'AT ITS MOST SPECTACULAR'

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 4, 2008 | by DAVE PHILIPPS

When Dave Cooper pulled up to the trailhead of Atlantic Peak on the first Saturday of spring, the thermometer in his little, red Toyota read minus 9 degrees.

"You almost wish they didn't put these things in cars. It's better not to know," the retired physicist and author of the new book "Colorado Snow Climbs," said with a smile.

The snow at the foot of this high cluster of peaks southwest of Breckenridge was so cold it creaked underfoot as he climbed out of the car. It did not feel like a typical spring morning, but as mountaineers like Cooper know, spring on the roof of the Rockies is a different season from the leaves and flowers below -- one with its own appeal despite the frigid air. It's snow-climbing season, a time when the avalanche danger has mellowed, days have lengthened, temperatures have generally risen and mountains still wear the snowy cloaks that Cooper writes "provide the opportunity to experience Colorado at its most spectacular."

"This is really when the peaks are at their most beautiful. There's a sense of solitude now, and challenge," he said.

Cooper, 58, is 6 feet 6 inches tall and thin as a rail. He has a long gait that lets him fly along the trail and speaks with a Yorkshire accent. His bushy gray brows are perennially arched, giving him a look of constant, pleasant surprise.

In the near-empty parking lot, he swung a backpack loaded with snowshoes, an ice axe and warm clothes onto his shoulders and headed up the trail.

With him was longtime climbing partner Kevin Craig, who has been on many subzero pre-dawn starts over the years to gather routes for the snow-climb book.

"I find this kind of climbing almost Zen-like," Craig said. "There's often no one around. It's absolutely beautiful. And if the weather is bad, you're completely bundled behind goggles and everything, in your own little world."

On this trip, the weather was good. As the party walked up a high valley, past old mining shacks almost completely hidden in the snow, the sun peeked over the ridge of 13,841-foot Atlantic Peak and warmed their faces. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Dawn shadows made the sharp, snowy ridges glow lavender.

Scenes like this are what sent Cooper down the accidental road to writing guidebooks.

Growing up on the coast in England he had almost no exposure to mountains. That changed when he moved to Utah to do post-doctoral research in 1974.

Friends took him to climb in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and the Wasatch Mountains in Utah.

"I was hooked," he said.

He moved to Denver in 1980, when he was 30 and began climbing peaks with the zeal of a convert. He joined the Colorado Mountain Club in 1985. By 1988 he was going on expeditions to climb in distant ranges in Alaska and South America -- an annual tradition he has kept for more than 20 years.

"When I started climbing, I was mainly going with friends who were trying to finish lists, either all the fourteeners or all the high thirteeners. Since people usually save the hardest peaks for last, I ended up doing many of the more interesting ones," he said. "Then I started doing snow climbs as a way to train for expeditions and found it was something I really enjoyed."

That sense of enjoyment is what distinguishes Cooper in the crowded pack of Colorado guidebooks. Most guide books are based either on location or altitude -- that is, they are guides to hikes in a specific region, (Pikes Peak, Summit County, etc.) or mountains of a certain height (such as the fourteeners). Cooper didn't do that.

"I'm not much of a list person," he said. "I'm not interested purely in altitude. I'm more interested in aesthetics."

His idea was to feature peaks based purely on how enjoyable they are. His first book, "Colorado Scrambles," listed 50 routes where, instead of trudging to a summit on an established trail, climbers "scramble" with hands and feet along Class 3 and 4 ridges, and perhaps encounter short bouts of Class 5 technical rock. Some peaks in the book were big, some were small, but all were classics.

Few guidebooks in Colorado have created such buzz. The guide, published in 2005, is in its second printing.

The same search for interesting routes drove "Colorado Snow Climbs." But with snow, he had to do something different.

"Every snow climb has its natural season. You couldn't do the climb we're doing now in June, but it's perfect in spring. Some couloirs are great in May but gone in July, so I had to organize the book seasonally," he said.

The book starts with spring ridge climbs and goes all the way through summer couloirs to autumn ice.

Cooper said it's selling well. He credits a thriving online community of mountain climbers on sites such as 14ers.com, who are continually pushing one another to go beyond standard routes and seasons.

Cooper provides these adventurers with the necessary inspiration and details.

As if to prove his point, a set of snowshoe tracks snaked across a meadow right where Cooper planned to turn off the main trail to climb Atlantic Peak.

"That's unusual," he said. "Usually we have this climb to ourselves."