEN
To me spring skiing is like an afternoon at the beach.
The sun's warming rays have returned after a long winter and the atmosphere smells alive with humidity and fresh plant growth awakening in the still air. Gone are the heavy winter layers to be replaced with sunscreen and t shirts. The snow is forgiving and welcoming, everything is just plain less harsh. While mid winter it feels like we are enduring and battling the elements, in spring there is time to ease and enjoy.
An essence of regularity and no rush to time a narrow weather window or manic preparations to make first lifts. Some of my best skiing memories are in spring. Trading skis for snowboards with friends and goofing around. Slashing natural walls as if they are a wave, watching slushy snow fling off the lip as if fanned by a stiff offshore. Long cruisy days touring and never ending golden sunsets. In Japan it would be 25c and full coverage of snow. A salty seabreeze would waft over low hills from the nearby ocean. In spring there is time. Time to spend with friends. Time to get out in the mountains. Time to have fun. To me spring is low key and relaxed.
TAYLOR BRACHER
Move over handwarmers, headlamps, frosty beards, and screaming barfies! Outta my way fleece buff, “oh shit mitts,” and the cold toes dance. It’s time to make way for goggle tans, sun hoodies, and tailgate bevvies!
The first day I put on sunscreen each spring is something I look forward to as if it’s a holiday. Like the smell of pumpkin spice in November and evergreen in December, the scent of coconuts and zinc oxide mixes in my nostrils with the cool spring air and I just know the season is here! After the hardships of a long and dark winter, I engage in a practically instantaneous act of forgiveness with Mother Nature. This holy day usually happens sometime around the second week of March in Alaska, and I know I will experience the trinity of warmth on my skin, sun in my eyes, and glide under my feet. In fact, I’m lucky enough where I live that the holiday is more like a festival, and all my friends emerge from their winter hibernation to join in on the activities until late April or even May. We spend weeks celebrating the return of the sun and honoring its relationship to the snow by switching to appropriate attire (sunglasses, brimmed hats, and softshell pants), bringing offerings in the form of “yippees!” and “yahoos!” that reverberate across the soundscape, and matching our skis to the conditions, sometimes choosing multiples from the quiver all in the same day.
My favorite spring day is the one that starts with a five a.m. alarm, so at first light we can skate ski on the glorious crust that froze overnight. On these mornings we eat miles for breakfast and savor an after-ski brunch and nap. Around midday, we don our lightweight touring setups and head for the southerlies just as they hit the perfect corn window. We lap the corn until it turns to mashed potatoes or our legs turn to jello (yes skiers are very food motivated), when we retire to our porches for barbecue, sparkling beverages, and comparison of our face tans. We go to bed early like children waiting for a saint to bring us gifts in the night. And if we were good, in the morning the crust is firm and we do it all over again. We celebrate our riches. There’s never enough sunscreen.
IAN PROVO
It is the fourteenth day of spring in the year of twenty three, and as I look out the window, fat snowflakes continue to fall at a rate of two inches per hour. The weather guessers say this storm will add another forty to sixty inches of snow to the already historic snowpack.
As it stands, spring skiing has been canceled for the mountains of Utah. After nearly six months of nonstop snowfall, I long for the pleasant weather and warm sun and the renewal of outdoor pursuits that don't require mittens and goggles.
To ski a big line in the sun followed by a day of biking singletrack, or a leisurely outing on the river. A morning corn session right into a round of golf. Slushy spring turns at Snowbird and a couple of ales on the sundeck. Gardening. I am ready for spring. But today is a powder day. And tomorrow will be too. And for that I am willing to sacrifice a traditional season of spring skiing. Long live winter!!!
BRETT DAVIS
By the time April arrives in southwest Colorado, the phrase, “I’m over it,” is the opening to nearly every conversation. The conversationalist is indicating that they are done with winter and all that it brings to the Rockies—frigid temperatures, icy roads, slow to start vehicles, weather delays, road closures, the landscape covered all in white. With the first sporadic warm days the exodus begins, and the green license plates of Colorado begin migrating to the deserts of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. Roof top ski racks are replaced with bike racks and long dormant rafting gear begins to appear in driveways. After several months of chasing the elusive “face shot” and seeking to visit the “white room,” the ski gear is abandoned to accumulate dust in a back corner of the garage until the first flakes reappear in late fall. These are the signs of a change in season in the mountain west and an indicator that the real skiing of the year is about to begin. Have fun in the desert, y’all! For us diehard aficionados in the snow tribe, springtime is when the skiing gets good.
Living in the intermountain west is a dangerous and complicated endeavor when it comes to the state of the snow. For most of the winter, we are dealing with a snowpack that is temperamental at best and outright scary most of the time. Comprised of a series of strong over weak layers, the avalanche dragon is always on the verge of being stirred from its uneasy rest with each ski turn through the sought-after light, blower powder. One miscalculation or poor terrain choice can have devastating consequences, bringing the entire mountain down. Hence, my search for face shots is on low angle terrain that is near and below tree line. You gotta love that pow!
With the arrival of warmer days and our grey world beginning to come to life with ever budding color, our white lurking dragon begins to transition into something tamer and more playful—perhaps unicorn like. With the sun climbing higher in the sky each day, the snowpack undergoes a constant freeze thaw cycle that overtime transforms the strong and weak layers into one homogenous layer of snow from its top to its bottom. When that happens, the “harvest” is on! Those of us who are early risers rejoice and take full advantage of our superpower to take in glorious sunrises from an icy skin track.
Moving early is the key, for no longer our we worried about the mid-winter sleeping dragon coming alive, but rather the unicorn getting rambunctious as it gets too warm and thus wet, under the hot afternoon sun. Our avalanche problems are no longer sneaky and hard to manage, but rather, are more identifiable and predictable. If you start sinking below your boot tops, then there is too much moisture traveling through the snowpack and stability is an issue. It is time to get back in town and join the masses mountain biking, rock climbing or boating the river. Spring easily allows for multi-sport days!
