FFS with Erik Lambert of Bluebird Backcountry
It’s not every day that a new ski resort opens, especially one without lifts! Yet Bluebird Backcountry is exactly that.
The inspirational idea of introducing a soft entry-point to backcountry touring has been so popular in trial seasons that it’s now moved to the much larger zone at Bear Mountain, just a 30 minute drive from Kremmling and Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
This crowd-funded operation has opened up a whopping great 1,200 acres of avalanche-evaluated inbounds terrain. For those who hire a guide or take an AIARE course at Bluebird Backcountry it offers an additional 3,000 acres to explore.
BACKDROP - Can you tell us about yourself and the concept of Bluebird Backcountry?
Erik Lambert - ‘I grew up in New York State and started skiing from a very young age, my Dad used to take me out of kindergarten and we’d go skiing, so it soon became my first love. I studied English and journalism in Maine and that’s where a friend showed me what to buy and took me out for my first tour. We skinned over two huge slides - I mean they were new, I could smell the pine. I was, like, blown away at the power of nature but didn’t even think about the fact that I could trigger an avalanche or get stuck in one. Looking back I wish there’d been a place like Bluebird where I could have educated myself, rather than relying on my buddies knowledge, or lack thereof.
It didn’t put me off and I kept on learning more and delving deeper into the backcountry while working as a journalist for Backcountry and Alpinist Magazines before working for the American Alpine Club, and I now run a marketing agency for ski and alpine companies.
Bluebird started as a side project when Jeff (Woodward, co-founder) called me and said he’d taken his brother touring and he’d had a great time, but he’d had no idea how to even start thinking about going out without the help from Jeff. He posed some good questions, like “Why is this so hard? Why are the barriers to entry so high? Why is it so expensive? Why do I need to rent expensive equipment without knowing where to go? Or buy all this equipment before I even know if I like it?”.
The main thing is that learning to backcountry ski or snowboard is expensive or dangerous or both. We felt there needed to be a better way, a more friendly and welcoming way.
“I believe that backcountry skiing is twenty years behind rock climbing. ”
I mean rock climbing is a dangerous sport, if you look back forty years you either needed a mentor or you just read Freedom of the Hills and hoped for the best, or you spent a ton of money for a guide. It was all so limited and that’s why climbing gyms have become so successful by introducing access, education and community, which is exactly what we want to do with backcountry skiing. Improve access, making it easier to learn, easier to try, more friendly, more welcoming, and create learning pathways to increase to help folk understand everything they need to learn and truly build skill set that will enable them to go out independently enter the backcountry.
“My take on it is that people who can’t see your vision at first ignore you, then they laugh at you, and eventually you win! ”
BD - How do find a mountain, what’s the process?
Erik - Land is the crux, and that’s the reasons there are no new ski resorts, right? So, we put a lot of elbow grease into it and got lucky. The land’s private and we have a lease on it. In the Spring/Summer it’s a cattle ranch, in Autumn there’s some hunting but there was nothing in the winter so we’re a good income stream.
This is our first full season at Bear Mountain - two seasons back we had six trial days mainly of forestry lands and one day in partnership with Winter Park resort, then last year we did more trials on the same ranch as this year but in a different area. Back in the Summer of 2019 we did a “land sprint”, we got our team of volunteers to help us figure out how we could chase down a location. We tried everything from teaming up with a resort to using a resorts out of bounds area, we’ve had to make it up as we go, which is great as we get to make up the rules as we go, rather than be led by what’s gone before.
The whole concept is disruptive to the ski industry, some major ski journals said we’re not even a real ski area. My take on it is that people who can’t see your vision ignore you, then they laugh at you, and eventually you win!
I mean, we hope to prove the concept this year and illustrate that a new kind of ski area can and should exist.
BD - Was there any problem with land usage and when you first explored the location? Did you think, ‘Great, this is good to go!’, or did you have to do much work?
Erik - No, we’ve not had to rezone the land, but we’re not allowed any permanent structures or do any heavy felling, and we’ve not needed too. We just cleared up some zones with excess dead wood. We didn’t clear them as such, just made sure there’s nothing sticking straight up! We are limited to how many cars can turn into our road, but that’s fine as we’ve limited guests to 200 max a day, as we want people to experience a wilderness.
BD - So what’s the experience for a guest?
Erik - Well, we have a ski patrol, avalanche evaluation, we have rest rooms, there’s food you can buy and there’s a rental shop, none of which you get in the true backcountry. We try to offer the same facilities as a small ski area, making our inbounds 1,200 acres of non-guided terrain a safe place for those first steps. It’s like an inbounds backcountry zone, which is an oxymoron except at Bluebird. Our 3000 acre guided terrain has some great skiing and its cool to open up a new zone for access, but you can have guided touring elsewhere, so our main focus is the inbound zone.
BD - It’s a real responsibility to take people into the backcountry. We always take any tour we’re going on very seriously, checking equipment and only going with trusted friends. Do you worry about the safety elements of Bluebird?
Erik - Ask any person in operations in any ski area in the world what keeps them up at night and they’ll say keeping their customers safe. I’m just the marketing guy and it keeps me awake (laughter). The number one reason people come to us is that they want a less risky, more comfortable place to go. The way we create that is we’re very conservative when opening or closing terrain, we are constantly controlling the inbound terrain, watching problem spots, only opening terrain with a deep understanding of the snowpack, the land and the avalanche atlas that we’ve built.
Also a big part of our mission is education, we have three courses starting from knowing nothing to be ready to take an avalanche course. We also deliver AIARE avalanche courses onsite.
BD - How would you judge the season to be a success?
Erik - The short answer is, we want as many people to experience a unique experience at Bluebird as possible, we want it to be the best day of their season and to be truly memorable, inspiring them to want to learn more, take a safety course and to go backcountry skiing again. Sales of season tickets have sold out, so have the first few avalanche courses.
We feel it’s the right idea and the right time, we had a fantastic response to our crowd funding, we raised $107,000 in just ten days! People want this to happen, I mean, we have over 300 volunteers and we’d never have gotten this far without them.
We’re building a real community of people who believe in Bluebird - it’s great!
Click for more information on the Bluebird Backcountry Resort
