Defying Death to Ski a 100″ Storm at Wolf Creek

Trip Report: “Hungry Like the Wolf (Creek)…Again”

Let’s start with the givens:  (1) the universe is fundamentally unknowable; (2) time is an illusion created by our brains to find structure in the screaming chaos of existence; and (3) Wolf Creek gets a lot of goddamn snow.

I’ve studied snowsports for years, my dearest friends, and I can state with some certainty that snow is important.  There have been some promising experiments with hoverboards–as I learned in a trilogy of documentaries starring a teenage Michael J Fox and some elderly scientist–but the technology just isn’t there yet.  One day, though.  Oh yes, one day.

Anyway, snow has not been plentiful this season in the Rockies.  Most of January and February was dominated by a warm, sunny system that chipped away at base depths and brought frequent days of spring-like conditions to our favorite resorts.  But things change quickly in this unknowable universe, and the southern tip of Colorado’s San Juan mountains ended February with two weeks of shockingly snowy weather.  You can see it for yourself in this Wolf Creek snowfall calendar that I expertly cut and pasted from the essential ski blog OpenSnow.com:

I’m a terrible guesser.  The last time I renewed my driver’s license, I put “probably between three and five thousand pounds” for my weight.  But even I, a terrible guesser, was pretty confident that conditions around Wolf Creek would be worthwhile during an heroic storm cycle that brought over 100″ of snow in twelve days.  Armed with that forecast and our fattest skis, the Powder7 Team headed down Highway 285 to the hamlet of South Fork, Colorado–exactly one year to the day from our famous* first trip to Wolf Creek.

It was snowing on Thursday night when we arrived at Powder7 Manor in South Fork, it was snowing when we left on Tuesday afternoon, and, in between, it was snowing.  It snowed a lot, is what I’m saying.  Over that period, the resort base depths climbed from below 80″ to well over 100″.

In the interest of brevity, for this trip report I experimented with communicating the highlights via exaggerated gesturing instead of words.  But I found it didn’t suit the blog format.  Instead, here’s our Wolf Creek experience, as told through photos and the basic building blocks of language:  punctuation and emoticons.  All images can be embiggened with a click.

Friday, February 27th:  6″ of new snow, exclamation point.

Saturday, February 28th:  10″ of new snow, smiley face emoticon.

Sunday, March 1st:  16″ of new snow, two smiley face emoticons, exclamation point.

Monday, March 2nd:  10″ of new snow, giant smiley face emoticon, two exclamation points.

Tuesday, March 3rd:  13″ of new snow, two giant smiley face emoticons exploding into a hundred exclamation points.

And here’s a picture of what looks very much like, but probably isn’t, Zack jumping over Justin:

Wolf Burgers were there, too:

It was a trip of astonishing discoveries, Powder7 friends.  For example, this snowboarder discovered that the steep pitches accessible from the Knife Ridge will occasionally hold belly-deep snow:

I’d list all the worthwhile things we found at Wolf Creek, but I hate lists and do everything I can to avoid them.  Why?  Oh, I have my reasons.  And I’d list them for you if doing that wouldn’t be so ironic.  But I will say this:  lift tickets at Wolf Creek remain absurdly cheap, crowds are minimal, and there are glades for days.  And it’s not even four hours from Golden, if you travel well above the speed limit with no regard for road conditions or the safety of your passengers, Dan.

(What follows is Dan’s  account of the time he almost killed half of us:  “As we descended at a cautious pace down the slick road from the ski area to the town of South Fork, my trusty Subaru began to gently fishtail.  Suddenly, the sliding was less gentle.  The rear end of the car whipped wildly back and forth, inching us closer and closer to the unguarded cliff on our right, while I fought for control.  With no railing between us and a drop of several hundred feet to the mighty Rio Grande, we smashed through the flimsy road reflector marking the edge of the precipice.  That’s when I shouted “I’m putting us into the mountain!” and jerked the wheel left to send the car into the rocky wall on the other side of the road.  As it turns out, the massive 100″ storm had left a perfect cushion into which the Subaru plowed.  Within minutes, helpful passersby had dug us out and we lived to ski another day.  No lives were lost.  We can stop talking about this now.“)

But, inevitably, the storm tapered off, most of us badly injured ourselves trying to jump off things or over people, and it was time to say goodbye to Wolf Creek.  I think I’ll miss you most, Lift Tower #11.  You always “got” me.  Because ski trips, you see, like the ski season itself, are ephemeral.  Unless you go to the Southern Hemisphere when our northern ski season ends, I guess.  Or unless you consider that, in an infinitely expanding universe, there are, by necessity, an infinite number of Wolf Creeks being skied by an infinite number of Powder7 Teams…infinitely.  I think this paragraph really got away from me, there.  You can read more stuff like that in my new collection of essays, “Horrible Ways to End a Trip Report.”

Anyway, here’s another picture of Steve.  Goodbye.

* not literally famous–more like ironically famous in an obscure, non-famous way.