Silveton, Colorado??

pnoom

pnoom

New member
Anybody been to this new area?

Supossedly, it's supposed to have the steepest, most challenging terrain this side of Valdez, Alsaska.

It's a huge untouched mountain serviced by one huge double chairlift. At this point (it opened in 2002), they only offer guided skiing/riding but they say they are working on offering unguided skiing in the future.

I'm very intrigued by this place and would love to experience it. Anybody gone yet? They claim that their steepest run is 55 degrees and their easiest run is 35 degrees (the steepest run at most other resorts).

Check out their web page, it looks like an amazing place:

http://www.silvertonmountain.com/
 
Yeah, it's all they say it is. I did a volunteer boot-packing weekend there before they opened last season. I think around a hundred people were there. We stomped out some starting zones, then skied the bottom two-thirds or so of several slide paths. On top of what you mentioned, they get A LOT of snow. Skied some thigh-deep there a week before opening day.
 
i have never been there, but a few of the things i've heard about this place are:

ya. this place would be pretty sick to explore. ALTHOUGH, you will only go
where conditions permit and group ability allows, so you better be in a
group of some really good riders/skiers if you wanna hit the really good
terrain. what i mean by 'really good terrain' is the extreme terrain and
not just riding powder(or maybe that's what you're after). woohoo,
$100+/day powder. i've read reports from this place that weren't all that
great. then again, when they take out a group of pro snowboarders out
and then print an article about it in a snowboarding magazine they make
it seem like that's the type of experiance you will have. in past reports i
have read, it has been the exact opposite. just a friendly little heads up.
and you should probably import your "necessities". there isn't a whole lot
in Silverton.
 
Facilities are primitive. And you will save $50/day if you have your own fat skis and backcountry rescue gear.

I didn't see much terrain I would call extreme, though that might have been due to the group I was in. But it's long consistent 30+ degree fall lines. With light and dry powder snow at that pitch you need to be prepared to handle a variable subsurface. And the tree run we did was tighter than most I have done cat skiing in Canada.

I wouldn't worry much about being slotted into an appropriate ability group. Silverton has multiple guides, small groups and 60% of the clientele is Colorado locals. They market to the "core" community and have had very few problems of people showing up who were out of their league.

Some of the terrain is accessed by hiking above the lift at 12,200 feet, so you need to be acclimated to enjoy the experience and not hold other people up. Do it at the end of your week in Colorado as we did, not at the start.
 
I went there last April. Impressive terrain, if you get in with a "core" group you'll get plenty of 40-45 degree steeps. What I didn't like was when skiing the wide open bowls you had to "farm" the powder: tight squiggly turns matching those of the guide. I'm more partial to big, wide super-G type of turns, which is a no-no at Silverton.
 
So they just flat out tell you not to make big turns?

That's kind of odd, but I can understand the logic.

Although, for $100+ you should be allowed to make any damn turn you want!!

I'm still gonna go, though. Maybe when they offer undguided skiing you'll be able to get away with making huge turns. I hope so!
 
Sorry to disillusion you all, but "farming the snow" is standard operating procedure at most cat skiing operations, and Silverton is a direct analogy IMHO. With limited acreage and not knowing when you're going to get more snow, anybody running one of these places is going to try and make some untracked lines last as long as possible. Heli operators have much more terrain and will often let you cut loose in open bowls, though usually setting a boundary to avoid hidden obstacles, crevasses etc. But even heliskiing sometimes they will want everyone's lines close together.
 
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