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Sopris the
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Volume 16, Number 2 | February 22-28, 2024
Lou Dawson: A tale in four skis – and a romance Lou Dawson has had a storied, outdoorsoriented life; much of it adventure-filled and exciting but also with great challenges. A pioneer of ski mountaineering and alpine touring (AT) in this country, Dawson is probably best known as the first person to ski all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains (fourteeners) – a feat for which he was inducted into the Colorado Ski (now Snowsports) Hall of Fame. Prior to his skiing exploits, however, Dawson was a highlevel climber, with hundreds of ascents in Colorado, Utah and the Yosemite Valley. The Dawson house hints at this lifestyle: the mailbox on its steel post in the shape of the trickster Kokopelli, the fence gate made of old skis, the vintage ski-lift chair serving now as a porch swing. The Sopris Sun met with Dawson in his home’s great room – brightly lit on a sunny winter day by a bank of south-facing windows, Mount Sopris visible through the tree branches. The walls are covered with his mother’s bright, cheery paintings and photos of family members and various alpine activities. Mounted in a rack on another wall are four vintage skis, the second one down curiously bent and broken. Those skis, as it happens, tell much of Dawson’s life story and represent many of the themes in his upcoming memoir, “Avalanche Dreams,” as does a somewhat serendipitous romance with the woman who would become his wife.
On a brisk morning in early February, Lou Dawson, local author and Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame inductee, looks out over the horizon from White Hill with Mount Sopris at his side, albeit at a distance. Flip to page 4 for an interview with Dawson. Photo by Will Sardinsky
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