© 2001 Michael Constantine for San Juan Silver Stage, Inc. [all rights reserved]

     Silverton, Colorado—arguably America’s most mountainous mountain town—is on the cusp of a winter renaissance. This National Historic District of 450 full-timers sits at the bottom of a deep dramatic hole at the center of the largest area of alpine peaks and tundra in the Continental United States. Although it has the look and feel of a subarctic outpost, it has the appeal of easier access to more world-class alpine backcountry than any town, anywhere. Unusually rugged geology, endless variety of terrain and the second deepest snow in Colorado combine to form what many have called the finest road-accessible snow sports area in the country.

“So why haven’t I heard of Silverton?” many backcountry skiers, ice climbers and snowmobilers from outside the Four Corners will ask. Simple. Although less than 20 miles from Durango Mountain’s Purgatory, Silverton has never had a ski area. And that’s always been fine with the locals, despite the town’s threatened extinction sice the closing of the last mines in 1991.

But something had to save Silverton; it just couldn’t involve selling out to IntraWest, Disney or Vail.

So the local snowmobile club began using snowcats to groom over one hundred and fifty miles of the most scenic winter trails in the West, trails not just for snowmobilers to ride on, but for cross-country skiers and skaters to slide on, and for telemarkers, snowboarders and ice climbers to approach backcountry on. People came, but it wasn’t enough.

    So the town put in a rope-tow, a snowboard park, the largest outdoor skating rink in Western Colorado, and a conference center, creating Kendall Mountain Recreation Area, where you can ride the lift for six dollars a day. But still the town’s population continued to shrink.

Finally, someone presented the solution that might turn Silverton around without developing it upside down: to install one strategically placed chairlift that would attract only advanced skiers and boarders. A “backcountry” ski area that would have no grooming, no cut runs, no base village, no smelly on-mountain cafeterias. Just four hundred inches of the driest powder covering sixteen hundred acres of extraordinary glades, bowls and chutes, and a season that gives from October through June. All for an unheard of twenty-five bucks.

Thus will Silverton become America’s newest ski town, succeeding without succumbing to the high prices and fancy pants that have isolated many of those who love powder best. You know—the rest of us.

(The new Silverton Mountain Ski Area should open this December with limited terrain until their full permit is issued sometime this spring. Basic avalanche equipment, a written backcountry awareness test, and a signed release form will be required. Check out www.silvertonmountain.com or call 970 387-5706. Services in Silverton are slightly limited in the winter, although more summer businesses should become year-round once Silverton Mountain is fully open. Go to www.silverton.org or call 800 752-4494 before you arrive.)

Photo credits
Snowmobiling photo, courtesy Jim Lokey, Silverton, Colo.
"Velocity Basin" photo, © Carolyn Wilcox, Silverton, Colo.