Words: Tom Winter 2023-01-23 10:33:52
Ryan Koupal and Pete Gaston on a cold morning skin out of the Broome Hut near Berthoud Pass, CO with the Indian Peaks and Continental Divide in the background. Photo: Fredrik Marmsater The Colorado Grand was one of Paul Ramer’s many big ideas. Ramer, a backcountry skier who tragically passed away from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in 2000, was a tinkerer and dreamer who worked a variety of high-level scientific jobs, from designing wiring systems for submarine-launched Poseidon missiles to building plutonium-handling robots for nuclear warheads at Colorado’s now-defunct Rocky Flats. Ramer’s true passion, however, was skiing. Among other inventions, Ramer’s NOTwax, a rub-on wax substitute, predated innovations such as DPS’ Phantom Wax by decades, and the Ramer binding introduced in 1975 foreshadowed the development of alpine touring frame bindings years later. But unlike Ramer’s other innovations, the Colorado Grand concept has no modern equivalent—a grueling endeavor that demands a high level of fitness, solid backcountry skiing skills and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of avalanche risk and terrain management. Ramer found his bliss—and his people—in the backcountry chasing powder. He conceived of the Colorado Grand after experiencing Europe’s legendary ski traverses in the early ’80s and thought that what Colorado needed was a similar adventure, a big eight-to-nine-day tour through some of the highest terrain in the Rockies, using ski lifts and touring bindings to experience the Centennial State’s mountains like never before. Ramer’s intense and committed multiday ski tour would link eight of the Centennial State’s ski areas from Eldora to Vail for a trip with shades of Europe’s storied Haute Route—well, at least on the hospitality side of things. Like the Haute Route, skiers would utilize existing accommodations, avoiding snowy bivouacs and eating well at restaurants. Beautiful in theory, but much more difficult in reality thanks to consistent high-altitude travel, the need for car shuttles, a lack of ski lifts across most of the terrain and Colorado’s notoriously dangerous snowpack. It was an experience conceptualized completely apart from Colorado’s more accessible 10th Mountain Division Huts, which are strategically placed for access and quality backcountry skiing with shorter touring distances between them and plenty of nearby powder stashes. Long sections of Ramer’s Colorado Grand are remote, with an abundance of vertical gain and loss, traversing terrain that might not qualify as enjoyable. “A lot of the skiing is high consequence, high altitude, long miles, far from help,” says Peter Shelton, who was part of the team for the inaugural attempt of the Colorado Grand with Ramer in 1985. “In great weather, the route finding would be difficult enough for an outsider. In poor visibility, yikes!” The route connects Eldora to Winter Park, Winter Park to (the now-shuttered) Berthoud Pass ski area, Berthoud Pass to Loveland, Loveland to Arapahoe Basin, with a second leg of Breckenridge to Copper Mountain and then Copper Mountain to Vail. There are multiple crossings of the Continental Divide over the nearly 80 miles and about 20,000 feet of vertical gain and loss, with nine-to-10-hour days spent traveling through avalanche-prone terrain. “Paul’s contention that lift riding would reduce uphill skiing and make the whole tour easier and more fun seems to me now a miscalculation,” Shelton says, laughing. While the logistics—including the need for car shuttles—means the Grand will never become as traveled as the European routes it was designed to mimic, Ramer’s concept is still appealing in smaller slices. But the tour in its entirety is too complex, too dangerous and too committed for all but the hardest of hardcores, which is perhaps why the Grand has never fully caught on. Even Ramer and his inaugural team abandoned their first attempt in 1985 due to avalanche risk, although Ramer returned to finish the Arapahoe Basin to Vail leg with another group later in the spring. Aside from his two-part effort, there’s no other record of the Grand being completed, particularly in one big push, making it a near-myth within the Colorado backcountry skiing community. “Bummer that [Peter] couldn’t stay around to think up more stuff, practical and whimsical,” Shelton says. “He might even have goosed the Grand Tour into being. But probably not.”
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.