Snow Sunday: Climbing Mountain Quail with Teenagers

24 Jan Snow Sunday: Climbing Mountain Quail with Teenagers

To be honest, at the start, there wasn’t very much enthusiasm about hiking up Mountain Quail, a ski run perched at the outer edge of Telluride’s Black Iron Bowl. It sits at roughly 12,500 feet and is only reached after a 30 to 45 minute hike up a steep snowy hill. (And that pace is only if your group is moving.) At the moment, mine wasn’t.

The group, a mix of 6 Telluride Mountain School girls, mostly 7th and 8th graders and one senior, was instead flopped out at the top of chair 12, listing all the reasons why we shouldn’t hike. (This I’ve learned is the default position of kids this age: when they’re not tearing down the hill like they might after a Taylor Swift sighting, they’re lying prone on the hill, waiting for someone to nudge them along.)
“My legs get tired hiking,” one said.
“Yeah, and I get vertigo,” another followed. The list went on: the hike was long; they’d never done it before; we need to get back to town by 4. What if we don’t make it to the top? What if I can’t carry my skis? And on. And on.

Telluride Mountain School Girls on Top of Mountain Quail

But I wasn’t buying it. I’d seen this group (with the exception of one new addition) tackle Baldy the week before. They were a strong group, a lot stronger than they believed they were. Besides, what else were we going to do? There had been no new snow in over week; it was either this or laps in Ute Park. These girls needed a challenge, something to shake them out of their horizontal blah. The day was cloudless, the sky, the blue of an alpine lake just before you take the plunge.
Finally, the senior spoke up: “I think we should do it. It’ll clear our heads.”
“I’ll lead,” a seventh grader piped up.

The group started up slowly. After nearly 20 minutes, we were only about a third of the way there. I started to get nervous. In the distance, I could see ski patrol starting their sweep up Black Iron. The bowl closes at 2, and while ski patrol is generous about letting you take that final run, they usually only do so if you’re ahead of them (which at this pace, we wouldn’t be for long). And it turned out, that at least 2 of the girls’ complaints were valid. They really didn’t know how to carry their skis. Rather than carry them over their shoulders, they were instead holding them in their arms like a tray. “How about I carry your skis?” I said. “I’ve got these ridiculously broad shoulders; they’re meant for carrying skis—”

The girls waved me off. They wanted to do it themselves. “I want to tell my dad I hiked the whole thing,” the one who was new to the group said. Fine. Noble, I thought, but she wasn’t going to get a chance at this pace. I looked out; ski patrol was gaining on us. “How about I carry your poles? That will lighten things up, help us go a little faster?”
They paused. I saw one turn and watch the red-jacketed figures climbing rapidly towards them. “I’ll give them back to you for the final section?” I said. They nodded, and we started up to meet the rest of the group. We reached the wide swath of snow above Lake View. Just above them was the final hard climb up to Mountain Quail. The girls resumed their prone position on the snow. “How about we rest for 30 seconds and keep going?” I said. Ski Patrol had arrived. I felt badly— maybe this wasn’t such a good idea—I didn’t want to make patrol wait. I apologized for the delay.
One of them looked up at me, his face worn and weathered with the sun. This was a man who had clearly seen it all. “Don’t rush,” he said. “Your girls are awesome,” the other said. “What group is this?”

Senior Bobbie Cooney after her first Mountain Quail

When we reached the top, I pulled out my camera and made them pause. Sorry, I told them, annoying mama with her phone, I said, all the while feeling so grateful that I am the age that I am and can at last do nerdy things and get away with them.
“Great job, everyone,” I told them when we reached the bottom.
“Yeah, but I didn’t really ski it,” one of them said, looking down at the snow. She was the one I’d worried about. She hadn’t been with our group the week before. I’m slow, she had told me. She’d slid down some of Quail before finding her stride.
“What are you talking about? Did you walk down the mountain?”
She shook her head, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced. “Will you do me a favor?” she asked. “Will you ask if I can be in your group again?”
“Only if you’ll say this,” I said. “I skied Mountain Quail.”
She looked up. The briefest smile flittered across her face, the way the sun sometimes hesitates before rising in the morning. “I skied Mountain Quail,” she said.
“See you next week,” I told her.