TELLURIDE — At the moment, life in the no fall zone is very good indeed. Dicey, a bit nerve-rattling, perhaps a tad tumultuous, but all things considered, not too shabby.
I can’t take credit for naming this place just beyond the rope-wrapped boundaries of the Telluride Ski Resort. That claim belongs to ski moviemaker James Kleinert, whose forthcoming film offering titled “Life in the No Fall Zone” focuses on the ski mountaineering descents of the Little Wasatch Face and the surrounding San Juan Mountains south of the resort. But I’ve been there, or at least close enough to count, from my perspective.
No, I’ve never skied “Grandfather Couloir” or “The Why Couloir,” but I got a pretty good glimpse of them during a day in the Bear Creek backcountry about a week ago, and an even better view from the vantage of Kleinert’s camera lens last year. They are harsh, unforgiving places, steep and narrow spaces between rocks hanging precariously close to areas known as “The Oblivion Bowl” and “The Graveyard,” where Greyhound bus-sized blocks of snow decompose alongside whole trees, uprooted and frozen, and those others splintered like toothpicks.
In truth, it isn’t such a happy place when you consider the possibilities. Yet almost everyone you meet there is smiling, laughing, giddy even. And most are willing to share.
That may have more than a little to do with the historic season of 2008, when record snowfalls in the San Juans opened up rare ski mountaineering routes on the ominous west face of Little Wasatch to descents by Josh Geetter, Kim Havell, Rick Willis, snowboarder Jason Troth and others captured by Kleinert’s camera.
Life in the no fall zone was good then, and Good Lord willing, continues to be today.
It’s a bit of a strange sensation, all this goodwill surrounding the San Juan sidecountry that others and I have always considered sacrosanct. With a backcountry background emerging from the more competitive confines of Eagle and Summit counties, the eager sharing of information on safe snow and where to go in the Bear Creek basin served as a refreshing surprise to someone more accustomed to the secrecy shrouding places like the East Vail Chutes.
As we pass the anniversary of two skier deaths occurring on consecutive weeks in East Vail avalanches last year, I’m once again struck by the contrast in attitude. It’s hardly uncommon for core East Vail crews to shrug off others following in their footsteps, keeping silent about their preferred routes. Even telltale nicknames for slopes such as “Charlie’s Death Chute,” where one of last year’s accidents took place, are often swept under the snow despite being vastly more descriptive than the more common reference to “CDC.”
In Telluride, meanwhile, films such as Kleinert’s showcase the lines without glorifying them, scaring viewers with helmet-camera footage and educating them with a backcountry safety section. Local photographer Brett Schreckengost went so far as to produce a fold-out photo map of the area’s most coveted backcountry terrain, titled Telluride Off-Piste, for sale at local shops this winter, naming the skiable runs after consulting with as many of the local sages as he could find.
“I think a big difference is that we don’t have that big urban population so close to us, so we really aren’t as worried about a lot of other skiers coming out here and tracking out Bear Creek or dropping in on us while we’re out there,” local backcountry skier Ryan O’Hara said. “It’s really a pretty small community out here skiing this stuff, so you know most of the people and share a lot of information. Everyone wants everyone else to stay safe and have fun.”
The attitude could face a new test this winter as the addition of a new chairlift in Telluride’s Revelation Bowl expansion makes access to Bear Creek and the surrounding “no fall” terrain not only easy, but lustily enticing. The anticipated influx of sidecountry skiers viewing the lift as an escort service has sparked discussions of further resort expansion into the 1,700-acre basin.
The notion has been surprisingly well-received by many of the current backcountry skiers in the area, with at least one vocal exception outside of that user group.
“In the past it hasn’t been that big a deal. There hasn’t been a huge amount of backcountry skiers. This year, even with the awful snowpack we’ve had so far, there’s been a huge number of people going out there,” said 28-year San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, whose department is straining under the financial responsibility of search and rescue for injured or lost skiers in the drainage. “Expanding the ski area might be one solution, but there will just be another sidecountry for people to ski next to that. Something has to be dealt with. . . . We’ve dug a lot of people out of Bear Creek.”
