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Publication: Powder Magazine
It's always the last chair to open. Silverado - the second most loved lift at Squaw behind the cultish KT-22 - has a fan club similar to the terrain itself: quirky, aggressive, a little off-kilter. Just like any resort, other lifts have their supporters, too. Headwall gets the work crowd which needs to bang out quick laps. Siberia is a bragging ground for the Bog’ powder-suit set. Granite Chief claims the hydroponic beard growers. But Silvy attracts those with a different mindset.
And yesterday 10,000 people skied on the other side of its ridge, lift tickets flapping in the wind, while four of us had this entire square mile of Squaw to ourselves. We were doing Ski Patrol bomb routes in two-and-a-half feet of blower powder and setting off avalanches wherever we could. We were the lucky ones yesterday. But today she's open for the season and has become fair game once again.
The bottom lift shack is perched fifteen feet high because of ridiculously rocky ground and the amount of snowfall here. One summer Squaw left a cat near its base to save Mountain Manager Jimmy King the hassle of driving one down the next year. When it came time to build the loading ramp they had to bust out probes to find the buried machine. Although the terrain has only been open since ’92, the twice-recycled triple chair celebrates its unofficial 31st birthday this season.
Squaw resort officials proclaim the mountain 100 percent open even when Silvy isn't spinning. They consider it added value, but for locals, Silverado is much more than a bonus. It is 600 acres of salt-and-pepper rock bands, blind rollovers, and little orange signs warning of monster cliffs below. Folks sniffing around Squaw's High Camp or nearby Solitude chair get sucked onto Silverado's inviting slopes, where bowls become bowels and non-savvy intermediates get cliffed out regularly. Oftentimes Ski Patrol has to rappel them down 80-foot China Wall, hundreds of yards wide.
"Silvy's got lines twice as long as the Chimney" (Squaw's most notorious shot), says local diehard Erv Wolf. "And way less forgiving."
Alex West is a freelance writer and photographer who has consistently learned many life lessons, by both success and high-speed yoga, back in Silverado since first dropping in nine years ago. Many thanks to Squaw for their cooperation with this article!
© 2001 alex west writing and photography