Peak Solitude

In the aftermath of the L.A. fires, it was only on a solo ski trip that author, writer, and podcast host Elise Loehnen was able to reconnect with her fearless younger self-and finally let the tears flow.

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I hoisted my boot bag over my shoulder and slowly eased the sliding door open, stepping into air still heavy with the scent of smoke.

I felt more than a little guilty creeping out while my kids were still asleep, but I was trying to draw as little attention as possible to the fact that I was escaping to 12,000 feet, high in the Rocky Mountains. After all, my kids would be okay. They were now back in their own beds after being evacuated to a hotel room for 11 days with me, my husband, and our three cats while the Palisades Fire loomed nearby. We all needed some space. But when my oldest son found out I'd left, he wasn't angry about that--he was mad he didn't get to come.

"But Mom, we ski together." "Yes, Max, that's precisely the point." I headed to Crested Butte, Colorado's Eleven Scarp Ridge Lodge, which runs a snowcat skiing operation out of a ghost town called Irwin. At one point in the 19th century, this former mining town was home to 5,000. Now it's home to a few snowcats' worth of skiers a day and an extensive snow safety team that mitigates potential avalanches with explosives. Thanks to two adjacent peaks that halt clouds in a weather phenomenon called orographic lifting, over 1,000 acres operated by Eleven gets hit with 450 inches of dry, cold-smoke powder a year, two times what the rest of Crested Butte can expect.