Focus on Ski & Mountain Travel:
Backcountry  Bonanza

KREMMLING, Colo. — At the beginning of a run, there’s that familiar pause as a skier stares down several hundred feet of vertical. But there was something different about the mountain at Bluebird Backcountry here: the trip up. No lifts brought skiers to the top. Every foot that skiers descended had first to be earned by skinning uphill.

Bluebird operated this winter on a trial basis of just 15 days on an isolated mountain 30 miles southeast of Steamboat Springs, Colo. The concept is unique. Its 400 inbound acres were ungroomed and had no lift access, just like any true backcountry area. Passes were limited to 300 daily to keep crowds at a minimum. But Bluebird offered the safety of ski patrol and avalanche mitigation.

Its approximately 1,400 feet of vertical even had a trail map with the usual slope gradings of green, blue and black. The site had its share of challenging terrain, giving it broad appeal. But co-owner Erik Lambert said the primary target for Bluebird Backcountry was beginner backcountry skiers, people who have wanted to try it but haven’t quite known how to get started. 

The allure of the backcountry is not new, as it promises adventure, nature and pristine, fresh-powder turns for days, with no crowds. Couple that with advances in ski gear plus the urge for travelers to seek out bragging rights and that epic Instagram shot and the number of skiers venturing outside of resort boundaries is, anecdotally at least, on the rise.

But entry barriers remain high. After all, venturing into unmarked terrain is intimidating for a newcomer, not to mention downright dangerous. 

So some skiers and riders are seeking out backcountry guides and ways to “earn their turns” in areas that are patrolled and monitored for avalanches. 

“I think that our consumer is evolving a little and wanting something different and something a little more out of the cookie-cutter ski vacation,” said Anelise Bergin, the director of communications at Ski Utah.

“I’m sure social media and the internet are really what have made that more widely available or more of an interest for people,” she said. “They see all these people who spend time in the backcountry and say, ‘Hey, that person had a really special, unique experience, and from what I can get in the inbound, I want that.”

Powder Mountain in Utah, for example, has what it calls “unconventional lifts”: snowcat and shuttle bus operations to access terrain within the resort but beyond the ski lifts. 

Silverton is another example of a backcountry-like experience. Its trail map consists of a general outline of a snow-coated mountain, and the one chairlift won’t get skiers to runs like Nightmare or Vodka Shots or Gnar Couloir. Hiking is the word of the day. Terrain is patrolled but ungroomed, and guests are required to travel with backcountry staples, such as a beacon, shovel and probe, but aren’t required to have avalanche training. Guided and unguided tickets are offered.

In a 2017 “meet the guides” Q&A on its website, one guide said, “My favorite thing about skiing at Silverton mountain is the lack of pressure to ‘get the good snow before it’s gone.’ Nobody’s throwing elbows in the lift line or trying to breathe down your neck on the bootpack.”

At Red Mountain Resort in British Columbia, a daily cat shuttle takes guests to the inbound Mount Kirkup section for glades and open runs for advanced skiers. 

Heli-skiing operator CMH Heli-Skiing & Summer Adventures, which is generally recognized as a pioneer of heli-skiing operations, said that over the years it’s introduced a number of trip options to cater to different levels of ability and comfort. 

“For example,” Julia LoVecchio, director of marketing, said, “we offer Powder Intro trips for those who are new to heli-skiing to introduce them to the backcountry with a more mellow pace and terrain and extra coaching from their guides to hone their backcountry skiing/riding skills on their own terms.”

The skinny on skinning

“Earn your turns” is more than a phrase or a hashtag (#earnyourturns, Instagram it). It’s a backcountry skier’s way of life. It basically means that a skier has to put in some sweat equity to get up the hill in order to enjoy the ride back down. 

And skinning, or uphilling, is growing in popularity amid a resort-skiing explosion.

Using the skinning method, skiers attach thin strips to the bottoms of their skis. One side is the adhesive that attaches to the ski; the other side is a nylon-and-mohair grip that enables users to slide upward in the snow. The boots and bindings connect at the toe, cross-country or telemark style, for uphill travel and then click in at the heel, alpine style, for the trip down. Snowboarders use a splitboard: a snowboard that can be split into two planks.

Skinning has long been a way for skiers and riders to get to pristine powder points where lifts don’t go. But even in ski-lift areas, uphill travel before the lifts open is an opportunity to get a jump on first tracks. 

Katie Ertl, the senior vice president of mountain operations at Aspen Skiing Co., said the company doesn’t officially track the number of skinners on its four mountains. But anecdotally, she said, uphilling has grown “substantially.”

“Ten years ago, if we had 30 people going uphill in a day, it would be surprising; that was high,” she said. Now, “there’s many times on Buttermilk where we’ll have 200 people a day going uphill.”

In the case of Aspen, Ertl said, uphillers are in it more for the exercise than for a backcountry-lite experience. However, Aspen’s mountains do rent uphill skis and gear and offer classes for newbies so they can find their footing — applying the skins to their skis, adjusting their pace, learning routes and rules and how to ski back down — to try skinning in a safer setting before heading out of the resort gates. 

“I think what’s so fascinating about backcountry is that you’re in an environment that’s uncontrolled,” Ertl said. “You’re seeking out areas that people don’t go to. I think what you gain from in-resort skinning is more about the exercise and the social nature of it and the training opportunity. It gives you the lungs and the legs to go into the backcountry.”

As the trend takes hold, resorts are setting or modifying their uphill policies on a case-by-case basis. According to a survey of National Ski Area Association resorts at the end of the 2019 season, about 57% of them allow some form of uphill access, and it tends to be more prevalent at larger resorts.

At Mammoth Mountain in California, for example, uphilling is allowed during operating hours on dedicated routes. At Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, early-riser access for uphillers starts at 6 a.m.  

Powder has an entire section of its resort dedicated to ski-and-skin in its Lefty’s Canyon, but a lift ticket is required to get there. Guests are also allowed to skin up the same routes as its snowcats take to nonlift areas.

Aspen has taken an enthusiastic stance toward uphilling, and the practice is permitted at all times at Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass. A page on its website is dedicated to uphill information.

Aspen offered four “full moon” dinners at its Cliffhouse at Buttermilk this season. Diners skin up, socialize and enjoy the view from the Cliff House deck and then ski down the 1,800-foot vertical with their route illuminated by headlamps or the moon. Ertl said the dinners can attract 400 to 500 uphillers over the course of the evening. “It just offers such a fantastic opportunity,” she said. 

The Bluebird model 

During its short season this year, Bluebird placed an emphasis on lessons, where students were taught basic uphill skiing skills along with how to use backcountry bindings, how to apply skins, how to read the snow and how to use beacons, avalanche probes and shovels.

One lesson-taker in early March was Boulder, Colo.-based psychiatric nurse practitioner Dayna Granston. She was once a backcountry skier but hadn’t been touring for 25 years. Bluebird helped persuade her to try again.

“It makes it so you can get back in the backcountry and not feel quite so intimidated,” Granston said.

Lambert said that he and co-founder Jeff Woodward have not yet decided if they will bring Bluebird back next year or where it would be located. But he’s optimistic they will reopen, this time for a full season of 80 to 100 days.

“I’m feeling very positive about the response and about the experience that we are providing,” he said. 

Guides in the backcountry

Almost everyone interviewed for this report stressed that skiers and riders who go beyond resort boundaries need to be prepared and educated about safety. But skiers who aren’t up for an “avy course” — intensive instruction on snowpack and avalanche awareness — can hire a guide who’s been through certification classes operated by organizations like the National Ski Patrol or the American Institute of Avalanche Research and Education. 

At Ski Utah, Bergin enthused about its Interconnect tour, in which guides take as many as 12 skiers to up to six Utah resorts in a day, along with the backcountry terrain between them. People, she said, are “hungering for unique, special experiences.”

Then there’s the big kahunas of backcountry powder turns: cat-skiing and heli-skiing. 

Imagine flying right up to the top of a mountain peak, grabbing skis from the outboard basket and then seeing the chopper flying away, leaving you and a small group alone in the silent mountains. 

“It’s a soulful experience,” said Ski .com chief marketing officer Dan Sherman. 

After a few moments of awe, the group starts clicking into their gear, the guide drops into the run, and the rest of the group follows, carving out giant, smooth tracks. “You’re skiing powder,” Sherman said. “You’re smiling your face off.” 

“Heli-skiing is awesome,” he said. “It is like the ultimate bragging right as a skier.”

At CMH, which was purchased in 2017 by Alterra Mountain Co., LoVecchio said that the company has “definitely” seen an interest in its experiences. “People are looking to escape resort crowds, and they see the value in having exclusive access to the amount of terrain we have at our lodges to themselves for their week of heli-skiing or hiking,” she said. “We see a large number of return guests year after year who we honestly treat like family, and we are also seeing an increase in new guests who are realizing that heli-skiing is more accessible than they may have previously thought.”

Skiers with deep pockets can spring for an entire multiday heli-skiing vacation with outfits like CMH or Chugach Powder Guides, based at the Alyeska Resort in Alaska. 

And Sherman said Ski.com has expanded its catalog of heli options, and they include daytrips, so that regular resort skiers can tack on a marquee skiing day. 

Ski.com works with travel advisors, and Sherman said the benefit is that advisors don’t have to be schooled in the minute differences between resorts and operators. “If an advisor says, ‘My client wants to go skiing for five days, and they want one of those days to be on a helicopter. Where can we go?’ then we can start putting quotes together and say, ‘Here’s three options.’” 

Cat-skiing is not as expensive as heli-skiing and can also get a guided group out of bounds for a special powder day. At Red Mountain, a cat company called Big Red Cats offers guests access to 20,000 acres of terrain with certified guides. 

At Aspen, Ertl said the Aspen Mountain Powder Tours cat-skiing operation, where groups pick up the snowcat at the top of Silver Queen gondola and which includes lunch catered by the Little Nell resort, is “unique.”

“You meet at the bottom of the mountain, take the gondola up, and you immediately pop into a cat,” she said. “All of a sudden, you’re off the resort. You ski down these incredibly wide-open runs, and you have these views that go for miles, to 14,000-foot peaks.”

The guides, she said, are “knowledgeable about the different pockets of powder.”