The casual observer might have thought that Royal was taking in the great beauty of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Wheeler Peak, at 13,161 feet the highest point in New Mexico, was off in the direction he was looking. So was Kachina Peak. All the peaks were pretty with the new snow on them. But I knew that Royal was looking out at the east side of Hunziker Bowl which is way out by our boundary. He had the binocs focused on tracks in snow. The eastern half of Hunziker wasn’t open yet. Too little snow, too many boulders. Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be good skiing on a powder day, just that it wouldn’t be safe. Folks would hit boulders, there would be blood and guts and gore. But the closed east half was right next to the open and popular west side of Hunziker Bowl, and sure enough, even with the naked eye, you could see that one or two tracks had already appeared over the line into the forbidden zone.

Royal put down the binoculars, beckoned me over with his finger and reminded me that I hadn’t submitted very many names to the “bad boy file.” That is our computerized list of neer-do-wells stretching back through the decades. If the name sounds sexist, it is not in reality. Ninety nine point seven percent of the hell-raisers on our list are “boys” of a certain age… busting rules, skiing recklessly, giving patrollers grief and forcing a guy like me to play at law enforcement. Royal told me, on that day two years ago, to get out there and “rip some lips” which is what he has often told me to do over the years. I nodded and went out determined to make him proud…it wasn’t the time to be asking him just what “rip some lips” means… I knew well enough that he wanted me out there busting bogies. I vowed to keep Hunziker safe for democracy and the rope line sacred.

It takes a while to get out that way, I had to ski for miles and then ride a long chairlift and then traverse a bit… I was just begging for somebody to hurt their knee so as to save me from my lip ripping fate. But no. When I got to Hunziker and checked out the perfectly good rope line, I saw that a few other scoundrels had made it out into the rock-infested dream snow. The tracks were bound to entice more scofflaws and I didn’t mean to allow that. I skied down Hunziker and waited in the basin below, which had a wonderful view of Hunziker, the ropeline, and the out-of-bounds powder. Anybody skiing out there would have to come by me and I would have witnessed all of their evil doing.

No sooner had I shoved my ski poles into the snow and turned to watch the mountain than I saw the first two bad people switch to the dark side. They weren’t very good bogies, to tell the truth. Not stealthy at all, not fast, not leaving very pretty tracks. They were falling a lot, wallowing in the powder. Taking forever, wedging their turns. When they finally got down, they skied right over to me. They were kind of pudgy for “bad boys” and I was a little worried for them since they had snow packed into all of their bodily nooks and crannies. Even so, the law is the law. "Did you guys go under a rope to get out there?"

"Well, yeah, we followed the tracks," said the older of the two, with no bad-boy belligerence to his voice… he seemed kind of Dad-like.

"You know that you can’t go skiing out into closed areas just because there are tracks."

The Dad said, "We sure learned our lesson, that powder is hard!" His boy seconded that, shaking snow out of his trousers.

While I nodded sympathetically, I still needed compliance. I got down to some serious lip-ripping, "You can’t be guessing whether it is ok to go under our ropes…we have that closed because the rocks make it hazardous, we have other places roped off today for avalanche conditions. You could get killed, you could get somebody else killed, there are laws in this state…" I was just about to ask them to hand over the lift tickets when the pudgy boy spoke up.

"Are there any good places to eat around here?" And this made me realize that I had traumatized the boy enough, he was getting hungry, for God’s sake. I gave detailed instructions to the nearest green-chile-cheeseburger and they left quickly.

I turned back to the mountain, disgusted with my softer side. I then had a few minutes of quiet reflection out there under Kachina Peak amid gently swaying spruce and pine trees. The sun was beaming down out of the bluest sky onto the whitest snow and I was starting to think that all was right with the whole world when dang it if I didn’t see two more bogies sneaking into the pow-pow. These guys were skiing fast, leaving nice curvy tracks. What was that noise? It couldn’t be… they were yelping and hooting and yodeling down. Oh man, were these guys dead meat. I got into the intercept position and drew myself up to all six feet and two inches. "Hold on!!! Come over here!" And they did, still smiling and happy…and I began to get a little worried by all the pastels and purples and yellows in their clothing. "You guys know you were skiing in a closed area?"

— Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Columnist