James Harlow Tests Dirt Skiing on Aspen's Mancos Shale

The air on the Rio Grande Trail hung heavy with dust, the kind that settles in the creases of your knees and coats your teeth. It was a hot Sunday, the kind where the sun feels less like illumination and more like a physical weight pressing down on the valley floor. Somewhere up the slope, the new Nell/Bell chairlift was humming, a mechanical heartbeat in the quiet afternoon.

Down here, at the base of the Mancos shale formation that cuts a diagonal swath from Snowmass to Slaughterhouse Falls, a different kind of activity was unfolding. It wasn’t the polished glide of groomed corduroy. It was the chaotic, gritty reality of dirt skiing.

To hear James Harlow tell it, the trend is gaining traction, fueled by construction and a desperate need for novelty in an aging ski culture. Harlow, who describes himself as a "rapidly-aging, ski-bum lunatic," decided last Sunday that the heat was reason enough to strap his skis to his back and hike up a sloughing sediment moraine. He wasn’t just testing the limits of his balance; he was testing the limits of his insurance policy.

"I’m chalking up my exuberance to the construction of the new Nell/Bell chairlift, which I’ve been entirely captivated by this summer," Harlow wrote in the Aspen Times. "and the fact that I became accustomed to, and pretty darn good at, skiing over dirt last winter."

The result was a descent down a pitch he admitted was "considerably steeper than I thought." The conditions were unforgiving. There was no wax, no ice to cling to, just loose shale and the constant threat of a fall that would leave you "bloodied, covered in dirt in the back of an ambulance."

Harlow’s verdict on the technique is blunt. Dirt skiing is bad for your skis. It is a sacrificial ritual. You don’t handle your equipment with kid gloves; you treat them as inanimate objects meant to be beaten. He jokes about trying Irish Spring bar soap on his bases next time, a nod to the gritty, unrefined nature of the sport.

This isn’t just about one man’s adventure up a shale moraine. It’s about a broader cultural shift in Aspen. As financial forecasts darken and weather patterns become less predictable, the traditional ski season feels like it’s reaching a "fall of the Roman Empire" phase. Armchair experts point to the weight of the industry itself, suggesting a slow, undignified death.

Harlow isn’t buying it. Not yet.

"Dirt skiing may very well be the wave of the future," he wrote. "I’m just doing my dirty duty by following in the ski boot-steps of local dirt skier giants before them, like the Pelletier’s and Marolts."

He’s even founded the "Amateur Dirt Skiers of Aspen" (ADSA), a non-partisan, non-profit, non-denominational, non-rational-thinking LLC headquartered at the lunatic fringe of Aspen and Woody Creek. It’s a subsidiary of the Aspen State Teachers College, if you’re keeping score, and while it’s not related to the PSIA, it does accept bribes.

The question is whether this is a fleeting gimmick or a genuine adaptation to a changing climate. If the shale keeps exposing itself as the snow line retreats, will locals start treating their skis like disposable tools? Harlow seems ready to bet on it. He’s earned his Level 3 Dirt-Cert, and he’s got the acrid sweat and the pounding heart to prove it.

"Stein Eriksen counter-rotating in his grave at the very notion of this dirt ski," Harlow wrote, capturing the tension between tradition and the gritty new reality of a warming valley.