Few natural environments are as conflicting as deep powder snow. On one hand, floating through 30 inches of fresh can be transformative, a feeling of freedom more powerful than any other. On the other hand, deep snow is often dangerously unpredictable -- deadly even -- when it comes to avalanches.
No matter what steps you take to mitigate the threats, they remain lurking beneath your skis like a land mine.
In light of the fact that it often takes a month (or two) to return to the cautious mindset that protects a backcountry skier or snowboarder each season, we bring you the perspective of an expert who has seen almost everything.
Blue River, Colo., resident Scott Toepfer, 55, is the longest tenured forecaster at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, entering his nineteenth year on staff. He also is a committed powder seeker the likes of which you don't find often, even in ski country. Here, he talks about balancing his urge to ski fresh snow with the sobering realities that permeate his profession.
In Toepfer's words ...
Thirty years ago I was skiing powder over my head, so I've had this experience for a long time. Now that I've been there and had that experience, the uncontrollable drive to ski powder that's over your head, the floating, skiing through clouds and things like that, isn't as all-consuming as it is for somebody that's just gotten into it and experienced it for the first time, and has gone, oh my God, this is the most amazing experience I've ever had -- I need more. It's probably like a heroin addict.
I believe that 20, 30 years of experience is still not going to make you the consummate avalanche expert, because it's just too complicated of a system. You need to go with the textbooks, you need the experience to back you up, and then you need to be humble, because you have to be able to say no, and that's not an easy thing to do in Western civilization: turn around or choose a different slope, without a tangible reason for doing so. There might be some things that tell me it's probably OK, but making a mistake can kill you.
What would be even worse in my world would be if one of my ski partners got killed while I was out with them. That would be just devastating. And I see that in my job; you interview people who've been involved with accidents where people have been hurt or killed, and you see what it's done to people who survived a bad accident when their partner didn't. It's crushing. It can destroy somebody's life forever. Having that experience can often make me a little more conservative in my quest for righteous Colorado powder.
That being said, several times a year I will have a backcountry experience where I will tell myself, for the rest of my life, I will never be able to match this. It's a combination of the environment that you're in, it's the friends that you're with, it's the weather, and it's just this wonderful feeling of standing on the summit of a beautiful peak in Colorado -- I've never experienced anything in life that even comes close to matching that.
There are times when I'm on a ski tour, and I kind of got this from a friend of mine who was one of my mentors. We were doing a big tour in the San Juans along this ridge, and he would just look down this incredible bowl, and he'd go, "Death." And we'd just keep going.
So a lot of my decision making, when I'm deciding whether to go down this path or not, I ask myself, "Is the risk here death?" And obviously, enjoying what I do so much, I don't want to cut it short by any stretch of the imagination. So I ask myself, "If I screw up here and make a bad decision, am I going to die?" If the answer is yes, then maybe I'm in a place I don't want to be.
Personally, I think my gut plays at least a 50 percent role in my decision making. And I think that gut feel comes from experience.
Taking a Level 1 avalanche class and going to three days of instruction, by no stretch of the imagination does it give you all the tools you need to survive in avalanche terrain. Basically, you've just started into kindergarten.
You really have to change your paradigm when you become a backcountry skier in that we don't necessarily look for reasons to do something, we should be looking for reasons NOT to do something.
There's just days when you have to throttle back a bit. And say, "I'm here for one reason. Why am I here? Am I here for the experience of being in the mountains and enjoying this, or am I here solely for the experience of deep powder skiing." I think eventually you're going to discover that you're here for the experience of this environment, period.
It's a hard thing to say no when heaven is two feet below your ski tips.