Ski mountaineers seek 'sense of adventure' in races
Photo by The Associated Press
By SCOTT WILLOUGHBY, THE DENVER POST
VAIL — For many, the onset of winter and the deep snows of February signal an annual closure of Colorado's high country. If a chairlift isn't available — and sometimes even if it is — interest in visiting a mountain peak lies dormant until flowers once again begin to bloom.
Others take a different approach.
For ski mountaineers, the mountains never close. Indeed, with the appropriate skill set and a proper amount of snow, Colorado's high country is more open than ever.
The dedicated ski mountaineer may qualify as a breed unto itself. Perhaps, in time, science will discover a gene linking the likes of Carbondale's Lou Dawson, who first tackled ski descents of all 54 Colorado fourteeners, to Aspen's Chris Davenport, who subsequently repeated the feat in a single calendar year. Maybe Kit DesLauriers, the first woman to ski Mount Everest and the Seven Summits, has similar DNA.
Whatever the link, it's evident that the gene can no longer be considered recessive.
More than 130 skiers started the Eddie Bauer Ski Mountaineering Race up, over and around Vail Mountain during the inaugural Winter Teva Mountain Games last Saturday. And while the race lacked the technical elements to put it on a par with a genuine alpine mountaineering expedition, the Elite division course did include more than 9,000 vertical feet of climbing across more than 20 miles of uphill and expert downhill skiing at elevations up to 11,500 feet.
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