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Dave Shively

Dave Shively's outdoors column appears Sundays in the Steamboat Pilot & Today. Contact him at 871-4253 or e-mail dshively@steamboatpilot.com.

I always thought spring break trips were overrated. Probably because I never had the "gone wild" experience that I imagined happened at every Senor Frog's foam party from Cancun to Mazatlan. I spent each college break in East Timonium, Md., waiting to play another rainy lacrosse game against another obscure Division III opponent.

But with the sight of Mount Werner melting, I had to salvage the end of my ski season with a couple big days, so I took off for Ophir.

Where exactly, you ask, is Ophir?

After driving 330 miles to Placerville, my friend John left the following bearings on my voice mail: "Come down over Dallas Divide, take a right, errr left, instead of going straight into Norwood, then somewhere along there should be construction, so turn before it to the right and go to Illium, which eventually goes to Ames, cross the highway exactly at that dirt road, go onto another dirt road to Ophir and our house is up there."

Bingo. Arriving at the valley assemblage of cabins surrounded by a ring of rocky 13,000-foot peaks, I found John and Dave watching ski footage of themselves on a 10-inch television in their two-bedroom shack. This is what skiing's core looks like.

I did a quick inventory. Main room: said TV and couch, two Labradors, wall of speakers for electric guitar and stained rug, presumably for my sleeping. Fine living compared to John's bedroom: sleeping bag on wood floor next to pile of climbing gear and shopping cart to hold political literature and other valuables. Refrigerator contents: tub of Country Crock and bag of celery, presumably for use with empty Bloody Mary mix container.

Needless to say, there was not much Easter egg decoration going on.

But the next day, hiking from the top of Gold Hill and out of the Telluride Ski Resort, I saw the logic behind the lifestyle. Looking west was the classic Colorado canvas of Mount Wilson and Wilson Peak that adorns every Coors can. And to the east was the view that explains why my buddies combine for upward of 25 hours of work a week at a liquor store and were logging their 115th backcountry ski day of the season. The sprawling Bear Creek drainage dropped thousands of feet below and opened an endless array of daunting, rock-walled options with ample blankets of snow.

The first pitch down the Delta Bowl was like stacking five North St. Pat's on top of one another. Trying not to get spring broken, it was slush powder turns down D & D (deep and dangerous) to the Wedding Chutes, a traverse to the Mandatory Couloir and a creative line around the canyon falls - a huge wall of crystal-blue ice frozen onto a semicircle rock band - 3,700 feet later to the valley floor and out the trail that spits you into the middle of Telluride. Click off the skis and cross the street to the pub.

Group consensus: not bad for one run.