Thriving in the Rocky Mountains in winter starts with stepping outside, even when every instinct says stay in.
Words & photos :: Bronwyn Biro
Winter isn’t optional here.
In the Rockies, it rolls in like an unwelcome houseguest and refuses to leave. For many, that’s the lure. Sunrise ski tours. Ice-bound waterfalls. Tiny weather windows to chase. Months of snow ahead to do it all over again. As I scrape ice off my windshield and my nostrils freeze, I wonder what I’m doing here. Normally, I’d be inside with tea, waiting out the next eight months. This year, though, I’m trying something new: becoming a winter person.
As I scrape ice off my windshield and my nostrils freeze, I wonder what I’m doing here.
The Art of Showing Up
In mountain towns, winter runs the conversation. It’s a shared language. Calendars bend around snowpack, avalanche forecasts and fleeting daylight. Skip a powder day, and the invites dry up. Winter participation is social currency, and the market is ruthless. I became the person “waiting for spring,” as if spring were a reliable appointment rather than a rumour. No one was unkind; they simply moved on without me.
This year, I’m showing up. Not because I love it, but because participation matters more than enthusiasm. I cannot observe the season from afar. I must live inside it.
Winter participation is social currency, and the market is ruthless.
Falling Is Not an Option
Climbing apparently isn’t hard enough, so we strap knives to our feet and carry axes in both hands. The first rule of ice climbing, I’m told, is to never fall. That feels ambitious for a beginner. We are also required to bring a parka the size of a compact SUV, which I quickly realize is entirely necessary.
There’s a quiet beauty in the ice. Sunlight glints off frozen waterfalls, casting ice into shapes that seem too fragile to hold a person. Every swing feels absurdly dangerous, yet heroic in my mind. For a brief moment, fear and cold sharpen into clarity. Ice climbing didn’t make me love winter, but it showed me how to live inside it. How to marvel at the impossible.
Kick Turns and Broken Pride
If ice climbing taught me patience, backcountry skiing taught me stubbornness. I always thought skiing was about moving fast and looking cool. Uphill skiing, though, is about moving slow and dying inside. Slogging my skis uphill, I wondered who invented this torture.
Every glide was a battle between my stubbornness and muscles that clearly hadn’t signed up for this. Each kick turn looked like a yoga pose designed to humiliate. The trees thinned, and the mountains loomed, empty and uncompromising. The uphill torture paid off with every turn through that perfect, untouched powder.
Ice climbing didn’t make me love winter, but it showed me how to live inside it.
Winter as a Skill
Winter isn’t a season here. It’s a skill. You learn to pack hand warmers and a headlamp, to check the avalanche forecast before your coffee. You’ll fall. You’ll fail. You’ll go back out anyway.
Winter strips things down. It demands patience. You wait for snow. You wait for stability. You wait behind someone still driving on summer tires.
Keep showing up, and winter gives something back. Not comfort or ease, but frozen mornings, quiet skin tracks and the steady satisfaction of moving through a season that refuses to yield.
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