The Last Ski Town
By Peter KrayThere’s no soft place to land in Silverton, Colorado. The jagged summits of the San Juan Mountains rise up like great gleaming castles that surround the horseshoe shaped valley in a kind of skier’s Shangri-La, shrinking the sunlight even in the summer so that winter often lasts for up to eight months a year. On the wide gravel streets wakes of dust rise up between the snows. The pretty two-story Victorian houses and 100-year-old miner’s cabins seem shrunken by hard weather and many of them are boarded up because the owners are gone for 11 months or for forever, or because the buildings are no longer fit to be homes.
Even the lone ski lift seven miles past town will only take you so far. After almost 2,000 vertical feet, the ride ends, and you have to hike from there.
“It’s pretty pure, as close to the backcountry as you can get at a ski area,” says Chris Davenport, an Aspen-based skier who recently completed a Herculean bid to climb and ski from the summit of all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks in a single year. “Skiing Silverton is like helicopter skiing from a chair.”
The chair runs from a base elevation of 10,400 feet to 12,300 feet, and you need to have a beacon, shovel and probe to even board. Once you disembark you need a guide to go further, except in the spring when you can go on your own. Storm Peak, the highest point, tops out at 13,487 feet above steep hanging snowfields and narrow precipitous chutes that slice down the mountain like waterfalls.
There is no grooming. No easy trail.
“It’s just you and the mountain, with absolutely no distractions, which drastically narrows down the potential segment of skiers that are actually prepared to ski there” says Rob Perlman, president of Colorado Ski Country USA. “There’s a Quonset hut for a base lodge, no running water, and a bunch of hardcore skiers and snowboarders focused on nothing but the hill.”
Perlman said in the six years since the area opened (in January of 2002), the stark simplicity of Silverton has generated a veritable clear cut of media exposure. In countless articles the skiing at Silverton Mountain has been described as “Backcountry Lite” and “Lift-Assist Ski Touring.” And the town itself has been described as a kind of ski camp at the edge of the world, with nothing to distract the powder pilgrim from the mountains and snow.
That’s mostly true.
Winter Solitaire
Red Mountain Pass lies between Ouray and Silverton—an avalanche-choked section of U.S. Highway 550 dubbed the “Million Dollar Highway.” Since 1992 Colorado’s Department of Transportation has worked to reduce avalanche fatalities on this treacherous stretch of two-lane blacktop bulldozed and blasted into Red Mountain’s red-iron oxide rock flank.
Colorado’s highway bureaucrats put it this way: “No other populated community in the conterminous United States has such a potential for isolation due to avalanche-related road closure, which disrupts daily delivery of mail, goods and services and access to medical services.”
Some 30 years before Silverton’s chairlift got built, Mountain Gazette’s George Sibley wrote a classic four-part essay on the self-imposed, winter-long isolation the town’s denizens endure. Skiers were mostly alpine adventurers and self-sufficient wax-trackers—mountain-poor, ski-rich backcountry hippies with lungs like bellows. They’d mingle—and drink—with the town’s miners when avalanches would slam shut Red Mountain Pass, Molas Pass and Coal Bank Pass.
Sibley defined that sense of mountain monkhood, a spirit that pervades this place still, as a tradeoff between deep powder and poverty. His friend, Jim Wallace, summed it up: “When times are good, you don’t want to leave; when times are bad, you can’t.”
And when you can’t there’s Silverton Cemetery, a silent sentinel situated alongside a ski-hill road carved into a pine-clad hillside in a hard won series of steppes. Hundred year-old headstones chronicle a litany of lives cut short by mountain misadventures and gravity’s eternal pull; young miners who crossed prairies or oceans to scramble atop cold crags in search of underground fortunes.
They were “murdered by snowlide,” shot in “a barroom affray,” tossed into ravines by out-of-control ore buckets, or felt their bodies purged, excruciatingly so, by deadly influenza. A small brick building at the cemetery’s entrance would hold their frozen remains through the winter, waiting for a few warm weeks of summer before digging into the dirt. Long since closed, this solitary cemetery holds 3,000 holes filled with bones, six times the number of people now living in Silverton.
In the early 1900s Silverton, the only town in San Juan County, boomed with the rush for riches buried deep in its rocks. Silverton was a brief, shining, mining Mecca: 5,000 residents, four railroads, gold and silver mines up every trail. But when the mines played out they fled as fast as they had come in search of another Mecca.
Drive out of Silverton either way and ghost towns are tucked near every turnout or dirt road. Skeleton shacks with blown out windows, wind-bleached walls, yellow-tinged tailings and rusted-out ore buckets are all that remain of Eureka, Buffalo Boy and Howardsville.
Of course some of those same roads eventually lead to the Eldorado-like riches of places like Aspen, Telluride and Utah’s Park City, too; former mining towns now famous for endless ski runs, chocolate shops, wine bars and $500 a night hotels, where the next generation of miners learned nature makes many kinds of gold and decided to sell the snow.
The Chairlift
When Aaron Brill and Jen Ader unveiled the notion of a single chairlift-served mountain in the fall of 2000, the number of kindergarten kids in Silverton had shrunk so low folks were about to shut the school’s doors.
Barstool chatter about a pie-in-the-sky ski area was common given the untouched powder and the occasional speed-skiing contests. But nothing had ever come of it. Year-round residents stayed well enough fed on tourists hitching summer rides on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. And there was still some mining money to keep lives afloat in the winter. But bean counters shut Sunnyside Mine in the early 1990s and December and January became as lonely as the dark side of the moon. When snow fell, restaurants closed and locals went on welfare.
“Kids here used to think we were stupid for working in the schools because they could always make twice as much at the mine,” recalls Greg Swanson, the mayor and a former Silverton schoolteacher. “There was a lot of money then, but when the mines closed it just disappeared.”
As we sat sipping coffee in the Avalanche Café in late November anyone could see there wasn’t enough business to keep much open between summer railroad rides or when the chairlift starts to roll. Everyone is on a first name basis and “Wolfie,” a free roaming black wolf-dog hybrid, is what we’re talking about thanks to a photo on the Silverton Standard’s front page.
Swanson says the ski area has injected new energy into town, along with an influx of young, healthy outsiders seeking opportunity in the outdoors. Without that lift, he says, the town might have shut down. “If that ski area wasn’t here,” he adds, “then I think we might even be worse off than we were 10 or 15 years ago.”
In 1999 the Brills, since married, were ski-bumming 29-year-olds living in Montana. Inspired by New Zealand’s so-called club fields, where open runs and peaks are accessible via a rope tow or T-bar, they began searching for a place where they could combine lift-served skiing with backcountry adventuring.
The blueprint was simple—a wild mountain with a long ridgeline looming over steep chutes and open bowls. They figured a single chairlift up the tree line would “spot” skiers the first couple thousand feet; then let them loose beyond the boundary ropes. Like Jackson Hole’s Cody Bowl or Taos’ Kachina Peak, it would be free skiing on a magnificent scale.
Silverton’s natural setting and economic need perfectly fit the bill, recalled Aaron Brill. “We were looking for the best terrain, but we wanted a place that needed us, too,” he said. “We wanted a community to get behind what we were trying to do.”
Skinny and serious, Brill is a wiry redhead in his mid-30s who is not the kind to wait long for interviews. When we meet in Silverton Mountain’s downtown offices, upstairs from the Miner’s Tavern Bar, it’s easy to see how the couple’s focus on the mountain has left the office unused.
The air is heavy with dust and old mining ghosts. Sitting behind a worn wooden desk, Jen Brill says the bodies were stacked downstairs when the influenza epidemic hit (in 1918) and that sometimes late at night she hears music sneaking up the stairs. Town meetings, plays and dances were put on here. But presently the entire space is bare of anything except a computer, new skis, some stickers, snow safety handbooks and a few worn and stained chairs.
On the mountain, Aaron Brill has a reputation for working hard, sawing down trees for the liftline with just his dogs for spotters, humping bags of cement straight up the slope and spending 12 hour days hand-digging lift tower holes because he reportedly would “be damned to pay to have that done by helicopter.”
An Environmental Impact Statement was required to approve the ski area: standard procedure for sure, but particularly interesting because the public land Silverton Mountain skis on belongs to the Bureau of Land Management. Every other ski area in the US that utilizes public land does so through the U.S. Forest Service.
Neil Artz’ company, Cirrus Ecological Solutions, did the study for the proposed area. BLM officials were concerned, and rightly so, over the perceived danger of a non-traditional ski area. “The agency’s concerns were about what kind of hazards the public might be exposed to, including avalanche, rock falls, falling off rock bands and then the remoteness of the place.”
Tall and lean, a self-proclaimed Utah cowboy, Artz said Brill is a perfect reflection of his hill. “I remember when I went out to see the lift alignments, there was this guy in a straw hat all grimy with sweat holding a chainsaw and I asked him where I could find Aaron Brill.”
Brill’s hands-on approach surprised Artz, who deals with the big corporations that run most western ski areas. He was also surprised by the near resounding unanimity of approval for the project. Well-heeled, well-educated residents of many western ski towns tend to be knowledgeable about environmental impact statements and often weigh in against expansion plans. Not here.
“Locally, there were two sources of public opposition,” Artz remembers. “It was just a handful of people. I could probably name them for you.”
One, a handful of backcountry skiers, wanted to keep things as they were; they had found skiing’s final sanctuary and it was time to shut the door. The other was Jim Jackson. He had dreamt of a project diametrically opposed to the Brills. Jackson, an Aspen businessman, had wanted to build a more intensive infrastructure for a ski area, and Jackson fought Brill’s plan from the get-go.
In 2004, the Durango Herald reported that Jackson had filed a lawsuit against the Brills and the area for trespassing. The Herald also reported that in 2005, in an unprecedented move still argued over, San Juan County condemned Jackson’s land on grounds that he was interfering with avalanche control.
By then Brill’s chair had been running for three years and had become a compelling town symbol of sorts—the combined thrill of skiing and the thrill of catering to skiers. It was a financial lifeline digging for tourist dollars in fresh fallen snow.
To powder aficionados, Silverton was like a church revival where accomplished skiers could drop into the backcountry from a chair. And to a business bloated on real estate, butter-smooth slopes and five-dollar French fries, it looked like an upraised middle finger. “The winter sports industry has been so overtaken by constantly unveiling new developments to excite the media that it’s nice to go someplace so simple,” says Fourteener expert Davenport. “Silverton’s like a throwback to the ‘40s and ‘50s where you just go where you want to go. And what’s new is the snow.”
The Town
Skiing pumps $2.6 billion into Colorado coffers every year and is key to the state’s tourism industry. That’s second only to energy extraction but doesn’t begin to scratch the mountain of revenue skiing generates in real estate sales.
Racking up profits on lift ticket sales alone is impossible. Most ski areas are nothing more than cold weather golf courses, winter’s window dressing for pushing high-priced condos and second homes. For example, early plans for a private ski area on Battle Mountain, above the town of Minturn, Colorado called for eight chairlifts and almost 2,000 building sites adjacent to an already choked I-70 corridor.
Because two passes, Red Mountain and Molas, flank the entry into Silverton via Highway 550 there’s few opportunities for a bustling bedroom community. Two thousand home sites in Silverton is a madman’s dream.
“You can only build one home on five acres of property here,” says Anne-Britt Ostlund of Silverton Realty, explaining that most of the available land is on old 10-acre mining claims. “It would be very hard to come up with a large enough tract do any kind of building on a big scale.”
In the six years since Silverton Mountain opened average home prices have gone up, particularly in the past three years. But Ostlund adds, “Silverton was enormously under-priced compared to Durango and Ouray. It was so cheap here that I think it kind of sought its own level.” Her clients are a mix of people buying to invest, to vacation, or to be part of the community. As it stands, people living out-of-state own more than half the town’s property and 60 percent is owned by people living outside San Juan County’s boundaries. And they’re not skiers.
“When Silverton Mountain opened I think there was some speculation that this was the next up and coming ski town, but the majority of people we see want to come here to hike and bike. Summer is still our best sell.”
Judy Zimmerman, San Juan County’s assessor is more succinct. She tells me, “I don’t know a single person who has moved here because of the ski area.” Zimmerman says there are 690 homes in San Juan County, 125 of them in a condominium complex just over Molas Pass and at the county’s edge. Thirteen residential units were sold in Silverton last year at an average price of $300,000. In 2006 there were 12 sales averaging $365,000, and in 2005 there were 21 sales at about $300,000 each.
“I don’t think you’d really say that we’re booming with growth,” Zimmerman says. “We’ve also got 65 kids in school this year, and we issued 79 dog tags (not including Wolfie’s), which means that there might be more dogs than kids in town.”
Zimmerman thinks the town would benefit from 500 more residents but long winters and a lack of amenities often prove too hard for most.
As if on cue, John Daughtrey from Tyler, Texas, walks into Zimmerman’s office. Daughtrey owns land in Silverton. He says he might even live there if the town did a better job attracting more people. “I don’t know why they don’t promote this town better,” Daughtrey complains. “There ought to be an ice skating rink and a winter extravaganza. Why, we have a symphony in Tyler.”
“We’ve got a brass band,” Zimmerman counters.
Daughtrey would like to see an ordinance banning old trucks parked in yards and thinks the town should better maintain its buildings and street. “This is a gorgeous town,” he says. “And I want to change it so that I can move here. I want to be able to get a decent steak or shrimp dinner.”
The Cold
Real mountain folk say they live in fear of having their hometown listed as one of Outside Magazine’s 50 best outdoor places to live or one of Parade’s best little towns in America. It would drive property values sky high and Range Rover driving trustafarians would pour in. Jen Ader Brill cringes when I tell her that my working title for this article is ‘The Last Ski Town.’
“I’m afraid,” she says, “that you might give people the wrong idea.”
Since Silverton Mountain opened, only three other businesses have started and are still open: Scotty-Bob Skis, Mountain Boy Sledworks and the Canyon View Motel. “People can’t move here just expecting to ski,” she says. “They have to expect to work really hard. And I don’t know that many people who would move here to work really hard for seven years.”
The number of years is notable. In October the Bureau of Land Management finally issued a 40-year lease to Silverton Mountain, nearly seven years after being presented with the idea. The area averages 80 skiers a day and the snowfall that comes so heavy so early and stays so late has given its employees first tracks in Colorado almost every year. That’s why it’s hard to imagine that with so many hardcore skiers and snowboarders coming to town, some might not want to stay for a season or two.
People who saw the town before and after Silverton Mountain’s arrival say it’s like comparing the moon to the sun. And other businesses are also betting on the snow. Venture Snowboards, a boutique big-mountain Colorado snowboard brand, moved here from Durango a year ago. Kendall Mountain, the town’s 35-acre ski hill, replaced its 950-foot rope tow with a chair hoping to attract families and ski teams seeking to train early in the fall when only Silverton has good snow.
Still, Brice Hoskin thinks it would take one of the mines reopening for two or three hundred people to suddenly move here in a year. Hoskin, who owns Mountain Boy Sledworks, says finding employees is tough. His accountant and lawyer live in Grand Junction; his bookkeeper lives in Durango.
“If people really love winter, then we have plenty to offer,” says Hoskin. “I had one of my best sled runs in June last year.”
Sidebars
The Patron Saint
No one ever put Sacred Sex, snow and spirituality together quite like Dolores LaChapelle. As a founder of the Deep Ecology movement, she stressed humanity’s inextricable and often erotic relationship with nature, arguing that ritual, recreation and conservation created a kind of communion between self and snow. As an athlete, she was renowned as the “The world’s best woman powder skier,” making the first ski descent of Mt.’s Columbia and Snowdome in the Canadian Rockies, as well as Alta Utah’s Baldy Chute, where hundreds of people now ski every year. Her books, including Deep Powder Snow: 40 Years of Ecstatic Skiing, Avalanches, and Earth Wisdom, and Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep, are equal parts romance, philosophy and science, chronicling her complete awakening to the world. The former wife of groundbreaking avalanche researcher Edward LaChapelle, Dolores left Alta to move to Silverton in 1973, where she directed the Way of the Mountain Center, and where her impossibly long silver braid, wiry frame and easy manner were a fixture until her death reportedly from heart failure on January 22nd of last year.
The Pioneers
“That’s a stupid question,” Silverton Mountain founder Aaron Brill replies when asked why he didn’t quit when his high altitude dream kept being deferred. “Your options are to succeed or die.”
Skiing is filled with alpine Ahabs in search of frozen white whales. Ever since Union Pacific Railroad President Averill Harriman sent Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch in search of skiing’s prize catch in 1936 – Sun Valley, where Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper would launch that astrological alignment of ski towns and stars – the blank slopes of the Rockies have inspired countless searches for the perfect hill:
Ernie Blake found Taos through the window of a Cessna. Founded in 1955, he and his wife, Rhoda, lived in an eleven foot camper at the base of the area without power until 1963.
Pete Seibert was told he wouldn’t ski again after being seriously wounded by a mortar shell in World War II. But he first skinned, then skied Vail Mountain in 1957 and decided to build “the most beautiful ski resort in the world.”
Dave McCoy was a hydro engineer and Eastern Sierra ski club member who sold his Harley for 85 dollars to help pay for the Mammoth Mountain rope tow after noticing how the mountain had a special habit of holding snow.
The Producers
In most ski towns you have to import your girl. In Silverton you import your career. Take a (the) five minute drive down Main Street and back, and you’ll see no McDonald’s, Holiday Inn or Taco Bell. There isn’t even pizza delivery here.
But ScottyBob Skis, Mountain Boy Sledworks and Venture Snowboards saw Silverton as a unique high mountain spot to declare home court for the kinds of snow surfing tools they build. Klem and Lisa Branner moved the Venture factory, offices, dog and two fat cats to town just to build boards that match the amazing mountains and deep snow.
Lisa says, “It’s a pretty perfect testing laboratory when you can go skin into 13,000-foot peaks from right out your door.”
Pass to Peril
Brice Hoskin calls the high mountain passes that keep Silverton safe from the outside world “The Twin Walls of Kong.” The owner of Mountain Boy Sledworks says the roads over Red Mountain Pass north to Ouray (11,018 feet), and Molas (10,970 feet) and Coal Bank Pass (10,640) south to Durango shield the town with their snowslides, soft shoulders to eternity and slick road sickness of fear.
Denver Post writer Jason Blevins, a regular spring ski recluse since the mountain opened, says he drives Red Mountain with his seatbelt unhooked, door unlocked and one hand on the dog’s collar “in case we’ve got to get out of there.”
