The Ski Journal • Volume 16, Issue 3 • SUBURBAN POW

If I have a lighter workday on Friday, I head up into one of my 4G hotspot zones, like this shot between the gambling tones of Blackhawk, CO and Central City, CO with my beater email machine and a small chair. Get laps, take extended work breaks, eat the snacks, jump on Zoom calls if they pop up. Then I’m back home to get my kids get off the school bus. Photo: Weird Foothill Guy

Moving from the cozy embrace of mountain life to the monotony of cookie-cutter suburbia might sound like a worst-nightmare scenario for most skiers, but not for Alex Kaufman.

“Necessity mothered invention,” he says from the garage of his home just outside Denver, an hour-plus drive (on a good day) from the nearest ski resort. “I want to ski powder, I want a sense of adventure—but I also want to live in Denver and not sit on I-70. I had to redo the equation.”

For a skier who once competed, worked in marketing at major resorts such as Sunday River and Mt. Bachelor, and hosted and produced one of the first ski-specific podcasts, the answer to Colorado’s growing congestion problem is in the foothills outside his back door.

“My goal is to travel the shortest distance the snowpack will let me,” he says. “Early in the season, that’s probably 30 to 45 minutes. Later I can ski 10 blocks from my house.”

Using a pair of Marquette Backcountry “trek” skis that weigh in at nine pounds apiece, measure 140cm long and 130mm wide underfoot and are constructed of blow-molded plastic with no edges and “scales” that act as built-in skins, Kaufman has turned to the unconventional to pursue the goods close to home.

“This equipment thrives in three, four, five inches of snow and it doesn’t matter what’s underneath,” he says. “They also need to ski in soft snow, so I only get powder turns.”

After his trusty Marquettes were discontinued, Kaufman took to building an arsenal of backups to continue feeding his non-traditional approach to ski addiction. “Anywhere on the internet you find a bad review of these skis, you’ll find my comment underneath offering to buy them,” he says. “They last me about two to four years, and I’ve got around 10 pairs now. That should be enough for the next 20 years.”

After more than two decades spent working in skiing, including living out of his truck in Vail as a high school dropout before working his way into some of the most influential circles in the sport, Kaufman says the industry life is behind him. He’s a family man and has a full-time gig outside of the ski world, but still dips his toe in occasionally, sharing his exploits (and his limitless snark) under the internet moniker “Weird Foothill Guy.”

“This is a hobby. I have a career, I have kids—I just want to ski powder on my weird, discontinued skis,” he says with a smile. “The backcountry is getting more and more crowded every year. They’re battling for scraps of what skiing used to be. Where I’m going, I never see skiers. It’s usually just very confused hikers or dog walkers.”

With no competition for fresh lines, every day is a powder day and stashes can still be foraged weeks after the last storm has rolled through. Clad in basketball shorts, long johns and a Colorado-based sports jersey, Kaufman can explore his go-to zones—all within a half-hour drive of his house—and score as many untouched laps as he can fit into his schedule for the day.

Last winter, Kaufman clocked more than 88,000 feet of vert on his plastic foot sleds. He says he was shooting for 100,000, but poor early season snowfalls kept him short of his goal. When asked what it was like to hit such an impressive number, he simply responded, “My feet hurt.”

Kaufman has found freedom in the foothills, watching ski traffic snake along the highway as he tops out on one of his myriad neighborhood lines.

“So much skiing from where I live is inconvenient,” he says. “But my experience is all about unbridled convenience.”

The Ski Journal - Volume 16, Issue 3

SUBURBAN POW

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