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The problem with Springtime in the Rockies
is
that it's just a song from an old movie. When the rest of
the northern temperate zone is celebrating the arrival of
the first robin, mountain towns are bracing for the
departure of the last skier, quickly followed by the
temporary shuttering of most cafes, taverns, rental shops
and the like because their owners are decamping to Mexico
for Mud Season,
and they won't be back until
Memorial Day.
Some of us like it that way -- it's nice to have your
town to yourself for a while. But the directors at the
local chamber of commerce view Mud Season somewhat
differently. They call it a Shoulder Season.
There's a summer peak when tourism comes to a head, and
a similar winter peak, and next to these elevated
heads
are depressed shoulders
when few
tourists visit.
Who could blame the tourists for staying away in droves? The weather can go from sparkling to sub-zero in an hour, surprise snowstorms can clog highways overnight, and if the snow won't do it, rockslides will.
Further, there's not much for the tourist to do upon arrival. The lifts are closed, the creeks are too roily for fishing, the river's too cold for rafting, the trails are too slushy for hiking.
To be honest, the best seasonal spectacle I've found is to pull over next to a pasture and watch the new calves joyfully cavort around the field, presumably unaware of their destiny at the Golden Arches.
Even that pastime has its hazards. For one thing, there aren't as many ranches as there used to be, so you often have to drive farther to find any frolicking calves. For another, you can be the target of suspicious eyes from a gun-rack pickup, especially if PETA or cattle-mutilation has been in the news lately.
The biggest hazard, though, is that the trip often involves venturing down an unpaved road, where every puddle might conceal a bog that extends to infernal depths.
Escaping from this gelid axle-deep muck can take the better part of an afternoon, especially if no one happens by to pull you out, but it also inspires a method to elevate the spring shoulder season.
Note that most popular modern forms of commercial recreation did not begin as pleasure pursuits, but as response to necessity.
Skiing was a way to bring the mail to isolated mining camps, and it was something you were paid to do, not something you paid to do. River-running was a way for trappers to get their furs to market 150 years ago. Hunting and fishing were vital livelihood, not leisure-time hobbies, for the Utes and Shoshone.
The trend should be clear now. The way to profit in the Mountain West is to find some arduous but necessary activity and convert it into a form of recreation.
Traversing our roads during Mud Season certainly qualifies as that kind of activity, so it shouldn't be too hard to convert local necessity into a form of paying recreation that we could call Brown-Water Mudrunning.
Like the similar sport of White-Water River-running, it would involve rating the courses from Class I (mild washboard riffles, will not spill coffee on dashboard at low speeds, but wipers must run constantly to maintain vision) to Class V (keeper holes, strong side-tilts, portaging and filling often required).
Once the local roads were rated, with daily updates posted on the Internet, the venturesome tourists might come in their own Spewts to tackle a notorious Class IV run. Thus more motel rooms and restaurant meals in Mud Season, not to mention the profit possibilities for tow trucks and garages.
Other tourists might crave the excitement, but prefer to engage a local outfitter for some world-class Mudrunning. This means jobs during a time of year when there aren't many. And the local guides, in their efforts to get their patrons back to town safely, would preserve and enhance traditional rural skills now in danger of being lost to posterity: chain-stringing, brush-weaving, rock-sinking, come-along stringing, widowmaker operating ...
All the infrastructure is in place now, in that every rural county has miles of roads that are wretched in April and May -- no need to build lifts or clear runs. And those gas-guzzling Spewts, the ideal craft for Mudrunning, are the most popular vehicles in America.
All it's going to take is some promotion and persuasion, like getting Outside Magazine to publish a 12-page feature on the daredevil delights of Extreme Mudrunning in some area previously known only for winter skiing or summer mountain-biking.
After that, the sport should take off and replace a depressed Shoulder Season with yet another Tourist Season. The only real danger here, in fact, is that Mudrunning might succeed -- and as I mentioned, some of us like Mud Season precisely because we've got our world to ourselves then, even if there are some long, miserable interludes, waiting for someone to come by and pull us out of the mire.
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