Here are a few snapshots of mountain fun found in and around Denver when the city harvests the deepest fluff.
The price is right
Why go to the mountains when all you need is right out your front door? “Free and close is the best,” Chris Schmidt said.
With the snow piling deep, Chris Schmidt’s pals headed for the hills for some boarding.
“I’m too broke,” he told them. “I’m going to the Denver Skatepark. I got more snow than them only a few blocks from home.”
The 19-year-old student at Johnson & Wales University spent many hours with a friend the past week sculpting his own private jib paradise out of the several feet of snow blanketing the summertime skate park.
“We were all stoked for the storm, but after awhile we had to get out and do something,” he said as he shoveled snow for a ramp onto a steel rail. “Free and close is the best.”
Schmidt joined a small army of metro-area weekend warriors whose treasured wintertime mountain bounty fell outside their city doorsteps. Donning snowshoes and cross country skis, they hit their favorite bike trails. They hiked small hills and aired carefully crafted jumps. They looked beyond simply sledding and used a bit of creativity to conjure their mountainside thrills in metro Denver’s urban and snowy landscape.
“We usually like to do the backcountry stuff, but this is so cool. Urban snowshoeing,” said Doug Simerlink, who joined his wife, Katy, for an urban snowshoe romp along Cherry Creek and the South Platte last weekend.
“People were tripping out,” he said, when the pair, visiting from Long Beach, Calif., donned their snowshoes and winter regalia right out the door of their downtown hotel.
– Jason Blevins, Denver Post staff writer
Skiing Red Rocks Amphitheater
With a clear shot thanks to plowdrivers, a symphony in the snow plays out on winter’s stage.
It didn’t take much persuading. We had all heard of the powder harvesting available inside Red Rocks after the March Blizzard of 2003. We had been waiting ever since.
Denver’s recent dalliance with bountiful blizzards saw the heavens open once again, and we jumped at the chance. While most of the city whimpered under a blanket of Colorado’s finest snow, we would plunder the glorious fluff and ski to the stage at the most breathtaking music venue this side of Egypt’s pyramids.
Arriving via Interstate 70, we were ready for an arduous push to reach the bleachers. Would we have to skin several miles from the Matthews Winter trailhead? Could we at least drive to the park’s entrance?
Turns out plowdrivers – everyone’s snow-stomping heroes – had cleared all the roads of the park, and we drove up rather icy roads to the park’s deserted Trading Post. David Goodman, George Allen and I skinned up the steps, using handrails for the steeper pitches and found the sandstone wonder brimming with a treasure of untrammeled snow. It was an inspiring sight.
We climbed the steps flanking the resonant basin and ripped as many laps as our legs allowed. A kit of pigeons cooed their applause from their rock-side vantage point.
We farmed diligently tight turns, but not too tight. Cross into another’s tracks and we quickly found ourselves on a speedy entrance ramp to the very unsoft netherworld of wood and concrete lurking under the downy blanket. In five laps, the powder was churned and ready for another dump. And we had logged a long-anticipated quintessential Colorado experience.
– Jason Blevins
Mountain master … Green Mountain
The reward for endless clearing of the driveway is skiing from the summit.
I was beginning to think all those hours spent snowblowing my 200-foot driveway, over and over again, were worth it for this.
Two days after the first big Front Range snowstorm, our street still hadn’t been plowed and I was getting stir-crazy, so I set out on touring skis for the greenbelt a block from our house. An hour and 15 minutes later I was on the summit of Green Mountain, an 800-foot climb from where I live near Red Rocks Community College.
It was late afternoon. In the west, the sun had just peeked out from under the cloud deck, casting long, enchanting shadows on the wide, flat summit. Wind-drifted snow created beautiful shapes, even cornices on far-flung ridges. It was very much like being on a high peak in the backcountry. With scant vegetation and most of it covered by snow, it was like being above the timberline.
But I was in Lakewood, roughly 12 miles from downtown Denver and 1,500 feet above it. Below me to the east lay a panorama of the white-blanketed metro area. To the west I could see Red Rocks Ampitheater and Mount Evans, to the north downtown Golden and Longs Peak.
I had seen a handful of snowshoers on the way up, and on the way down, one guy making telemark turns on a short pitch in a gully. That looked like so much fun I came back eight days later – after the second storm dropped an additional 27 inches on Golden – with my alpine touring gear.
This time it only took 50 minutes to reach the summit because I didn’t have to break trail. On the way up I saw an inviting slope on the north side of the mountain with lots of ski tracks, but another slope just south of that appeared to be a beautiful pitch for skiing and it hadn’t been touched. Why? Did it look from up close like it could slide? I imagined the headline: Denver Post ski writer first-ever avalanche fatality on Green Mountain.
But when I got there, it looked perfectly safe and it was begging to be skied. I put some sweet tracks on it, climbed the ridge again, skied the other side and headed for home certain all those hours snowblowing the driveway were worth it.
– John Meyer, Denver Post staff writer
