I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Winter Park, waiting for the sun to come up before heading over Berthoud Pass, going back to Fort Collins after two days of good skiing. The groomed ski trails were sketchy at best, lots of bare spots and rocks, but the woods harbored deep powder. Few skiers were out...the destination folks and the day trippers were waiting for the snow that would accompany massive winter storms.
So few folks ventured into the woods. But the woods harbored old ski tracks, covered with the few inches of snow that had fallen during the last week. The tracks wound between trees, under branches, around logs, catching the sloping curve of the hillside. Skiing trees keeps one totally focused...following a trail between two trees and realizing the track was probably made by a 10 year old and one just might not fit...judging the degree of slope...avoiding tree wells (spaces under trees that are deep hollows)...trying to psyche out the next couple of turns. And, then, suddenly making a new track and hoping not to shudder to a stop in some deep pocket of powder or, worse, have the skis go under a log and suddenly stop resulting in some form, hopefully non-lethal, of face plant. More commonly, I turn off an old trail to make some new tracks and wind up buried in a drift of deep powder.
In the trees it's all about figuring your next moves through a tangle of trees and branches, being grateful for the helmet as you lean forward and downward, in the silence of the forest...pure concentration.
Not at all like the Denver road traffic that I had to move my SUV through in order to reach these still, silent woods.
