Night Driving
Late-night drives on icy roads from mountain to mountain—a quintessential ski experience
It was too good to leave. A five-hour drive over high-mountain passes lay ahead, but the snow on our home mountain was cold, soft, and—in the right zone—untouched. Warm temps, blue skies, and firm, chalky, grippy snow had been the norm for months; so, the day’s spongy powder was more coveted than normal.
Eventually, with tired legs and wind blown faces, we loaded our trucks with coffee, skis, and Gore-Tex. We pulled out of town while others reveled in apres. Alpenglow guided us over the first mountain pass, topping out at 8,755 feet. Pink light illuminated the jagged peaks. As the sun set behind the western slope, a darkness engulfed the road. Snow started to blow sideways. I clinched the steering with white knuckles.
The soundtrack for the drive south through the Rocky Mountain included tunes from Sturgil and Bingham, Shakey Graves and Zach Bryan, Maggie Rogers and Lucius.
A mentor—in both professional and personal life—once told me that parenting was like driving on icy roads. When he told me this, I bridged the metaphor to sitting at the helm of a sailboat, something I devoted a previous life to. In all three—ice driving, sailing, and parenting—little tweaks on the tiller keep your heading. Over steer and the rig, the boat, or your family swerve off course.
I thought about this conversation from nearly a decade ago as I drove frozen roads south, hugged the white line, and sent love to my young boys tucked comfy into their beds while the storm raged outside their windows.
Chasing storms is quintessentially skiing. Driving at night is the sacrifice we make to not compromise a powder day’s treasured daylight hours. Music and inner dialogue, voice memos and quietness make up the majority of the lonely hours on the road barreling between mountains.
Night Driving is a quick canonized read for diehard skiers written by Dick Dorworth almost 50 years ago. “[It] first appeared in the winter of 1975 as a long [Mountain Gazette] story” writes George Sibley in the foreword for the eventual book that legendary skier and storyteller Dorworth published with Western Eye Press years later.
“Our mountain worlds really did overlap,” Sibley writes of his and Dorworth’s roads, “in the long tunnels the headlights carve through the night in an all-night drive—a phenomenon that in itself is a kind of self-induced madness, a stupid thing to do (however necessary) that takes one out of ordinary reality into a parallel universe where your other mind, the one that doesn’t mind, wakes up and takes over the wheel.”
I was inspired by Dorworth’s writing the first time I read his work when I was an aspiring writer. Recently, I just picked it up again and plan to re-read on an upcoming long-haul flight. (Night flying is another story for another time.)
“Dorworth’s Night Driving is written like one of those coffee-stoked nights. It needs to be ready in one sitting, like one of those long nights shared with friends whom Dorworth calls ‘the brother fuck-ups of the lost highway,” writes Sibley.
My skiing life is colored by the darkness of night driving.
I treasure memories of:
Pre-dawn departures from Silicon Valley in the passenger seat of my grandmother’s car as she whisked us away from the suburbs, headed towards the tiny ski hill of Soda Springs as young ones. Later we would pass the iconic Olympic Rings that still welcome skiers headed to Palisades (it was named something different in those days).
Sunday night bumper-to-bumper traffic through Vacaville or Concord after a day trip to Sugar Bowl—they were always day trips in those days—with my mom, dad, and brother. We’d usually be listening to Traveling Wilburys or Jimi Hendrix (never Fleetwood Mac), or to a 49ers playoff game with Joe Montana under center or Steve Young threading a pass to Terrell Owens for a win.
Winding up the snake turns to Portillo on my first—of many—visits to the yellow-walled ski pilgrimage site in the Andes. We were coming from a big-mountain comp in the mountains outside of Santiago with a van full of Freeskiing World Tour athletes. We had to leave the post-comp party early but we grabbed 40s of Chilean beer from the cooler for the drive. After being held by the Chilean military at a checkpoint because of late-night avalanche conditions, our driver paid the officers to let us make the 90-minute, two-mile drive up to Laguna del Inca. While weaving up the 28 hairpin turns of Los Caracoles, we came up with a drinking game. A well-timed swig of the oversized beers at each turn would slingshot beer, like a bong, down our throats. We stumbled into the hotel that first night. The next morning, we woke up with headaches to the Tres Hermanos; then, we hiked the Super C.
Pushing a friend’s two-wheel drive car in the dark up an icy stretch of road in Little Cottonwood Canyon headed for the Peruvian Lodge. We were racing to get to our diggs for Interlodge. The next day we snagged early ups with photographer Jim Harris for a story assignment with Skiing Mag.
Rolling into Silverton for Red Bull Cold Rush after navigating the icy roads on Road Mountain Pass, knowing that a week of Silverton with Red Bull was worth the icy late-night drive through Montrose and Ouray.
The dappled dawn drawn fence post on a powdery sunrise in Telluride that jolted me awake at the wheel with more zeal than the copious amounts of espresso that fueled the seven-hour overnight pilgrimage to the San Juans.
Most late-night drives have been rewarded with a memorable moment. The lonely work on slippery roads during the darkness of night seems to lead to treasured memories, a poignant reminder that good things take effort: chasing storms, spending time with family, pursuing yet-to-be-written stories, and exploring new places.
Night driving is skiing.