Highland Bowl-Special Place- Great Article

[Woodsy]

Fantastic article I ran across this morning.
Remembered hearing bits and pieces of this story, wasn't sure if alll were true.

I remeber hiking to the small section they opened in 97, the "Y" zones, with my Basalt roomate Don.
Still have a photo of that day. Skied it on my 200cm N170 s. Steepest thing I had ever skiied at the time.

Remmebr the first time I skied North Woods, visiting from UT. Hiked out with Pinner, trailing raddam and Janesaw. That was a great day too.

Skiied there a lot over the years, want to go back every day of every season.

You should too.

The long history of the long ridge
Alison Osius -
Fri 03/24/2006 12:00AM
Lou Dawson and John Isaacs wanted to ski Highland Bowl, the amphitheatre above the Aspen Highlands ski resort, and from its highest point. Skiing the Bowl had long been a concept -- anyone who sat at the Sundeck Restaurant on nearby Aspen Mountain could see it, within its embracing ridge -- and it had even opened to guided hiking/skiing tours a month earlier. It was February 1982.

The two did not want to ski by arrangement, though; to them this was another personal backcountry adventure. Neither did they want to be arrested and fined, however. They skinned up the ridge early and quickly to poach the run.

Highly experienced backcountry skiers, they carried shovels and beacons, but, hurrying to elude patrol, did not dig a pit, or test-ski.

The Bowl is on the east side of a curved ridge that rises to a 12,382-foot summit, its flanks offering steep 1,500-foot shots, divine snow, and plenty of avalanche potential.

Today on any nice day -- or, more so, on a powder day -- dozens of skiers may snake up the ridge, their skis on their backs. I saw 60 on the summit on a warm day two weeks ago. But it took a long time to reach this point. The stories from over the years, and the sustained efforts, despite setbacks and even great tragedy, to open this high arena are a complex history unknown even to many of the most loyal regulars.

That day Dawson skied first, laying down dreamy tracks for 100 feet. He dropped into his intended gully, and then suddenly the tails of his skis sank into sugar snow. Just as he tried to escape sideways, the slope went. His feet moving away beneath him, he stabbed at the wall with his poles, but was pulled down.

Dawson had always imagined he could swim, or ball himself up, if caught by an avalanche. Instead, he was flung, in roaring darkness, limbs maytagging. Pressure built up and his femur exploded amid crosscurrents of snow. His other leg broke as well.

After 1,200 feet in 10 seconds, Dawson stopped at the flats below, mostly buried but with his head fortunately only covered by a few inches of snow, which he shook off. Hidden in shadow, he watched Isaacs search for him, but lacked even strength to shout out.

Isaacs found him, dug him out, and set off for help. Hurt and hypothermic, Dawson watched Isaacs pound back up to the ridge. As he crossed it, he was, astonishingly, met by ski patrollers on snowmobiles, with Mountain Rescue members.

An Aspen man, Bob Limacher, watching through a home telescope, had seen the whole sequence. He called 911, where, he says, the dispatcher at first accused him of making a false report. Then dispatch contacted Mountain Rescue, who phoned patrol.

"Any longer in the Bowl and I would have died on the flats," Dawson would later write on www.wildsnow.com. He says today that the help "speeded up the rescue by two and a half or three hours." His body temperature was 94 degrees when he arrived in the emergency room.

Limacher says: "I was looking through the telescope at seven in the morning because I had (skied the Bowl) the day before, with the helicopter and ski patrol, and was looking for my tracks. It's a bizarre story. The odds of that were very slim." He saw Dawson drop into the gully, and make two turns: "Then I saw the crack, and he went flying down."

Over the years, various people had skied the Bowl, not necessarily legally. Two resort employees, Matt Wells and Jim Flanagan, survived a slide there in 1968. Locals including the brothers Theo and Mike Minor skied it numerous times, though not legally, in the 1970s. In 1979, however, the state of Colorado passed the Ski Safety Act, defining the responsibility of ski areas. Different ski companies interpreted it differently, and Highlands, then privately owned, felt the resort was responsible for its entire permit area, and obligated to crack down.

Dawson's experience sparked a personal reevaluation. He was newly 30, and had been starting to question the dangers in what he was doing, but was also at the height of his powers, having just completed a weeklong traverse of the Elk Mountains.

"I was at a junction when I was getting done with being the big risk taker, but I couldn't do it on my own, something had to break," he reflects. "I was so caught up in my own deal and so prideful, nothing was going to stop me. (But) I was going to get myself killed, or maybe others, charging along." Naturally something of a mystic, he segued into born-again Christianity. He also began to wish to share his experiences. He wrote his first guidebook during his recovery; four other books would follow, as well as "Wild Snow," a history of backcountry skiing. He backed off in terms of pushing it in deep snow, but over time became the only person to ski all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, for which he was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame.

The year 1982, according to a longtime patroller, Jeffrey "O.J." Melahn, saw 19 hiking tours, in February and March. In 1983, the mountain conducted no Highland Bowl tours simply because weather and snowpack were unsuitable. In 1984 four helicopter tours took place.

In March of that year, a disaster occurred that still resonates. Three ski patrollers doing avalanche-control work in Highland Bowl threw explosives from near the top and then, seeing no signs of danger, they skied lower, and set off more charges. The second charge triggered an avalanche below them, but also brought a large one down from above. All three died.

One of the men, Tom Snyder, had been with the team that rescued Dawson. The other two were Craig Soddy and Chris Kessler, the latter from a longtime Aspen ski family -- his father, Sepp, was a fixture at the Sundeck Restaurant, and skied well into his 80s. Craig, a newlywed, and Kessler, had been patrolling for four or five years, Snyder for six.

Though a longtime local, I realized only a year ago that three of the mountain's classic difficult runs -- Snyder's Ridge, Kessler's, and Soddbuster -- are named for them. At the top of Snyder's, a memorial bears a line from a telegram from Liam Fitzgerald on behalf of the Snowbird Ski Patrol: "It is always sad when someone dies in an avalanche. It is sadder yet when someone dies making it safe for others." Pictures of the three grace the mountain restaurant.

The Bowl was then closed to the public for 13 years.

In 1988, however, some patrollers were allowed to gain familiarity with the terrain and prepare in case of rescues.

"A little bit later, we were allowed to start looking into the possibility of what it would take to open it safely," Melahn recalls.

In 1993, Melahn, then the area's Snow Safety Director, created an atlas of Highland Bowl, compiling measurements and other information. Town focus groups discussed the issue of opening it. Whip Jones, the owner of Aspen Highlands, had a master plan drawn up by Peter Lev and Beat VonAllmen of Alpentech, mountain-safety consultants.

"We guided them up there," says Melahn. "It was Beat's idea that there should be a race up the ridge and down into the Bowl, and it should be called the Inferno." Today that race is an annual, and it is a stunning sight to see the churning horde advance.

That year, Texas developer Gerald Hines bought Aspen Highlands, and the Aspen Ski Co. joined ownership in December.

For three seasons Melahn and his colleagues, Peter Carvelli and Kevin Heineken, studied the Bowl, and opened a section in 1997, employing pre-season boot-packing by patrol and locals to adhere the snow to the Bowl walls. Patrol increased the acreage annually, incrementally, and by 1999 allowed skiing from the highest point. In recent years, the gladed North Woods, on the far end, have been largely opened.

Patrol practices extensive monitoring and control work, including compacting, and uses lowered and thrown charges, and now grid-bombing (which means every 30-by-30 square in a certain area is tested), based on studies of the effects of explosives on snow.

The Bowl isn't always open. A standing question when you go to the area is whether it is open, or when it will be, and in which parts.

Melahn says the bottom line in decision-making is, "Would you let your kid ski there?"

The new Deep Temerity Lift, extending runs from the Bowl as well as from the difficult Temerity and Steeplechase regions, opened only this season, to delight and fanfare, but just as significant to many locals was that the mountain opened new terrain in the North Woods yet again. The patrol director, Mac Smith, has stated his goal as to open the woods fully.

[Woodsy]

continued

Lou Dawson, studying microfilm at the Aspen Times after his accident, found the first recorded avalanche death in the Bowl in the 1950s: that of a hunter swept off the ridge. Since the three patrollers were lost, no one from the public has been caught in an avalanche in the Bowl, though I imagine a few patrollers have taken little rides in sluffs. The area's snow-safety crew is considered conservative, which people like me welcome.

"I think we have a really strong team in snow safety and feel comfortable about decisions on whether to open the Bowl or not," says Lori Spence, a longtime patroller.

For myself, having skied for over 30 years, in latter years I had grown something that could verge on bored. I was definitely sick of moguls. Then Highlands opened the Bowl, and that is really all I've been interested in ever since: walking the curving ridge line -- the 40-minute hike is part of the experience -- and skiing those long, consistent shots. When they're not powder, they're usually Styrofoam. The hike itself, with an 800-foot vertical rise, feels as if someone designed the perfect course on a stationary bicycle: a steady warmup, a spike, a big hill, and two last, diminishing rises.

Only one spot on the ascent feels exposed. Near the start, a rock bench forces a hiker along the edge of a snow slope punctuated by a few toothy rocks. Usually hikers' steps have cut a trench, but the spot can be a little slick. A rope handrail is strung beside it.

I recently encountered a guy edging a retreat across it. I offered to take his skis, and he declined, but at the last step or two, he shook so hard the skis began to whack against the wall, and I feared they'd knock him off. I insisted he hand over the skis, and then just talked to him as he toed down.

A friend of mine says one day a woman froze, spread-eagled, in the middle of the wall: "She wouldn't move so no one could get around her. We finally called ski patrol. She can't help laughing. Two of them went out there and they each grabbed her under an arm and hauled her out."

I've introduced people to the Bowl, including my own children. One day I took a teacher friend, Nannette Weinhold, for her first time up, accompanied by a fellow teacher, Ted Kauffman, and Jim Hanrahan, the school's beloved maintenance man.

We stayed near Nannette across the bench, and then started our hike in earnest, pausing at times as Ted identified mountains in our expanding view. However, I grew concerned that my husband, a fast hiker, would have reached the top, and would be freezing. At the next stop, I suggested moving on.

"Alison, if you'll just give me a minute, to let these people pass," Jim said, "I want to show you something." He pointed at the ridge extending west, outside of the resort boundaries, from the summit above us. "Look straight over from right here and you can see a white cross. My brother Michael and John Roberts died in an avalanche there in 2000.

"My brother lived a very full life," Jim told us. "He was always full of stories. Now he's a story."

We reached the top. Nannette was a little quiet, but plugged down the steep run called G8, and only afterwards said her heart had been jack-hammering. Nannette has run over 20 marathons, so is plenty tough. But at the bottom, she said, "That was the most adventurous thing I've ever done!"

More recently, hiking up with two other friends I suddenly squinted past one: "Wha-?" In fog and blowing snow, a mountain goat pawed at the lichen on the steeper, out-of-boundaries right side of the ridge. I had never seen one up close. Walking further, I saw four more, with their slender dark horns, light coats, and humped musculature. That is when you know you're really out in the mountains. And all of this is why I am disappointed any time I go to Highlands, and for one reason or another cannot ski the Bowl, preferably twice.

A week ago, I e-mailed Nannette asking if she wanted to go again. "Yes," she wrote back. "Yes, yes, yes!"

Alison Osius is the executive editor of Rock and Ice magazine.

[sanjuanworm]

good read

[Lloyd Braun]

I am on my way there today!

beautiful and sunny and rumor has it the bowl is skiing well!

[smolakian]

Thanks for the article.
I LOVE Highlands Bowl. Every skier needs to ski it at least once. Now with deep Temerity it's that much sweeter.

[Woodsy]

beautiful and sunny and rumor has it the bowl is skiing well!

funny, with so many aspects, i rarely remeber it ever siing poorly when open....

[homerjay]

Nice!

(I might be there Sunday)

[Particle]

I learned to ski in Aspen, and spent all my early turns there. Deep Temerity was my first real solo 'O/B' experience in my early teens...I hiked out the ridge a little ways, alone, and dropped into the trees. I flailed and crashed and gaped it up as best I could. Skied untouched pow and had a moment of realization - this is what skiing is all about.

I remember when the Y Chutes opened...I've had a few amazing runs in there. But I haven't been back to the RFV since they opened the top. Definitely on the must-do list...that's still such a special place for me

[Woodsy]

BumpskierX

[Buster Highmen]

I was so blown away by A-Basin and Aspen Highlands when I raced there aeons ago I never even thought skiing that bowl was possible.

I __do__ remember being thrilled with Steeplechase.

[Cornholio]

Hiking out the ridge was my first X-Treme skiing too. I went with a good friend, who is an aspen local and a much better skier. I've never been so scared in my life, but I remember each of those panic-laden powder-flail hop turns (accomplished on my 203 Atomic Red Sleds) like it was yesterday. I was over my head, literally and figuratively.

I crashed hard on the uncontrolled, accidental straightline in to the catwalk back around the front of Loge's. I went ass over teacup and blacked out, but all I could think about was getting back to the top in time for another run.

I'm pretty sure that run is what got me hooked on skiing for life.

[Lumpy]

Woodsy hiked to something?

[smolakian]

Anyone skiied 5 fingers or K chutes? The access from the top is WAAAY killer too.

[Woodsy]

Woodsy hiked to something?

laugh it up fuzz ball.
Hiked the King in WA afew weeks back too.
I earn my tuns occasionally.

[leroy jenkins]

Anyone skiied 5 fingers or K chutes? The access from the top is WAAAY killer too.

Some of the skiing farther up the ridge from 5 fingers looks fucking awesome too.

The bowl might not have too many cliff bands or little chutes or anything, but its one of the only places you get a true "big mountain" feel. For those fifteen seconds till you get to the runout you really feel like you're in Alaska. The veiw from the top is absolutly insane too. The whole culture and atmosphere up there is awesome too. Fuck, I just love all of it. Its really the one thing I miss when I'm skiing elsewhere.

[FigureEleven]

Anyone skiied 5 fingers or K chutes? The access from the top is WAAAY killer too.

Yes, and yes. I generally hike the bowl and don't ski it.

[Woodsy]

great area,
but 11 you think it is safe that orften eh?
wow.

[grskier]

One of my favorite hike to inbounds things in CO.

Great article.

[YB]

Highlands Bowl is AK jr. all the way! Going to AK last year made my bowling lots more fun and now the bowl is the way I get ready for AK part deux.

[FigureEleven]

great area,
but 11 you think it is safe that orften eh?
wow.

Yes I do. It's not just chutes and open bowls out there, there is some awesome tree skiing as well. Additionally, the sidecountry has terrain facing almost every aspect, so it is easy to mitigate exposure to wind loaded slopes. There is generally something that I feel can be enjoyed safely. Needless to say, there are also areas that spook the hell out of me and i won't touch with a ten foot pole. I just really like Highlands as a portal to the surrounding mountains.

Also, often times the bowl and hike to the gates isn't even open.

[Xover]

nice shout-out from NY; thank God for the www advances in the last 5-6 years, heh??

[Woodsy]

great answer 11, and X you gotta go.

[mt_goat]

Old thread I know but I just found it, thanks for posting it Woodsy. I learned a few things from it and recognized a few of the names (Jeffrey "O.J." Melahn and Peter Lev) from my days on the Highlands Patrol and avalanche school in Jackson Hole. I knew the 3 patrolmen that were killed in Highlands Bowl very well as I worked with them for many seasons and they were great guys.

I'd like to share pics of my recent trip to Aspen last week to see their memorial at the top of Loges Peak. I have wanted to see it for many years, but since I only go to Colorado in the summer now and Highlands doesn't allow you to drive up and they don't run the lifts in the summer any more, I had to plan a time to hike the 4000 vertical ft to see it. What I found was a very nice memorial to these great young men who died "making it safe for others". RIP Tom Snyder, Graig Soddy and Chris Kessler.



















For any of these pics you can see a bigger view by clicking on the pic and selecting the "full size" option.

Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol new HQ at the top of Lode:






















The old PHQ now has another use:



The deck that we all loved to jump (especially Soddy) is still there:

[mt_goat]

Bump...

[Shredhead]

That a great story, I never saw that before. I think it's great that they mentioned Theo and some of the other early skiers. We use to hide in Boomerang Woods until after sweep and then sleep in the loge patrol shack until 5am. Then ski the Y zones at first light and ski daddle out to Castle Creek.

I was also on one of the 19 tours in 82. I was a volunteer patroller with Pinto. But I had a three mountain Aspen comp pass and they wanted me to work way too too much and it didn't look like they would be hiring any pro's for a while, so I quit. But when the slide got Tom, Chris and Craig, that all changed.

I think they have to give PD Mac Smith and Mt. manager Ron Chauner a lot more credit for getting the bowl openned. Those guys busted there asses to get the bowl openned and still are some of the hardest working guys at the skico.

Downhill Dave, did you work there in 82?