Ski museum to host Lou Dawson, the mountaineer who retraced Trooper Traverse from Leadville to Aspen

Colorado Mountaineer Lou Dawson accomplished many goals throughout his life, becoming best known as the first person to ski every 14er in Colorado.

But amid all the time spent scaling slabs and climbing chimneys, many of his goals were put on hold while he pursued other objectives.

Many of those goals were climbing-related — he wanted to be the first person to ski Denali, retrace a certain 10th Mountain Division trek from Leadville to Aspen, and set the speed record up El Capitan, to name a few.

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But he also had goals not related to climbing. He longed to learn more about his father’s story and why he deserted the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale and was jailed during World War II. And he wanted to start a family of his own.

He also wanted to write a memoir of his life in the mountains, using the narrative nonfiction format that he loved from reading memoirs like William Finnegan’s “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life” or “The Tender Bar” by J.R. Moehringer.

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But just like his climbing goals, his personal goals were often put on hold over the years while more pressing objectives awaited.

Dawson first heard about the 10th Mountain Division taking a trip from Leadville to Aspen on skis from Fritz Benedict, a 10th veteran who shared with Dawson a copy of the Camp Hale “Ski-Zette” from March 1944. The Ski-Zette was Camp Hale’s newspaper, distributed to the 11,000 ski troopers who trained there in the 1940s.

Growing up in Aspen, “I’d heard vague legends of 10th Mountain soldier studs marching 50 miles across the mountains, seeking women, booze, and a few turns on the ski hill above Aspen,” Dawson said.

Upon receiving that copy of the Ski-Zette, the story came to life in the newspaper’s coverage of the journey, and Dawson was able to imagine the route the troopers took over the Continental Divide. He fantasized about skiing the same route and bringing it back into the popular consciousness of mountaineering. But like many other goals, it sat dormant for years.

Twelve years later, he finally accomplished the goal, calling the trek “The Trooper Traverse,” a name that has stuck.

Getting that story and all of his others into a book was another goal that eluded Dawson for years, but he has finally completed and published the work, showing off the writing skills that he has mastered like so many rock faces over the years.

In naming his book “Avalanche Dreams,” Daswon said the title reflects not just the snow slides that are omnipresent in the minds of climbers, but the avalanche of emotions that come with reflecting on one’s own life and relationships.

Dawson will visit the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail on Saturday starting at 3 p.m. He plans to sign copies of his book and answer questions, but he says he may also speak or read excerpts from the book, as well.

In many places within the work, the snapshot scenes of mundane life in the mountains are as vivid and well-described as the intense battles with nature.

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Of working in a ski shop in Aspen, “The scent of burning tree sap swirled from the pine tar I was torching into a pair of wooden Nordic skis. Outside the window, rice-sized snowflakes spit from muddy, low-hanging clouds,” Dawson writes.

Of his bravery in tackling his first ascents and descents, Dawson describes “the bottomless reserve of stupidity I rationalized as courage.”

Dawson’s story of retracing the 10th Mountain Division’s path from Leadville to Aspen is just one of dozens of smaller stories within the memoir, but it connects the dots on much of the work, bringing together his father’s generation, which forged the path, and his son’s generation, which enjoys the fruits of the older generation’s labor once they’re pried away from their computer screens.