I drove up to Buena Vista over Kenosha Pass for a few days in the mountains. Crossing the pass into the huge open snow covered space of South Park is always dramatic. Urban life is left 4,000 feet below on the front range. It is quite unlike the drive up I-70 and through the Eisenhower Tunnel where urban and commercial sprawl follow you over the Divide. The drive over Kenosha brings you into a different world.
I stayed at the Cottonwood Hot Springs, sharing the loft in the dorm room with Tim. He was living further up along Cottonwood Creek at 11,000 feet. He is in a camp tent for the winter, wood stove for heat, and working on a house he is building at the mouth of an abandoned mine. The land is part of a mining claim he bought a few years back. His claim is three miles up the mountain; he gets there by snowshoe or snowmobile depending upon the weather. When he has business in town, he spends the night at the Hot Springs where he works in exchange for board. His wife, not too surprisingly, is living in Texas. We share evening and morning conversation and coffee in the lounge. I marvel at the ways people come to create a life for themselves.
But I had come up mainly for alpine skiing. I'm not sure what I love the most: the sensation of swooshing downhill over fresh powder (like gliding on silk) or the simple feeling of being high in the snow covered mountains at places where only lifts or snowcats can bring you. Ski Cooper, outside of Leadville (highest incorporated city in the United States at 10,152 feet), was just opening for the season. The sides of the groomed trails were three to four feet deep in powder. And if the lifts seem slow (this ain't Vail), they give you a chance to take in the spare beauty of the far mountain ranges and the simple pleasure of being outside in the snow on a bright sunny Colorado day.
