Don't have an account? Join Now. Forgot Password. Dolores LaChapelle revels in the magical early-morning glow that she loved so much. Katie Lozancich illustration. Today, LaChapelle has mostly become an obscurity, but her teachings still echo in the hearts and minds of some of the most influential people in snow sports. Silverton Mountain cofounder Jen Brill was a personal friend of LaChapelle, often visiting her home in the San Juans to talk about life and their shared love, powder skiing.
Then you add to it that she was a female mountaineer in the s. Picking it up — palms sweaty with anticipation — I felt years of searching culminate, the moment a capstone to the quest. Ed and Dolores LaChapelle exploring the countryside of Switzerland. The first time Dolores LaChapelle touched a pair of skis was at an army surplus store in Denver in World War II was winding down, and a glut of cheap military gear was for the first time making recreation available to the masses.
Grabbing a pair of seven-foot hickory army skis, she felt an arcane power, and in that moment she committed to learning the emerging mountain sport. A few months later, Dolores hitchhiked up Loveland Pass to test out the surplus sticks. That first run was filled with tumbles and hard falls, but upon reaching the bottom, Dolores knew that this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
For the following three years, Dolores dreamt of skiing all night, every night, until, in , she was offered a teaching job in Aspen, Colorado. She accepted, and never looked back. She would later describe those early days as a dreamlike time filled with unlimited powder lines.
But this era of purity — and the community that accompanied it — quickly ended once people realized that skiing was a marketable commodity. Investors moved in to stake their claim, and what had been a golden age soon passed into memory. After parting ways, the two wrote love letters for many months until, one crisp autumn day, the Federal Institute of Avalanche Research in Davos, Switzerland, offered Ed a research position.
