Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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I wonder if such a thing would happen today(?) The mountain folk of those days were a quite a tribe of visionary do-ers. The distance involved between up high and down below were greater then. Pioneer self sufficiency was more evident and the great smothering bureaucracy was just showing its corpulent hand…
It’s definitely gotten way worse in terms of getting special use permits to build huts on public land. In 1984 I thought the USFS was being too obstinate, but basically all you needed to do was some politicking and get a signature from the district ranger. In my opinion, key these days is to find private land parcels and bypass much of the bureaucracy (but unfortunately not all of it, as you still have to deal with anti-growth building codes, ignorance of elected officials when it comes to the state of winter recreation worldwide, and that sort of thing.)