Powder, powder, powder. It seems that we just couldn’t get enough of it today. If you look back to the itinerary that I posted on Saturday, you’ll remember that today was the day that we headed up to David’s backcountry cabin in Irwin, CO. Before I describe today’s events, I’d like to give a little context about where exactly we were heading. The previous day, while riding up a lift in Crested Butte Resort, I struck up a conversation with a local. He asked who was coordinating our trip and when I told him that David was a local, he asked where he lived. I replied, “He lives up in Irwin”. Silence. A good 5-6 seconds must have passed before the local replied, “OH, so he’s one of those REAL die-hards.”
That might have been a little over the top, but I can certainly say that Irwin is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We’re only 7 miles (by snowmobile) to the nearest road, but man, does it feel isolated out here. While the isolation is a curse in certain ways (no internet, no cell phone, no running water), it is also a blessing (untouched beauty, a return to older, more old-fashioned ways). All in all, coming up here has so far been an experience is close-quarters living, but has also been a refreshing break from the world.
We woke up on Monday morning at around 8 AM. We had to be out of the hostel by 10 AM, so a mad dash ensued to try and ensure that we would actually be out by that time. After cruising out of the hostel at a cool 10:09 AM, we got in the trucks and headed out towards Irwin. The road to Irwin is partially plowed, so we were able to drive that portion. Before I knew it, however, a bunch of snowmobiles and a parking lot filled with cars had appeared. This was our final stop by car. We got out and began to unpack the vehicles. David had already hauled a lot of the food and equipment up the previous day, so there was less need for him to haul equipment up. We still, however, had to get up there along with our personal belongings. We had two snowmobiles—David has one that he owns and he rented one from a neighbor to let Dan use one. On the back of David’s snowmobile was a sled that could haul all sorts of different luggage. We put a lot of our stuff on it and zipped it up (it was basically a massive duffel bag with a sled bolted to the bottom of it) and got ready to go. To get us up to the cabin, we had a couple of options. The first option, which is what we thought we would be doing, is to ski up to the cabin. This option would have taken us around 3 hours and would have been exhausting enough to knock us out of action for the rest of the day. The other option was to have David and Dan tow us up to the cabin. This option would not have been feasible if David had been making multiple trips to the cabin hauling gear up. Fortunately, however, David had done most of this gear hauling already and so we could pursue the second option. Now, to make it perfectly clear—there is no standard way to “tow” a skier behind a snowmobile. David had devised a couple of pretty devious ways to tow us, however. On the back of Dan’s snowmobile, he had attached a system composed of bike tires and ropes to allow us to slip our poles through a loop and then bring a bike tire around our backs. The final step was to hold the bike tire and the poles in one hand—effectively creating a loop for us to rest our bottoms on, thus taking the strain off of our hands. On his snowmobile, David had attached a standard water-skiing tow rope, complete hand-holds. The person riding on the back of that snowmobile had to deal with hand fatigue. Despite the potential for fatigue and wipe-outs, this system was infinitely better than the alternative—to hike up. Why? Because this system meant that we would be at the cabin in 15 minutes, rather than face a three hour hike.
The tow system meant that only four people could be hauled at any one time—2 behind Dan, 1 behind David’s snowmobile and 1 actually on David’s snowmobile. When David asked for volunteers to fill the empty spots, nearly everyone volunteered to be towed. Funnily enough, no one wanted to ride on the actual snowmobile. I thought this was rather strange—why not ride and save the energy for later? As you might have guessed, yes, I did volunteer to ride on David’s snowmobile. This decision wasn’t particularly consequential because we all ended up having a good time. We got all set-up and ready to head up to the cabin. I was on the first group to head up there. In terms of positions, behind Dan’s snowmobile we had Mauri and Danny. Behind David’s snowmobile, Jakob was skiing solo. Finally, I was riding on the snowmobile. Once everyone was in position, we started the snowmobiles and got moving. David pulled out of the parking lot and began to pick up speed. We started along the road towards David’s cabin. Keep in mind that from June-November, this road is an actual road, so it was pretty wide and smooth, despite the extremely deep snow. A couple of minutes into the ride, I glanced over David’s shoulder and saw that we were going at nearly 30 miles an hour! I looked behind me to see Jakob having the time of his life. Rarely staying on the tracked-out road, he was constantly swaying off to the side, going into virgin powder. It was very much like a water-skier does when he goes outside the wake of the boat. It was about a 15 minute drive up to the cabin. Before I knew it, we had arrived at the cabin. When the cabin finally came into view, a couple of things hit me—first, that the snow was REALLY deep. The entire first-story of the cabin was buried. The second thing that hit me was the interesting architecture. I’ll describe that in a second. Moving back to the snowmobile ride, when we finally pulled to a stop, Jakob, Mauri and Danny had that “wind-swept” look to them. Nevertheless, it was smiles all around as we talked about what an amazing time we had.
*Photos to follow*
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