All winter in four days

 I went into the 25/26 season with an Ikon 3-pack of day tickets. December, January and February blew by while I kept mt. biking and focusing on fire stuff. I told people I'd use them when the snow got good. Climate change brought us the lowest snowfall in recorded history, so by the end of March and I needed to use these tickets.

I contacted my brother in-law who works at Monarch to see if he was around and he said I should join him at Monarch and he'd have a comp ticket for me. With four days lined out, gear was loaded into my fine German steed and the mountain roads unwound before me. First stop Mary Jane.

The parking lot scene was pretty mellow. A few aging campers circled a portable fire pit and shared their thoughts on the snow conditions. They advised going to the Winter Park side. I chatted up a parking lot attendant and thanked him for his service. He too said if I want anything decent, go to WP.

I slipped into my boots and looked up at the runs. Brown dirt patches littered the mountain and the main run above me only had a sliver of snow running down the side that was skiable. But I love Mary Jane, that's why I came here. I skated to the Super Gauge Express and breezed through the empty maze. There was no lift line, only people standing in the maze fixing gear or working their phones. One other guy sat down on the chair with me as we headed up the hill.

That's how I met Charlie. Charlie was sixty five and planned on retiring this year. He had grown up skiing on a podunk hill in Minnesota and moved to Colorado when he was young. Not only was he financially fit, but a short, wiry build kept him athletic into his sixth decade.

I figured this out quickly as we took our first run and I struggled to keep up with his fast karate chop turns. For ten runs I skied with this guy and he never let up. His style was classic ski school technique, each turn fast and controlled. The only time I could get ahead of him was if I had a chance to point it and bomb McConkey style past him.

On the lift rides up we talked about life, careers and skiing. I asked if he wanted to make some laps at the Winter Park side and he scoffed, "I never ride over there, I only ski Mary Jane." So that's how it went, we made one water break but mostly just made lap after lap. Eventually he had to cut out and I bid him farewell and a happy retirement. 

With day one under my belt I headed to Leadville for the night and Copper the next day. Copper still had some nice coverage and I started the morning pinning it down mostly empty groomers. The terrain park looked really enticing but I wasn't sure about bringing my geezer steez into the packed line up. Late season booter sessions have always been one of the best parts of spring skiing.

That's when I rode up with Ryan the Ripper. One of my ice breaker questions for a chair lift ride is to ask what tricks people are working on. Sometimes this question falls flat, but with him he quickly listed tricks he had recently dialed in as well as goals he had set for the day.

Ryan was in his twenties and had only been skiing for four seasons. He was a solid, confident skier and was pushing his park skills every time he got on the mountain. I've seen this fast track from beginner to advanced with mountain bikers who got their first bike during covid. Ryan's drive and focus was contagious. He stated that he was going to nail a 360 off one of the large park jumps so by the time we unloaded at the top I knew I wanted to follow him down the hill.

Skiing with a young park rat was my ticket into the crowded start hill above the medium sized kicker. I dropped in and did a safety grab, with a safety air and a safety landing. 

Ryan had asked me to film for him so I picked a good spot and he sent it. He stomped the three and then went on to hit a series of rails. We made park laps until last chair and his 360's kept getting cleaner.

For the second Copper Day I joined my brother and our buddy Aaron. All three of us had transplanted from the Northwest corner of Connecticut in the early nineties. We learned to ski on the icy slopes of Mohawk and followed the call of the big mountains out west. Skiing with my boys is always fast, fun and familiar.

Sunday morning I left Leadville and headed south to Monarch. At Twin Lakes road I saw a dude carrying a skateboard and hitchhiking. I judged his appearance and decided it fell into the parameters of mountain town worker and not homeless drifter. I hadn't picked up a hitchhiker in a decade so I was happy to pick him up and check off another square on my road trip bingo card. 

He hopped in graciously, he just needed a lift to Buena Vista. We made some small talk about his broken down car, then we talked about Leadville. I was actually feeling a little disappointed, was this hitchhiker just going to be a normal, stable person with car trouble? I was hoping for at least a little crazy...and we got there.

He started explaining to me that Leadville and these other mountain towns were actually much older than they appeared. In fact, when the gold miners arrived in the 1840's most of this mining equipment and mines were already here.

Hitcher: I've been hiking way out in the hills and seen a metal cable as thick as my arm just laying out there.

Me: uh huh, that's abandoned mining equipment.

Hitcher: You really think some cowboy carried that cable out there on horseback? It's way too heavy.

Me: well, they used burro's mostly and yeah, it was really hard work.

Hitcher: There's no way cowboys dug straight into solid rock.

Me: Miners used rock drills and dynamite to blast into solid rock, I'm not saying it was easy, they were really tough dudes.

Hitcher: Have you noticed how the doorways to all the oldest buildings are like ten or twelve feet tall?

Me: uhh, I guess I haven't.

Hitcher: Or the chimney in Salida? You really think cowboys built that with ladders? It's like two hundred feet tall. Are you gonna haul bricks two hundred feet up a ladder? I know I'm not gonna do that kind of work!

Me: I think if that's the best job around, and I needed to haul bricks up scaffolding to feed my family, I would do it. So... if 1840's Coloradans weren't capable of building this stuff, who did.

Hitcher: Look, I'm not saying it was a race of giants. But, it makes you think.

Me: wow man, it really does. Well, here we are, Buena Vista.

The actual conversation went a little more in depth. I found myself vehemently defending the capability of the human race and he suggested several Youtube videos I should watch to get a better understanding of the "Giants built everything" hypothesis. I was still pondering our discussion as I pulled into the parking lot at Monarch and found my brother in-law Brian.

He was chilling with some other employees as they all prepared to open the mountain for one last day. A voice came over radio in his chest harness stating "anyone with moderate to advanced hacky sack skills please report to the southwest corner of the main lot." 

Brian handed me two day tickets and we made a plan to meet up later. Longtime friend of the Blog Kevin arrived soon after and offered me a breakfast beer.

*unimportant sidebar* In 1994 I bought my first mountain bike and started riding the singletrack of the front range. I mostly wore cut-off jeans, or Dickies shorts and a cotton t-shirt. As I progressed I decided I needed something more breathable to ride in. While perusing a thrift store for something more sporty and I found a maroon football jersey with white stripes. The thick ventilated nylon seemed to always be the right temperature and this became my mountain biking uniform for about the next decade. I never got into road cycling jerseys and I always liked the false sense of elbow protection a 3/4 length sleeve offered.

I chose to wear my old bike jersey on this ski trip because of the warm spring temps and I thought it was funny how 2025 gave the number 67 a new relevance. I thought maybe the fad had died down until I started hearing the reaction it got on the slopes. Calls of 6-7 rained down from the chair lift and I saw children tugging their friend's sleeve and pointing at me. Young adult snowboarders made the hand gesture at me.

I always try to ski with some flare and I like getting attention. There's a reason my favorite ski run is any trail under the lift line. Naturally I felt I needed to ski in a style appropriate for my new identity. I needed to embody the spirit, nay, the essence of 67.

How would 6-7 ski? I decided that 6-7 meant lots of straight lining, lots of skiing switch, lots of jumping and doing stupid trick like tip grabs and spread eagles. It turns out 6-7 isn't much different from how I normally ski. But the closing day conditions allowed me to add the element of skiing fast across long stretches of bare dirt. Skiing across dirt is actually a lot easier than I thought, and coincidentally I had the perfect equipment with my Candide Thovex signature series sticks.

It's with that mind frame that Kevin and I proceeded to tear down the mountain in proper style. Brian would meet us for a lap or two and then see some other friends he needed to catch up with. As the day went on the snow started getting sticky and the lifties gave up on maintaining the loading and unloading ramps. We would walk across rocks to get on the lift and then dodge them again at the top.

Many of the ski area employees just bailed and started partying,  Brian actually had to be the responsible one and make a final trash run across the mountain. Kevin and I helped in a fun scavenger hunt style challenge of pulling all the trash bags off the top of the mountain and skiing down with them.

We kept banging out laps as the snow got slower and the day wound down. Eventually Brian gave fist bumps and good byes to one of the lifties, then we boarded the last chair of the year as the rope got pulled across the maze behind us. It was only four days but it felt like a full season to me. Skiing with friends in Colorado is one of the main pillars in my life. Sure, it's not as frequent as it once was, but it doesn't take much to fully rekindle the flame. It's the reason I left home at 18 and the reason I've stayed. Colorado mountains have an energy that heals the soul. Cheers to everyone out there who understands this.