The run I'm standing at the top of used to be skiable by mid-November. This year it's November 21st and I'm looking at exposed rocks and patches of brown grass where there should be three feet of base. I've been guiding backcountry tours in Colorado's San Juan Mountains for eight years. I know every line, every safe zone, every place where the snow holds.
Or I thought I did.
My season used to run December through April. Last year it was January through March, and we canceled a third of our bookings. This year I'm telling clients to plan for February. Maybe. The ski shop where I picked up repair work in the off-season closed last spring. The guide service I work for added wildfire evacuation training to our avalanche certifications. Last September I spent two weeks evacuated, watching smoke from my phone.
The average snow season in the San Juan range has shortened by three weeks since 2017, with fire season now overlapping what used to be prime ski months.
I'm 32. My friends from guide school are leaving—some to Patagonia or New Zealand, chasing winter. Others quit guiding entirely. My college roommate keeps sending me job listings for corporate outdoor programs. The pay is triple what I make. I keep not applying.
I don't know if I'm staying because this is who I am, or because I'm terrified of finding out who I'd be without it. Those might be different questions. I can't tell anymore.
"I tell people this isn't just my job, it's my identity. I'm the person who can read snow, who knows which aspects hold powder, who keeps clients safe in the backcountry. But I don't know. Why does my identity need to be my job?"
My partner asked me that last month and I got defensive instead of answering.
She works remotely for a tech company. She loves it here but her relationship to this place is different—she can live anywhere with good internet. She thinks I should transition out of guiding while I still have a choice, before the mountains make the choice for me. I resent that she's probably right.
I've been picking up remote work, building websites for outdoor companies. I'm good at it. I could do it full-time. But then what? I'd be someone who lives in the mountains and works on a computer, which is what my partner is, which is fine for her but feels wrong for me. I can't explain why. Why is guiding real and website work isn't? Why does one count as being in the mountains and the other doesn't?
I check the snowpack data obsessively. The average snow season in this range has shortened by three weeks since I started guiding. The fire season now overlaps with what used to be ski season. I know what's happening. I'm not naive about this.
Knowing doesn't make leaving easier.
Some mornings I wake up and think: this is stupid. I'm watching my career disappear in real time and I'm just staying? Hoping it gets better? Other mornings I think about leaving now and spending the rest of my life wondering if I gave up too soon. Wondering if there was one more good season I missed.
I'm planning for next season anyway. Adding summer alpine hiking tours, rock climbing instruction, trying to stretch the guiding work across more months. Building the website business as backup income. Accepting that some years will be good and some will be terrible and I won't know which until I'm in it. Making peace with the fact that I might guide until I'm 40 or I might guide until I'm 35, and either way it won't be because I chose to stop.
My partner asked what would make me leave. I said I don't know. She said I'm not making a choice, I'm just refusing to choose.
The snow will come eventually. It always does, even if it comes later and melts earlier. And when it does, I'll be here. I'll take clients into the backcountry. I'll show them lines they've never skied. I'll keep doing this until I can't anymore.
It's just what staying looks like when you're not ready to become someone else. Even if you're not sure who that someone is anymore.