OCTOBER 05: Hostel Takeover
When I ask why he keeps returning to the hostel, he says, “I came here for the deep powder snow.” Then, all earnest and Warren Miller-like: “Another thing about the hostel is the location, right next to the Moose [the Mangy Moose Saloon]. They got all of these new places, but they’re not as close to the Moose as this place is, you understand?!” He leans back in his chair. “The other thing I like is the people. You meet different sorts and get different points of view. I like to talk and the hostel is the best place for that.” He pauses and looks around. “This is a very democratic place,” he says.
Democracy is all about freedom of information. Meaning, an out-of-towner like me can befriend a local like Jeff Ledger and learn a few of the mountain’s secrets from him. Ledger is 30 and works as the front desk clerk. He’s worked at the hostel for more than a decade. He’s also a member of the Air Force and knows the location of practically every stash on the hill. The next day, he volunteers to show me around Grand Targhee, on the western side of the Tetons.
We ride the Dreamcatcher quad to the top of Fred’s Mountain, then ski to an out-of-bounds area behind the resort. To the east, the Tetons spike dramatically skyward. Directly in front of us, rock cliffs ring a scooped-out bowl of snow. Only now—too late—I wonder what kind of skiing this stash demands. Ledger and a few friends recently produced and starred in ski film called Committed: Insanity’s Asylum, and one of the wildest sequences was filmed here: A series of hucks off of a 75-foot cliff known as the Diving Board.
There’s good snow today, but it isn’t fresh enough to go big. Ledger and a few of his friends who’ve tagged along leap repeatedly from lower perches. An hour into the session, I’m waiting in the bottom of the bowl when I hear a nasty scraping noise. I look up in time to see one of Ledger’s friends sliding sideways off the edge of a cliff. He’s about to freefall when he smacks a sapling hard enough to bend it. A ski comes off, takes flight, and spears tip-up in the snow 100 feet down slope.
Ledger, however, never scrubs. He sticks a 25-footer and streaks downhill. The performance is effortless, and you’d expect nothing less from a guy whose structured his life to facilitate skiing—free hostel lodging at the base of a big mountain, a schedule (usually at night) that gives him ample powder time, and no end to his lifestyle in sight. The Wilson family members say they have no plans to sell HostelX, but who knows—the land it sits on, perfectly situated for the next condo complex—is worth a fortune. The obvious consequence, of course, being that if the hostel disappears, so too will many skiers like Ledger.
Crested Butte residents know how to rough it, making it no surprise that the Crested Butte Lodge and Hostel is the best on our route. The bedrooms are huge. The common room boasts a stone fireplace, overstuffed sofas, a TV, and wireless Internet access. I hit Snowreport.com and the news is great: Crested Butte is in the crosshairs of a massive storm. With only four days left in the trip, we’re finally about to get the dump we’ve been waiting for.
When we finally get up on the hill, the mercury is in the single digits. The chill is enhanced by the fact that we’re taking turns being towed up the hill at insane speeds behind a snowmobile. Five miles down a wide valley, the snowmobile stops in a meadow at the base of the Anthracite Range. My guides for the day—Olympic racer turned freeskiing champion Wendy Fisher and her husband, Woody Lindenmeyr—begin skinning into the four-mile-long, east-west-curving sub chain. The trees around us are clumpy white forms, sagging with snow. After climbing 1,500 feet to a ridgeline, we get ready to drop in.
Fisher goes first, then Lindenmeyr. They vanish below a knob. I stand alone, listening to the whoops and yells echoing from downhill, then push off. My skis and boots vanish immediately into snow, and I hear that familiar hiss. I bounce a little to get the feel of what’s beneath me. Drop over the knob and gain speed. Make a turn, then another. I lift and crank my skis, stay in rhythm, find symmetry. Faster, easier, more flow. The snow is smoke, all air and sound without substance. I weave around trees, drop into a gully, streak down an open slope. I’m bobbing deeper and deeper, and the snow comes up, around, and finally over my head. I can barely see where I’m going, and can only trust that gravity is pulling me in the right direction. Elation. “Best turns of my life,” somebody says at the bottom of the run. And I agree.
Powder memories linger on the drive south to New Mexico. I see alpine white even as the landscape shifts to desert brown. The terrain is rugged, dusty, sage-dotted. It’s dark by the time I make it to Taos, and after a long day, I’m craving a drink. This desire proves surprisingly difficult to fulfill. The modern town of Taos, built around the historic pueblo, has art galleries, Indian rug emporiums, and moccasin shops galore. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a painting of a coyote. But the only bar I can find is in the lobby of a hotel. We skip it.
No matter. I’m eager to check into the last hostel on our quest—the intriguingly named Abominable Snow Mansion. The location is eight miles north of town, just below Taos Ski Valley, in Arroyo Seco. The town barely occupies a long bend in Route 150, and it feels authentically Southwestern in way that Taos doesn’t. There are a few small stores, a restaurant, and a dive bar playing Mexican music. The adobe buildings, strong and simple against the desert sky, look like they were painted by Georgia O’Keefe. Behind the street, in the dirt and scrub, sit a few junker cars and trailers.
After parking behind the Snow Mansion—near the guest tepees—I walk to the front door. The windows are painted turquoise, glowing Christmas lights strung beneath the eaves. The Abominable Snow Mansion is going to be memorable, I can tell. As were all the hostels I’ve seen. Skiing certainly won’t die if hostels get priced out of the mountains, but it will be considerably more boring. Stepping through an entry arch, under a smiling mask painted like the sun, I push the doorbell, step back, and wait.