The roulette wheel back at the hotel may have taken all our money, but up at Lee Can-yon we hit the storm-day jackpot. Words, Photos, Art and Captions Colin Clancy WE were somewhere around Vegas on the edge of the desert when the storm began to take hold. Angry clouds concealed the 11,289-foot summit of Lee Peak above Las Vegas’ local ski hill, Lee Canyon. gotten a job in Vegas, his first thought was, What the hell are you talking about? I’d been skeptical too. Despite having seen the hazy mountains above the neon glow of Sin City, I had expected to find a Podunk little hill—more novelty than mountain. But we’d arrived at Lee Canyon to find real skiing rising from the Mojave Desert. With a base elevation of 8,600 feet, Lee Canyon’s three chairlifts access 195 acres of terrain. Through the resort’s gates lie another 250 acres of backcountry steeps and chutes, all less than an hour from the Strip. “It’s small, and big,” Shanahan says of his home hill, explaining that the ski community is tight and the relationships and terrain knowledge here go hand in hand. “But it’s big as in you can get into some big trouble with the terrain that’s up there.” That big terrain has led to past tragedy and destruction. Much of the resort’s terrain lies in avalanche paths from the steeps above. An avalanche once wiped out the top station of one of the resort’s two main chairlifts, and the chair had to be rebuilt and rerouted out of the avalanche path. In 2005, a 13-year-old boy was killed when another avalanche swept him off the chairlift. As snow safety supervisor, Shanahan’s focus is as much on the big terrain above the resort as it is inbounds. Each year Lee Canyon sees more and more people using its backcountry gates. Shanahan has made it his mission to educate the public about snow science and avalanche safety. Shanahan takes us out a gate and into thick groves of towering ponderosas and gnarled bristlecones. The terrain in here is hum-mocky and undulating with lots of gulches and playful hits perfect for fun storm-day slashes. The out-of-bounds woods are full of rails and log slides and smoke shacks—clandestine projects headed up by the area’s fringe ski community. Most of those employees are Vegas locals themselves, many living on the northwest side of town where the commute is only 40 minutes. A few skip the bright lights altogether, living instead in the small suburban community of Kyle Canyon. As we pull into the lot, though, the whiteout breaks long enough to give us a glimpse of the top. It looms above, far more imposing than the imitations of Paris, Luxor and Bellagio towering over the Strip down in the desert. Carrying ski gear through the casino at 7 a.m, the bedraggled patrons looked at us with fear, loathing and a strong sense of confusion. A couple sitting at a video roulette machine dragged on cigarettes in unison as their simultaneous gaze followed us to the elevators. I recognized the couple. They’d been sitting in those seats all night. “You know you’re in Vegas, right?” A skeleton-thin man asked us in a two-pack-a-day croak as we shuffled our gear into the tiny elevator with him. “Yes,” Adam said. “We know.” We’d come to Vegas on a whim, with a mind to go skiing off the beaten path, making some lesser-traveled turns. I’d been to Sin City several times over the years—vacations with friends, a buddy’s bachelor party, a stop along a great American road trip—and at some point on every one of those trips I’d turned my head from the fabricated reality of the Strip and neon mayhem of downtown to fix my gaze on the purple mountains rising from the horizon. They’d seemed so close, but could they really be anything but a desert mirage? I needed to see for myself. SHORTLY AFTER LANDING at Lee Canyon, my friend Adam Watson and I chase ski patroller Seth Shanahan through the trees. By pure luck we’ve hit the area on its biggest storm day of the season, and it’s dumping a couple of inches per hour. I don’t know if I’ve ever skied glades this fun. It’s steep and pretty darn perfect—tight enough to keep the crowds on the groomers, open enough to push down the throttle. When Shanahan first considered moving to Vegas 23 years ago, he’d been skeptical. He’d agreed to move anywhere his wife found a job as long as there were mountains. When she told him she’d Las Vegas 069
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 2: Page 69
