Walking Mountains Explores the Creation of Vail's Back Bowls

Alice Dwyer, a naturalist at the Eagle County-based Walking Mountains Science Center, has penned a great little article about Vail's "legendary" Back Bowls . Specifically, about how they were "created."

"...[T]he origin of the open landscape remains a mystery," her story notes. "What started the blaze that led to the amazing ski terrain we experience today?"

Was it a lightning strike?

The article explores that possibility. It also ponders the question of the Utes burning the area while they were being forced out of much of Colorado in the 19th century.

After a lot of white settlers came here, and after many fights between the locals and the newcomers (sound familiar?), Congress created the Ute Removal Act, "which gave the go-ahead for the wrongful removal of the White River and Uncompahgre bands from their land to the Uintah Reservation," Dwyer notes.

Pete Siebert, one of Vail's founders, has been quoted as describing the Back Bowls as “the most mind-blowing landscape of all: a series of bowls stretched to the horizon, a virtually treeless universe of boundless powder, open slopes, and open sky.”

But, perhaps the greater mystery is why the land hasn't seen the trees grow back.

"With an increased presence of wildfires in the West, we are growing our understanding of how trees repopulate," Dwyer writes. "Regrowth following a major wildfire is not a simple process. A 2018 study by Colorado State University noted that, prior to 2000, 19 percent of post-fire forests experienced no regeneration."

Anyway, it's a fun little read and it'll have you looking around for clues while you drop those snowy bowls in the Vail backcountry. To read more, go here .

For more on Walking Mountains, go here .

See you out there!