Shop Amazon: Uphill Skiing and Light Tours of Colorado
New book in Off Piste Ski Atlas series.
The sport of alpine ski touring has exploded in Colorado. If you’re an experienced practitioner, the state has an amazing amount of options for you — covered by numerous guidebooks. Lou Dawson, publisher and prolific writer here at Wildsnow.com, was an early pioneer in both exploring the alpine touring of colorado, as well as writing the first guidebooks that covered “modern” aspects of the sport, such as detailing steeper alpine terrain (see books option in nav menu above).
All well and good, but a best kept secret of ski touring is that a vast number of individuals seeking to enjoy the sport would rather not deal with avalanche danger and difficult snow — not to mention super steep terrain. A new ski touring guidebook by Lou, due out late fall of 2017, seeks to help.
“I’ve been ski touring — and writing about it — for half a century,” says Dawson, “frankly, ever since I was a teenager I’ve enjoyed both the moderate routes as well as big mountain descents. I guess it was the enthusiasm of youth, in that the books I authored in the 1980s and 90s tended to ignore the easy stuff — even though a ski day for me could have equally been a fourteener summit or a scenic shuffle to a mountain hut. Well, with the help of publisher Andy Sovick, I’m correcting my oversight. Andy and I have a book in the works that covers a curated selection of both backcountry and resort uphill routes. Each is moderate in terms of difficulty, as well as the backcountry routes having minimal avalanche danger.”
Titled “Uphill Skiing and Light Tours of Colorado,” the book will be published by Off Piste Ski Atlas, available at ski touring retailers and online. A while back Lou filed this review on the Atlas covering Crested Butte. The new guide will be similar, spiral bound at about 60 pages, with well crafted oblique aerial photos and curated information for each route.
“I’m really excited about this project,” continues Lou, “I’ve always viewed my books as a way of giving back, and I’ve met so many skiers over the past 10 years or so who simply are not interested in going big. Instead, they simply desire to get outside for a mellow workout during a Colorado bluebird day, perhaps with their kids or significant other. Thus, I hope this will be a gift to the sport in that regard.”
Andy and Lou will do a brief ‘book tour’ in December. With Andy’s publications now covering the gamut of Colorado options, the pair’s presentations should be fun and interesting. Watch this space for schedule.
New ski touring guidebook due from Lou Dawson, winter 2017-2018.
While most of the WildSnow backcountry skiing blog posts are best attributed to a single author, some work well as done by the group.