Sample Article -- Bringing the Past to Life on Colorado's High Peaks
10th Mountain Division soldiers are tough. Just how tough is something Lou Dawson found out when he retraced their famous 1944 ski traverse over the mountains between Leadville and Aspen.
Dawson, who lives in Carbondale, Colorado, is a veteran ski mountaineer and author of climbing guidebooks for Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, known as the "fourteeners." He's known for being the first person to ski from the summit of each of those 54 mountains (some of those with those 45-60 degree pitches). Dawson spends 30-40 days each year on skis in Colorado's backcountry. He's an insatiable ski mountaineer, a prolific writer and photographer who calls himself a history buff.
This winter, he's touring the West with a multimedia presentation on what he calls "The Trooper Traverse," a ski traverse undertaken by 10th Mountain Division soldiers nearly 60 years ago. He's in _______ tonight, for a program sponsored by ______.
A few years ago, Dawson stumbled upon an article, written in the Camp Hale newspaper of the early 1940s, it told of a backcountry ski trip from Leadville to Aspen in 1944 undertaken by a small group of soldiers. Once he saw the article, Dawson was hooked.
"Though I'm more known more as an extreme skier who skis from the tops of mountains, I've always been interested in ski traverses," Dawson says. "They're decidedly different from ski descents. A descent requires more extreme skiing and ski mountaineering, while a traverse is a snow camping trip that involves skiing, though it can include as many peak descents as you care to work for."
For Dawson, repeating the trip was a given. "I believe those guys were the ultimate ski mountaineers, because they combined warfare with mountaineering -- and the only thing harder than hard climbing, for better or worse, is combat."
Dawson wanted his trip to be as true to the original as possible. "I had talked to as many 10th Mountain veterans as I could, but discovered that the officers who had led the traverse had all died. The younger men who followed them didn't know the route -- they had just followed the older, more experienced officers. At first, I was concerned that we'd have trouble making sure we used the same route."
From his research, Dawson determined that the route stretched for 45 miles, over the highest mountains in Colorado. "It went around Mount Elbert, near Mount Massive, north of Independence Pass. The route passed near dozens of near-14,000-foot peaks, several 14,000-foot peaks, and was almost all above treeline. It goes over 4 passes on high ridges."
Dawson signed on two friends for the journey - photographers Brian Litz and Chris Clark. The group headed out in May from a trailhead near Half Moon Road outside Leadville, and spent four days on skis.
When his group returned, Dawson says he did some comparative studies. "I found out that we went over the same passes, and followed the route as closely as was possible."
Dawson says he and his friends were "wimps" compared to the well-conditioned soldiers. "The 10th Mountain guys - there were 33 of them - did it in the middle of winter. We waited until spring to avoid deep snow and avalanche danger. The soldiers carried 70- to 90-pound packs and traveled on huge, heavy wooden skis. We had light- weight packs and skis.
"Every step of our trip, my respect for those boys went up ten notches, until I was in awe," says Dawson."
"I thought a lot about the gear they used," Dawson says. "It was about 60 years ago, their equipment was primitive and heavy by today's standards, but they were skilled athletes, and smart. They knew their limits. Any outdoorsman knows the key to doing a good job in the outdoors and staying alive is staying within the limits of your gear and your abilities."
Dawson and his group slept in a Marmot tent, wore lightweight Marmot shells, melted snow for water over a hot burning and efficient MSR stove, and skied on randonnee and telemark skis that rival space shuttle parts in their engineering complexity. "We were prepared," he says. "But that doesn't mean the troopers weren't -- we traveled in different style, based on gear and things, but our goals were much the same: enjoy the mountains, both by challenge and aesthetics."
During the trip, Dawson says he often thought about the young soldiers who had been there before him. "I could really relate to those guys. When I was their age (some as young as 19 years old), I was doing the same kind of stuff -- hard, challenging mountaineering in the middle of winter. I enjoyed that connection . . . respected that connection."
Dawson's group stayed true to the beginning and ending of the Trooper Traverse - starting in the town of Leadville, near Camp Hale, and ending where the troopers did - at the bar at Aspen's Hotel Jerome.
"The troopers celebrated their trip with Aspen Crud - a mix of bourbon and ice cream. That's what we did, too, although we probably didn't drink as much as they did, because I remember how many I drank" he says with a laugh.