Stomping grounds

Risks often are steep, but boot packing is a step toward safety

Cindy Hirschfeld, Special to the News

Published December 10, 2005 at midnight

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It was the kind of early-season powder day that makes summer-weary skiers and boarders practically drool with anticipation.

Moreover, the Exhibition lift at Aspen Highlands was being cranked up for a select group of ski bums, as well as patrollers, before the mountain even opened for the season. None of the people riding up the lift that morning would be getting much in the way of freshies, though.

Rather, in a cruel twist on the motto "earn your turns," they would be walking downhill, aggressively pulverizing the powder underfoot. Such is the reality of boot packing ski slopes.

Boot packing and its sibling, ski packing, are two primary methods by which Colorado ski areas work to stabilize their steepest ungroomed runs in this notoriously avalanche-prone climate.

"You need to have that initial layer of snow really packed," said Mac Smith, in his 29th year as ski patrol director at Aspen Highlands. "You're trying to take the air out between the crystals so that there's a better bond between them."

In other words, the goal is to establish a solid base for future snowfalls to progressively adhere to, eliminating or greatly reducing the risk of a slide.

Ski patrollers at Aspen Highlands have been undertaking early-season boot packing since the mid-1980s, Smith said, but as skiable terrain at the resort expanded into Highland Bowl in the late 1990s, more packers were needed.

Since the 1999-2000 season, volunteers have joined the mountain's paid employees, donating sweat equity in exchange for future skiing privileges. Fifteen days nets a packer a season pass. Few make it that far, instead earning substantial discounts on a pass purchase for each day of boot packing, with a minimum of five days of work required.

Crested Butte and Silverton Mountain also rely on volunteer boot packers to help get their celebrated steeps in shape for the season.

"It helps immensely," said Frank Coffey, snow safety director for the Crested Butte ski patrol.

The volunteer program has been in place for at least 15 years, said Coffey, and 81 hours of packing is required for a season pass.

Since opening in January 2002, Silverton has attracted 100 to 150 volunteers on preseason boot-packing weekends, ski area co-founder Jenny Brill said.

"It's good karma to participate in boot packing is how a lot of people see it," she said. Silverton's packers can earn up to six days of skiing at the mountain, which usually charges $140 a day to access its big-mountain terrain with a guide.

Granted, the payoff is great, but when it comes to boot and ski packing, there's really no such thing as a "free" day of skiing. The work is brutal. On that blustery, snowy day at Aspen Highlands a few weeks ago, about a dozen volunteers gathered in the patrol headquarters at the top of Loge Peak.

Outfitted with avalanche beacons, harnesses and alpine touring or telemark boots, the packers secured their pants legs to their boots with long strands of duct tape, creating a snowproof seal, and wrapped rings of tape around their pole shafts to enhance grip.

"That's what I'm all about: pain and suffering," volunteer packer Jason Platzer, a respiratory therapist at Aspen Valley Hospital, said jokingly as a patroller explained the plan of attack before sending out the troops for the day.

After being split into smaller groups, patrollers, volunteers and "pros" (ski- area employees, such as instructors, who can earn an hourly wage for packing while they wait for their usual gigs to start) all headed down Kessler's Bowl in the Steeplechase area of the mountain.

After catching a handful of turns in thick, untracked powder (the bait), they ski packed the run (the switch) down to the start of the new Deep Temerity lift. Ski packing involves sidestepping a slope; imagine breaking trail downhill, sideways. It covers a wider area of slope than boot packing, but it doesn't compress the snow as compactly, said Smith, the patrol director.

The next stop for one of the groups was Highland Bowl, where the runs range up to 48 degrees in pitch. During the ski season, accessing the bowl's terrain requires a ridgeline climb of up to 40 minutes, but the rigors of preseason boot packing give an entirely new meaning to hiking the bowl.

Fanning out across the slope, packers, attached to a fixed rope, marched downhill, working to break through to the ground with each step. Each boot packer is clipped into a shunt on the rope, a friction-creating device that arrests falls. The packers hiked back up via a single track, then set their individual lines downhill again. And again.

For experienced packers, trekking up and down for several hours becomes almost a meditative experience.

"I get in a groove, and I have my iPod on," said Peggy "Piglet" Harris Foster, who is in her sixth year of packing at Aspen Highlands.

At other times, boot packing can be pure misery.

"I remember getting out the day after a big windstorm and having to break through a 6-inch crust," said Todd Hartley, who volunteered for 12 days last year. "You would sink in snow up to your crotch with one leg while your other leg would still be on top of the crust. Then you'd have to push yourself up out of the hole that you made. It seemed like each step took a minute."

The attrition rate of Highlands packers is understandably high.

"The first year (of the volunteer program) we had about 150 people start out, and it got down to about 15. That was before word got out to the right kind of people," Smith said. "Now we'll start with 70 or 80 and boil it down to 30, 35. If you get your head off the pillow on the fourth day, you're probably going to make it."

In addition, dedicated packers are motivated by more than just the ski pass. Getting in shape, fast, is a reason cited by many.

"It's a pretty good ski-conditioning class," said first-year packer Joel Lee, an Aspen-based freelance film producer. "And I'd rather work really hard right now than work another job all season for a pass."

Said Doug Tucker, who was working his fifth year packing at Highlands: "The people really keep me coming back."

Tucker, who owns a silkscreen business, makes up commemorative T-shirts for the crew of packers each season. A unique camaraderie develops among the boot packers, forged from the shared experiences of frozen feet, utter exhaustion and soaked clothing layers paired with the unmatched splendor of an incredible mountain environment.

"It's a cool group of hard-core skiers," Brill said of the volunteers who pitch in at Silverton.

Boot packing also inspires a renewed appreciation of the work that patrollers do every day to keep slopes skiable and safe.

"It gives me a whole new perspective on what goes into pre-mountain setup," Platzer said. "Before this, I thought, 'Patroller, that sounds cool.' I had no idea what the patrol was all about."

Boot packing at Aspen Highlands and other areas finishes up shortly after the mountains open for the season. At that point, the compaction caused by skiers and riders regularly using the terrain enhances stability.

The memory of preparing that terrain for fellow powder seekers to revel in lingers, though. As boot packer Jenny Fadale puts it: "I will certainly enjoy many hikes to the top of Highland Bowl this season - from the snowcat drop-off, up a relatively easy slope, in neatly packed snow stairs."

The details

• Aspen Highlands, Crested Butte and Silverton welcome volunteer boot packers before the ski areas open for the season. You should be in excellent physical shape and be willing to put in a lot of grunt work. Unless you just want to see what all the fun is about, you'll need to make an extended stay in Aspen or Crested Butte to realize boot-packing pass benefits.

• Boot packers at Highlands must work a minimum of five days to start receiving discounted season passes; 15 days of packing earns a full pass. For information about boot packing for the 2006-07 ski season, call the Aspen Skiing Company at 970-925-1220.

• At Crested Butte, 81 hours of boot packing is required for a season pass. For information on volunteering next year, call 970-379-4069.

• Packers at Silverton net one day of unguided skiing in April for a day of packing (the area plans to offer unguided skiing for the first time ever that month). Two days of packing equates to one free day of guided skiing in December or April, or two days of unguided skiing in April. To pack next winter, call 970-387-5706.

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