RISKY BUSINESS

Markus Beck’s made a living out of pushing boundaries, but now those boundaries are pushing back

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Markus Beck describes himself as a “risk manager,” and if you glanced at his resume, it’s clear he manages plenty of it. As an avalanche safety instructor and the owner of a mountain guide service, risk is often the one thing Beck can’t avoid. His company, the Boulder-based Alpine World Ascents, has, in many ways, made risk into a business — or rather, the mitigation of risk. But with the U.S. Forest Service limiting the number of active permits allowed on forest lands, teaching other people how to manage risks in the backcountry might just be the part of his business he has to bury. 

From an early age, Beck, who grew up in Switzerland, not only became acquainted with the beauty of nature, but also with its unpredictability. He’d hiked just off a resort in Davos, Switzerland, skiing an area he was well acquainted with that could be reached with minimal skinning. He’d heard the ski resort’s guides discussing ski cutting — a method used by ski patrollers and helicopter ski guides where you trigger an avalanche “on your own terms,” ensuring you have speed built up and an island of safety should the slope fracture — and Beck thought he’d have a go at it. Beck had noticed wind slabs in the area, and while attempting to ski cut the slope, he was caught in an avalanche. Lacking the momentum to avoid the slide, he clung to a cluster of rocks that had formed a small cliff. The avalanche just shallow enough for him to wade it out. It was a wake up call he hasn’t slept off since. He’d gotten lucky, but a backcountry skier can’t live on luck. 

“I think it took decades, really, for me to realize what happened to me back then,” Beck says. “This stuff actually hurts, and can kill you, and I didn’t experience that. … The risk perception is so far off with some people, particularly that [younger] age group.” 

According to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, there were 265 avalanche fatalities in Colorado from 1950 to 2014 — 127 more fatalities than the nearest state, Alaska, which recorded 138 deaths over the same period. Of the total number of avalanche deaths in the U.S. between 1950 and 2014, 240 were backcountry tourers. 

Despite the near-death experience in Davos, Beck didn’t shy away from the potentially fatal realities of his passion — he became fascinated by them.

After taking the numerous avalanche safety courses in Switzerland required during his ski instructor training in 1989, Beck moved to the U.S. in 1997. He made his living teaching P.E. at Foothills Academy in Wheat Ridge. When an opportunity to spend two months in the Himalayas came, he convinced the school to give him the time off in part by promising to visit and observe schools in Nepal. Those school visits would make as big a difference in the course of his life as the mountaineering did. 

He set off to the Himalayas with Freddie “Hot Dog” Snalam, whose famous hot dog stand still operates on the Pearl Street Mall, planning to snowboard Tharpu Chuli, or Tent Peak, and climb Hiunchuli, both in Nepal’s Himalayas. The two quickly realized that the conditions on Tent Peak were less than hospitable, the summit having melted out, dashing their plans to snowboard from the peak. They climbed up via a glacier that led to an exposed knife-edge snow ridge, and by snowboarding down from just below the ridge they were able to accomplish a partial descent. Before ascending Hiunchuli, they realized the information they’d received regarding the difficulty of the climb had been a bit faulty. In addition to them lacking the proper climbing gear to conquer the difficult face, mid-altitude cumulous clouds began to blanket the area, thickening and dropping rapidly, indicating fast-approaching weather changes. They decided to bail out. 

Two days later, the range was buried under 4 feet of snow, with avalanches running down all the way to the trails feeding in to the area. 

“We would have either gotten caught in an avalanche, or stuck,” Beck says.

Although weather conditions had prevented Beck and Snalam from completing most of their goals for the range, Beck gained something he hadn’t expected from the trip. 

 “I did visit a lot of schools, particularly the ones in mountain areas,” Beck says. “It was a phenomenal experience, and what really struck me was how different school is in Nepal — particularly the mountain areas of Nepal — [versus] the Western countries. There were kids that walked three hours in frickin’ flip-flops, through any weather, just to sit down on some very uncomfortable wood benches to listen to a dude who barely can read himself … and then three hours back home again. … It just struck me that they were so supportive of each other and helpful with the little kids, the big kids. Kind of what you think it should be.”

Watching how children lived and acted with so little in Nepal, and comparing that to his experiences teaching children who had so much in the U.S., Beck found himself no longer motivated to be a part of the educational system in the States. Beck says he was fascinated that, despite their age, younger Nepali kids were actually motivated to be quiet, to listen, to glean all they could out of what little they were offered, all while taking nothing for granted. He felt that mindset wasn’t shared by many of the young students he’d encountered in the States. 

When he returned to the U.S. from Nepal, Beck gave up teaching at Foothills. Having taken courses on Berthoud Pass and with a Swiss guide out of Crested Butte, Beck received his American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) Level 3 certification. Following his “graduation,” Beck was asked by then-owner of Crested Butte Mountain Guides Jean Pavillard to teach the Level 1 courses for the company.

He began working full time as an avalanche safety course instructor, as well as a national and international guide for mountain sports, then shifted his focus to developing new strategies for avalanche safety. In the process, he discovered a new passion for the teaching. 

“I just love being outside,” Beck says. “I think it was definitely a passion for the mountains and to get more involved, to be outside more, the sense of adventure [and] sharing that with people and enabling people to find the courage to push it a little bit more than they’re comfortable, to learn more about the mountains and survival and [how to] get better at it.” 

Sifting through new ways to bolster the teaching methods for his avalanche safety courses isn’t the only obstacle Beck has been attempting to address. He’s also trying to decipher why he’s no longer able to offer courses on certain areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service. In order to teach avalanche safety courses on federally protected lands, Beck is required to obtain a commercial use permit. But there’s a moratorium for permits for Berthoud Pass, which falls primarily in the Clear Creek Ranger District of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, that has stopped him from offering the courses. Beck says the pass is not only conveniently accessible, but offers some of the more avalanche-prone terrain in Colorado, making it ideal for avalanche safety courses.  

Since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Beck says, rather than focusing on properly assessing who should receive the commercial use permits required to teach courses on publicly protected lands, the U.S. Forest Service is restricting access. 

Beck had previously operated through Crested Butte Mountain Guides, which held a permit for Berthoud Pass and had contracted him as an instructor for the courses. As an independent instructor, he’s without that kind of access.

“I personally think it’s valid concerns that are played out completely wrong and ineffectively,” he says. “Wrong, because they target professionals and prevent them from doing their job and prevent professionals from providing valuable services to the public, and ineffectively, because it does not address the valid concerns of land managers.”

The forest service splits lands into compartments, or zones, and although there are currently six active commercial use permits in the Berthoud Pass area, additional permits are being withheld until a carrying capacity study is completed, says Penny Wu, a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service who’s stationed in the Clear Creek Ranger District and handles the majority of commercial use permits for Berthoud Pass. The study, which commenced in 2011, will determine whether the number of permits for the Berthoud Pass zone can and should be adjusted.  

“We do not have a projected end date. The forest is very close to finishing [the survey],” Wu says. “We know how important this is and we know there’s competitive interest stuff there that would be interested in applying for specific permits if we have the capacity.”

 The limited number of permits prevents people from taking courses or participating in backcountry touring with guides of their choice, Beck says. The exclusive access also allows certain businesses to use areas that should be accessible to everyone and he argues that’s creating a monopolistic system that doesn’t address the real issues. He sees reasonable concerns in questions over liability and environmental protection, he says, but isn’t sure limiting guides’ access is the best route to manage those and other concerns.

“The guiding industry is 1 percent of the public use of the land, so they’re really only managing 1 percent, and it’s probably that 1 percent that not only treats nature in the way it should, but teaches our clients how to do that, but we’re the ones being excluded,” he says.

As long as permit holders remain in “good standing,” meaning the business is able to meet requirements such as carrying the proper amount of insurance and paying annual fees to the government on time, they can renew their permits. Commercial service permits cannot be transferred between locations or business owners. A permit only re-enters the pool if a business owner decides not to provide the service that required that permit anymore.

“It’s a competitive process, for sure,” Wu says. 

Due to the limited number of outfitters allowed in the Berthoud Pass area, Beck says, he only has access to sub-par terrain. He acknowledges that he could teach courses in other locations, such as Rocky Mountain National Park — where he’s taught courses in the past — but he says there’s too much traffic as a result of limited access to other areas, and less-than-ideal conditions that defeat the purpose of hands-on avalanche training. 

“I think it is a very difficult situation, and as a land manager you have to protect the resources, but yet you have to make it available. That is a tough job,” Beck says. “Maybe what has worked 30 years ago or so, it’s just no longer adequate. There are way more people pushing in to the backcountry, whether it’s winter or summers. There’s way more demand for professional instruction, or just being able to pick a guide of your choice and then take off and have a good time in the mountains. … I would personally like to see the land managers and the guiding, or the commercial, side of outdoor industry sync more together and problem solve and actually making a real difference.”  

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