graupel on the beach - spring at A Basin

It is a spring tradition to spend beach front time at Arapahoe Basin in the Colorado Rockies. Located on the western side of Loveland Pass, A Basin breaks the 12,000-foot barrier to bring great skiing as late as July in big snow years. The views from the summit are breathtaking, and the lifts' top are a launching platform for intrepid chute hunters who take their skis off and start climbing the ridge above to find virgin snow and steeps. A Basin has been delighting us Coloradans with its terrain and wonderful scenery since it opened in 1946. The ski resort itself has not changed so much since its inception; it has a rustic realness that the high-end destination resorts lost long ago if they ever had it.

My personal relationship with A Basin goes back 30 years. It's one of my favorite places to ski and has so many memories for me, not all of them wonderful. I tore my anterior cruciate ligament on the catwalk that connects Pallavicini ("Palli", above in the foreground and looking toward the East Wall in the background - picture: www.coloradoskihistory.com), the Basin's signature ski run, to the base lift in May of 1984, another gorgeous spring ski day like yesterday. I think about that fateful run every time I carefully ski the catwalk, as I did yesterday.

Yesterday my friend Keith invited me to their company's spring beach party. I told Don I'd just go for a short time - it's only an hour's drive from our home. Keith and Trudy had dropped a car off early in the morning to reserve their group's spot at the beach, which is the edge of the muddy, rutted parking lot that abuts the bottom of the ski runs. They brought a gas grill, tables, a boom box, lots of camping chairs and a picnic griller's selection of wonderful foods and beer. There were as many as 18 in the group, babies and middle-aged folks like me, and everyone in between.

When I got there at 11 a.m. the party was just starting to swing. Along the beach there were dogs, tents, chaise lounges, stereos, kegs, and snow toys of all sorts. People were skiing in interesting attire, ranging from standard ski gear through a fluorescent pink zoot suit with accompanying fedora. At the lodge the band was setting up for an afternoon of rock'n'roll. My arrival garb was shorts, tank top and flipflops. (picture: www.schussbaumer.com)

The snow at the bottom was soft and getting wet, classic spring snow. The sun was bright, the temperature balmy and I briefly considered staying with the shorts and tank top, but I knew better from many years of experience. I pulled on my snow pants and brought mittens, a headband, a hoodie and a windbreaker. We got on the Exhibition lift and headed up to mid-mountain. Sure enough, by the time we loaded ourselves on the upper lift the sky had gotten dark, and upon reaching the top we were enveloped in graupel.

Graupel is a wonderful form of precipitation. It is not snow, not hail, not sleet, and definitely not rain. The stuff we played with on and off yesterday was like styrofoam; dry and compressible, it could be made to stick to itself but contained so much air it took lots of it to make a snow ball. As we got off the lift we put on all the clothes we had with us. By the time we pointed our skis downhill, the graupel had turned to sleety snow. Skiing was blind - wet snow coated my face and sunglasses and as I skied fast into the wind, the plastic frames froze the bridge of my nose to a painful attention focus. We stopped and regrouped, gathering our strength and trying not to shiver.

I pushed off again, this time with the light so flat the contours of the bumps and surfaces disappeared. Every slight topographic change was a surprise to my feet, making it a challenge to keep my balance. I started to feel a little bilious. That sensation triggered another A Basin memory from many years ago, when Don and I skied with our kids and Lissa got motion sick in the fog. The full story requires audience permission to tell in detail, so I won't go on.

Yet even as I thought about those times the fast-moving clouds changed and sun began to dominate the scene. The bumps under the Exhibition lift were clear to the eye and the rocks stuck out with high contrast (thank heaven! my skis are still new). We made the bottom and it was time for a beer and bratwurst. These normally tasty items acquire a magical flavor when consumed in the snow under blue sky with puffy white clouds and the sun hot on us again.

Then Keith and I headed for Palli, in my mind the whole reason for having a party. Pallavicini was named for 19th century climber Alfred Markgraf Pallavicini, who pioneered a dramatic direct route up the Grossglockner in Austria in 1876. Many mountaineers lost their lives attempting to climb the Grossglockner, another mountain that lives also in my personal history. Palli at A Basin is an ideal slope for building large, regular bumps that delight skiiers in the spring when the snow begins to soften. Neighboring glades and chutes bring their own joy, and all must be explored to have the complete experience.

Conditions yesterday were close to ideal, at least from the top through the middle of the run. The bumps were big and soft, and the steepness drove us smoothly down even as the snow eventually became slower and softer. We made big flying turns down the center, reveling in the rhythm we set up. Every so often we'd stop and I would realize that once again I'd forgotten to breathe - it took a minute for me to get my breath back under control. Keith was hacking with the end of his bronchitis; what a guy he is, not letting a little thing like adequate air stop him from being an awesome skier.

We encountered one of Keith's colleagues at the trough into which Palli funnels on the right side - he was making smooth progress through the bumps on his free-heel tele skis. It is such hard work, and he made it look so easy and graceful. By the time we reached Palli's base the snow had acquired snow cone characteristics. In some places the frozen mix incorporated enough mud that the friction slowed our skis abruptly, forcing us to pay close attention so as not to be launched onto our faces.

Then there remained the catwalk, a steep-walled trail from the base of the run across the hill. The catwalk itself isn't very steep, but if you're lazy and you ski straight down it rather than turning to control your speed, you could do what I did long ago; I caught an edge, lost my balance and planted both skis into the snowy uphill wall at high speed. My bindings did not release, and my left knee did. This time I was careful to ski all around, up the wall, into the woods, down steeply, anything but straight out. Another run, done, and the band was playing as we rejoined the lift line.

The rest of the afternoon slid by fast as such times always do. I skied until the lifts closed, thermo-regulating minute-to-minute between winter gear and tank top as the sun went in and out. I tried to keep up with the young guys on skis and snow boards and learned that my new Pilots are pretty fast (sometimes faster than I anticipate). We played on Palli and reveled in our freedom. On one run with another skier and a boarder we found a "floater" in the North Glades; a steep face fed a trail up through a small rock ridge that launched us into the air at its apex, only to float back to the snow below.

For the day's end we gathered a core group of 6-7 hot dog snow riders. We hammered the Exhibition bumps under the lift for two last runs after all the other lifts had closed; playing, throwing snowballs and showing off our prowess for the chair lift onlookers. And for our last run we found the best bumps of all, a slope behind trees that we had almost skied past, just west of Exhibition. It was sad to look up at the stationary chairs as the ski day ended; our hearts were ready to ski forever, even if our bodies would eventually say no.

After the lifts closed, the energetic young people launched a race series on the bunny slope, teaming to ride snow boards like snow saucers, fighting for the lead and chased by dogs and small children. We oldsters sat at the bottom in the camp chairs with our beer (Jacob's first-try home-brewed stout was awesome) and cheered them on as the variable clouds scattered sun and precip throughout. I hugged my generous hosts and thanked them for a wonderful day, switched back to the shorts, ran through the snow in my flipflops to find the lodge restroom (talk about getting cold feet), and then headed back for dinner with my sweetheart.

As I drove home over Loveland Pass (left, picture: www.idahosummits.com), I was once again awestruck by the landscape through which I passed. I listened to the Blind Boys of Alabama sing their gospel praise and reflected on my luck: to have lived years in this place of beauty and power, to have a mate who shares these values and understands my joy, and to have so often experienced skiing at the beach and the memories I'll keep.