The ultimate adventure for many of your guests is powder. And many will go to great lengths to find it. They cut the ropes and hike the peak and yo-yo in and out of bounds. This has made sidecountry one of the most talked-about trends in winter sports. But what exactly is sidecountry, anyhow?

In the west, sidecountry ranges from the severe terrain found in Jackson’s Granite Canyon and Telluride’s Bear Creek to the mellow powder skiing of Vail’s Minturn Mile. In the East, it’s something different: thick tree skiing with little or no avalanche danger.

Look closer, though, and you’ll see that sidecountry, regardless of how the terrain is defined, is actually a state of mind. It’s possible for all sorts of resorts to tap into the adventure mindset and enhance the overall riding experience for locals and guests.


GEAR EASES THE WAY
With equipment rapidly making tough snow conditions easy and fun, more and more people are looking for untouched snow. The primary technological advance behind sidecountry skiing and riding is rocker, a combination of reverse camber and traditional camber that makes skiing in a wide range of snow conditions—and powder especially—easier.

Mixed camber ski sales have doubled in the past year, to more than 52,000 pairs sold, and will take a much larger share of the market next year. Reverse camber snowboard sales also exploded over the same period, increasing by 36 percent, and account for 70 percent of current-season sales. Furthermore, other powder and backcountry-oriented gear is seeing similar gains. Alpine touring and randonée equipment sales in 2010-11 rose 90 percent overall in dollars and 87 percent in units. (See SIA Snow Show reports in the March 2012 issue of SAM for more on rocker gear.)

People are buying the tools that allow them to ski deeper snow and have fun, even if the conditions are funky, and rockered equipment is the foundation of this trend.

And this gear works. It allows more skiers and snowboarders to ride more places. You’ve probably heard your hardcore locals bitch about this over après-ski beers in the lodge. And they have a point: more skiers going more places, particularly outside the ropes, or in the woods between runs, creates a host of management issues. These range from increased patrol resources and expenses for rescues and injured skier evacuation to customers “poaching” avalanche closures and “track followers” who don’t know where they’re going and end up lost.

In this regard, the sidecountry phenomenon is linked to the uphill traffic issues discussed in the January 2012 issue of SAM. Uphill policies should always be considered when developing a sidecountry plan, as the issues are interlinked.


PLUSSES AND MINUSES
Sidecountry is “adventure” skiing and riding that happens at the margins of a resort’s boundary, in the trees or off the beaten path, just outside the ropes. Customers use lifts to lap this terrain. And while there may be hiking involved, the uphill aspect is limited.

The benefit to opening this kind of terrain is obvious: slap up a few warning signs and some backcountry access gates, and you’ve effectively added additional skiable acreage without much cost.

But there are risks to this, too. The dangers of rescues and associated expense, the potential for guests to inadvertently trespass on private property, avalanche danger, manmade hazards such as mine shafts—the list of potential issues can be long.

But the good news is that a plan is relatively simple to put in place, can make your locals happier (with the accompanying stoke they’ll share on Facebook) and offer your more adventurous destination guests additional types of experiences. Here are a few examples:


EVERYONE’S JUMPING IN
Beaver Creek might seem an odd place to find sidecountry stashes and adventure skiing. But the mountain has long been proactive in opening terrain, both “controlled sidecountry” inside the resort’s boundaries along with true backcountry accessed via the ski area’s backcountry access gates. One of the gems of the resort is the Stone Creek Chutes sector of the mountain, a former backcountry avalanche area that was adjacent to the resort, and which opened in 2007.

“It was really a no brainer,” says Adam Borg, assistant ski patrol director. “It was already a yo-yo kind of situation, where people would go ski it and then come back into the ski area.” According to Borg, both the USFS and Beaver Creek recognized that safety issues were involved with traffic going into an uncontrolled avalanche hazard area, and that an expansion of Beaver Creek’s terrain and associated avalanche mitigation plan would be the best solution.

“We work closely with the USFS on life-safety issues,” says Borg. “The USFS doesn’t want to restrict access to public lands. We put [backcountry access gates] in places where people want to go, and we work very hard to educate the pubic that they are leaving a controlled ski area.” In this regard, the gates are signed heavily, with avalanche risk and other warnings clearly spelled out.

Northstar-at-Tahoe has also created a controlled environment for adventure skiing. Slated to come online during the 2011-12 season, the resort’s Lookout and Sawmill Glades comprise 170 acres adjacent to pre-existing advanced and expert terrain. As part of the expansion, the ski area will offer guided tours and snowcat accessed skiing (once the necessary snow has arrived, that is).

Similar opportunities exist for guests who visit Alberta’s Castle Mountain. The ski area has a variety of gated adventure terrain for guests as well as cat skiing on terrain directly adjacent to the mountain.

Areas like Jackson Hole have developed other ways to profit from adjacent backcountry terrain. The steep, cliff-pocked, avalanche-prone terrain surrounding Jackson Hole was off-limits for years. With increased poaching and pubic pressure for access to public lands, though, the ski area made the risky decision to open access.











Jackson Hole’s backcountry is legendary, but controlling that experience has long been an issue. With signage that warns and informs, the ski area makes it clear that safety is the guest’s responsibility.

The scope of the acreage, severe avalanche danger and the political impossibility of creating a “controlled sidecountry” experience for guests led Jackson to come up with a different solution: guided excursions in Rock Springs Canyon, a portion of this terrain.

“People come here for that experience,” says Jackson Hole’s Zahan Billimora. “It’s about finding powder and experiencing the mountains in a more wild and serene setting.”

There can be strong upside to creating adventure skiing/snowboarding management solutions. Even if resorts seem to be limited by local geography, there are many ways in which a mountain can effectively add additional acreage along or inside existing boundaries while reaping goodwill from locals and guests alike when this terrain is opened.


EASTERN ALTERNATIVES
For eastern skiers, Vermont’s Jay Peak has been a leader in expanding “controlled sidecountry “ glades, with over 100 acres on tap. But this type of terrain has been a fixture in eastern skiing for a long time. Mt. Mansfield’s Slalom Glade first showed up on a trail map in 1940, and Mad River Glen’s The Glade was cut in 1952. Jay’s aggressive controlled sidecountry program may set the standard, but other areas have stepped up their offerings.

Sugarloaf’s recent expansion into Brackett Basin is a case in point. Part of a major multi-year program to expand the resort, Brackett Basin is an ambitious sidecountry undertaking that, when fully open, measures 405 acres.

“It wasn’t in bounds and it wasn’t out of bounds,” says Sugarloaf’s Roddy Ehrlenbach. “In the mid to late ’90s some locals cut a few chutes. Then we had four really good snow years and a lot of people started to go out there. But they really didn’t know where they were going. We dealt with that and it was taxing our resources from a rescue standpoint, so we decided to manage it.”

According to Ehrlenbach, the first stage of the project was to improve access to address rescue and safety concerns. Once the access was established, mountain ops went about improving the skiing. “We cleaned up the glades, created a more western style of tree skiing,” says Ehrlenbach. “There’s been a lot of hand work, and we’ve had to be mindful of the environmental impacts. It will take us at least eight years to finish the project.”

The early results have been positive. “The general public loves it,” says Ehrlenbach.


CREATING SIDECOUNTRY
Sidecountry is what you make it. You can clear underbrush and stumps to create four- or five-turn glades between existing runs. Downed timber can be used in your terrain park, or to create unique features in the woods.

Loon Mountain, N.H., is a prime example of how to do a lot with a little. The ski area added 15 acres of glades this season, and created a “natural” terrain park built with materials pulled from the surrounding woods during the glading process.

“It’s very, very popular,” says Loon’s director of skiing operations Ralph Lewis, adding that Loon plans to continue to develop this kind of terrain as the resort makes ongoing improvements. “I would recommend it for any resort.”

Eldora, a mid-sized Colorado resort with limited backcountry adjacent to the mountain, also has created a controlled sidecountry experience. It, too, cut glades along the edges of the resort, terrain that was nearly inaccessible due to thick timber. These enhancements are complemented by backcountry access gates, allowing the Front Range resort to punch above its weight in the highly competitive Colorado market, stoking out locals who might be tempted to go elsewhere.

“It actually skis really big for such a small ski area,” says Boulder resident Rick Weiner. So big, in fact, that Wiener says he plans to buy an Eldora season pass next winter to complement his Vail Resorts Epic pass.

Regardless of how you decide to maximize the potential of your mountain, adding adventure or sidecountry terrain is another way to make the most of the opportunities you have, both inside and outside the ropes. Given the diversity of resorts and the terrain that surrounds each individual mountain, the opportunities will vary. But the end result will be the same: more people smiling at the end of the day. Of course, Mother Nature needs to do her part, too.


OUT OF BOUNDS, OUT OF CONTROL
Bear Creek’s most recent avalanche victim was like so many others. The 31-year-old snowboarder had ridden the lifts at Telluride, then entered the backcountry via a backcountry gate. Like the others, this victim had also taken an avalanche awareness course. He also had all the latest avalanche-protection technology.

Many ski areas provide access to sidecountry and backcountry terrain, but Bear Creek is more accessible than most: it can be skied five times a day, says San Miguel county sheriff Bill Masters. That has helped Bear Creek become a popular backcountry destination. Where just a few dozen people were entering the Bear Creek basin a decade ago, now, 200 to 300 people a day can access it. “It’s just an explosion of people using the backcountry,” says Masters.

All this has made Bear Creek a bellweather in the current debate over control and authority of backcountry terrain, and responsibility for rescue reflects the same considerations many areas face.

In 1987, following four avalanche deaths here—plus another four on a slope adjacent to Breckenridge—the Forest Service established a backcountry policy that allowed access only at specified exits from the ski area. “We’ve followed essentially the same principles since 1987, and I think it has been extremely successful. But it’s not perfect,” says Ken Kowynia, head of winter sports program administration for the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado. “Once you leave the ski area, we can’t guarantee safety at all.”

Given the high danger level, the Forest Service tried to prohibit all access to Bear Creek for a number of years. To get into the steep-walled valley from the ski area, though, required no more than ducking a rope. Plenty of people did. In 2007, the Forest Service lifted the closure. The Forest Service has come to see boundary closures as unenforceable.

The answer? Education and control. “We think we are much better off directing people to decision points,” says Kowynia. At that decision point, he says, the Forest Service can, through signs, reinforce the idea that avalanches and other bad things can happen in the backcountry.

Masters wants his say, too. The Forest Service lets people go into the backcountry, but won’t allow the sheriff to post signs that indicate the best routes. That “makes zero sense,” he says. “I have the responsibility for it, but not the authority to manage it.”

For Ethan Green, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, the big question is, “How do you communicate with your guests about the routes, if they wish to leave the ski area, and what kind of advice do you want to give them?” he asks. “It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s almost an unfair burden on the ski areas, to have to tell skiers about what to expect outside the ski area boundary.”

Ah, there’s the rub: many adventurers are unfamiliar with the specific conditions and dangers of a given route. “The public sees a pro skier doing a 2,000-foot line in powder, and it looks easy,” says Candace Horgan, communications director of the National Ski Patrol—and a part-time patroller at Colorado’s Arapahoe Basin. What viewers don’t see is the testing of the slopes in advance of the shoots, with avalanche pits and other slope-stability methods.

For Masters, the practical issue of paying for backcountry rescues is also a big concern. Even if he does only a few rescues a year in Bear Creek, it costs $50,000 to be prepared. So he is incensed that Telluride does not allow ski patrollers to respond to rescues. Some patrollers do, but on their own time and, says Masters, only when they can be spared from normal ski area responsibilities.

Telluride, for its part, is reluctant to send its patrollers into uncontrolled terrain. “If we are going to be managing, we need the authority to do it professionally and completely,” says Dave Riley, chief executive. And you have to do that from the start of the season, he says. “Just booming your way into it, to find a route—that’s just not how you professionally manage avalanche mitigation.”

At the same time, Riley sympathizes with Masters. “I don’t blame the sheriff for feeling like he’s stuck in the middle, because he is,” Riley says.

The solution? Riley believes the Forest Service should allow ski areas to expand into sidecountry/backcountry terrain when it becomes the practical way to balance freedom of access with safety and rescue. Question is, as Riley says, “What is the tipping point where professional management is the responsible thing to do?”

Given the conflicting aims and preferences of adventure seekers, resorts, and the government bodies involved, it will take time to answer that question.