In early June 2020, Arapahoe Basin Ski area announced that, yes, it would open its slopes again, despite that pesky pandemic. I was desperate for a few more runs, to justify my Ikon pass. So I pulled out my mothballed ski gear and headed west on I-70. A Basin is almost 250 miles round-trip from my front door. So, I personally would be responsible for emitting a hundred thousand grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In layperson’s terms, that’s enough to choke a mountain goat.
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I know this, because I met some mountain goats, in person, at the top of the lift at A Basin. The goats were enjoying a warm June morning, at least until I got there. One annoyed ram swiveled his head around to look at me. Was I a threat to him, the rest of his band, and maybe the planet?
The goat was right: I am indeed a triple threat.
Mountain goats were introduced here in the 1940s, so hunters could shoot them. No wonder that ram at A Basin was upset. As far as the goat knew, I wanted a trophy to mount over the planet-warming fireplace in my ski lodge.
Okay, I’m not a hunter and I don’t own a ski lodge, but the goat didn’t know that. To charge, or not to charge, that was his question.
My wife and I moved to Colorado seven years ago. I’d been flying out here from Pennsylvania twice a year for 20 years, spending thousands of dollars and emitting apocalyptic amounts of greenhouse gasses in the process.
The climate-saving solution was obvious: Move to ski country!
So now, instead of downhilling three days a year, I log 15 days on my Ikon pass–skiing toward the apocalypse. Watch me land this Lui Kang 360 straight into the end of civilization as we know it. Actually, I have no idea how to execute a Lui Kang 360. But I do know this: My winter passion is not planet-friendly.
Let me count the ways:
First of all, there’s water. You may have heard that that’s a problem here in the West. A study in the journal Nature Climate Change asserts that, with a rise of 4 degrees centigrade to the world’s climate, mostski resorts will be forced to trade natural snow for the man-made fluff. Environmentally speaking, that’s like pointing a snow-gun at your temple and firing.
There’s more bad news. When I drive by Copper Mountain in the summer, the ski trails look like vertical golf courses. Anything that puts me in moral proximity with golfers has to be bad. Golfing, like skiing, is a sport where economic privilege meets an unnatural landscape soaked in vanishing resources.
And while we’re on the subject of “vanishing,” I should also point out that winter itself is an endangered species.
But Colorado skiers are immune, right? Hardly.
Warmer air does hold more moisture, which could mean more snow for our ski resorts. But as the climate taketh away on both coasts, it giveth at DIA. Visiting skiers will let loose an average of 244 kilograms of CO2 per person, on their flights to and from The Museum of Snow. A French study found that two-thirds of the carbon emissions produced by skiers comes from transport to, from, and around the ski resorts.
Can you say “vicious climate circle?”
No wonder that mountain goat was annoyed. He can see the writing on the bare rock walls above Loveland Pass. But he didn’t bother to charge. He knows that I’m a weak and stupid animal. Eventually, my kind will be gone, those lifts will stop turning, and goats will inherit the earth. And take better care of it than we do.
But come to think of it, I was wrong to compare skiing with golfing. It’s more like chariot racing–which was probably amusing, in the Roman Coliseum. Nobody does that anymore. The world has turned. And it’s turning again–like a pig on a spit.
Meanwhile, I’m off to Winter Park. I need to get in a few more turns, while that name still fits.
Peter Moore is a writer and illustrator who lives in Fort Collins. You can hear, and see, more of his work at kunc.org.
