'Limits' Take 'Extreme' to an Extreme

by Gavin Ehringer

Everyone who snowboards seems to gravitate toward a particular discipline, a particular type of terrain. What I really enjoy and excel at is steeps. Give me a slope beyond 45 degrees and I'm happy. Cover it with deep, untracked powder snow and I achieve a state of Zen-like ecstasy.

Crested Butte Mountain Resort is my favorite resort when Colorado is blessed with heavy snowfall. It can take several weeks of heavy snows for Crested Butte to open its notorious back bowls, the area often referred to in company literature as "the extreme limits." But it’s worth the wait.

About a third of Crested Butte's more than 1,400 acres of terrain is designated as double black diamond. Indeed, it's the steepest lift-accessed in-bounds terrain in the lower 48 states, far surpassing anything available in such well-known "extreme" winter resorts as Jackson Hole, Telluride and Aspen Highlands. (Its only rival in Colorado is Silverton Mountain, which I've yet to visit.)

Crested Butte has been a training ground for many of the best all-mountain snowboarders and skiers in North America, including ski-film superstar Seth Morrison. Short of Alaska's helicopter-accessed mountains, there's nothing comparable in North America.

Crested Butte's extreme limits has slopes so steep you can reach your arm out and touch snow while standing stock-straight on your board.

My first encounter with Crested Butte's back bowls was during the United States Extreme Snowboarding Championship series (later the U.S. Extreme Boarderfest). I'd taken a camera with me and was accompanied by Crested Butte photographer Tom Stillo. I made the rookie error of putting all my gear into a shoulder bag rather than a photo backpack. The bag swayed and swung as I tried to make my way down the first steep pitch to a good viewing area, throwing me off balance and making each turn an exercise in sheer terror. Fortunately, Stillo took pity on me and helped me side-slip down to a safe spot. There we dug into the snow and waited for the action.

This was in the pre-digital era and I was caught loading film when the shot of the day happened: A snowboarder whose name I no longer recall launched a 50-foot bomb drop off a cliff band at the top of the run, crashing down on hard-pack and still managing to hold on to his landing. I later asked him what that felt like, and he replied, "Dude, I couldn't even feel my legs for the next five minutes of my run."

The terrain parks at Crested Butte - one with a well-groomed and hardly crowded Super Pipe - rival anything available in Summit County. But given the huge expanse of expert-only terrain lurking in the far reaches of the resort, it's a bit disingenuous to sell this as simply a family ski area. It's a family ski resort, all right - if your family name happens to be Knievel and your job description is "daredevil."

Snowboarding and skiing in deep, untracked backcountry conditions is not for the faint of heart. You can get into serious trouble, especially if you don't know your way around the cliff bands, steep chutes and sheer mountain faces.

For those up to the challenge, I highly recommend hiring the services of a snowboarding or skiing instructor or hooking up with a Crested Butte mountain guide. Knowledge of the good lines through the bowls can turn a horrendous hike down the hill into an unforgettable thrill.

And this is the season to go. When the snow falls this deeply, Crested Butte is by far the best in-bounds snowboarding and skiing locale you're ever likely to find.

Gavin Ehringer covered snowboarding for the Rocky Mountain News for 15 years.