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Phil Parker: Thoughts run wild while you're stuck in the snow

By Phil Parker
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

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"I was lost so deep in the forest," I'd joke later, "that I met Minotaurs."

Talking about mythic figures, with their bull heads and battle axes, wasn't funny at the time.

Somewhere on the Alberta run at the Wolf Creek Ski Area in southern Colorado, thigh-deep in powder, every direction looked uphill. Over the next two hours I'd point my eyes toward the top of the mountain many times. Not once did I see another person.

The feelings come back with this week's stories about Albuquerque snowboarders who've been stranded and lost, both at Wolf Creek and Santa Fe.

Getting stuck — alone on a very big mountain — taxes a snowboarder in every conceivable way. Try to put your arms down and they'll sink without ever finding ground. Tip over, onto your stomach or back, and standing up again might feel impossible because every movement makes you sink deeper.

When it happened to me a few weeks ago, I fought — jerking back and forth and trying to budge. I think I moved about a foot every 10 or 15 minutes. There was some rolling, shifting, panting, grunting and cursing.

Terrible, self-destructive thoughts flash across your mind, if only because time slows when you can't move. I had trouble even picturing the moment when I could get free. The temperature drops a little. Claustrophobia shouldn't come in such a wide-open place.

My feet got colder and my backside wetter as I struggled for centimeters. My hips strained and clicked weirdly with each rooted lunge. My legs got so weak.

Sometimes taking your snowboard off is an option. Sometimes not. It may be the one thing keeping you from sinking in over your head.

The physical strain is what's worst, but nasty thoughts can creep in at such times. For a moment, the very real-feeling notion hit me that I might get stuck all night.

What if it started getting dark? What if I'd waited until later in the afternoon to start this run — wouldn't I die out here?

Fresh powder is, for a boarder, the perfect drug. And no place within driving distance of Albuquerque gets sweeter snow than Wolf Creek, about 15 miles from Pagosa Springs. The board slides so cleanly, it's like surfing on a giant tub of margarine. I've flown down the steep runs' faces there, making only the slightest turns. Fast and free.

Falling is like belly-flopping onto a mass of goose-down pillows.

There's nothing I'd rather do.

But it's freakish, how much snow that place gets. It's as if Wolf Creek makes its own weather. Durango doesn't get snow that nice, and no place in our state comes close.

So I follow the powder like a drug-sniffing German shepherd and trek to Wolf Creek at every winter opportunity.

And I head to the Alberta lift all the time. It's my favorite. Folks from Wyoming and Texas have told me it's their top lift anywhere. There are no groomed runs and the trees are spaced just so.

Once you're off the lift, facing down the mountain, unlimited routes sprawl in all directions.

But there are also spots that'll swallow a snowboarder. I spent more than an hour-and-a-half straining to extricate myself from that misery. Apparently, since that mid-December day, it's only gotten deeper.

It's a blessing and a curse, I guess. Wolf Creek can be heaven on a snowboard, but it can also be terrifying for those few tense seconds when I wonder: "Am I gonna get out of here?"